I was reading one of my favorite assassins in Col. Charles Askins from my more salad days. If you have noted I use that terminology for greener days, that is Col. Askins and I recoiled from it when first reading it in it being so 1950's wag and "wag" comes from Elizabeth Custer of 1880, so there is no need to get the bulge on in thinking you know my age due to my linguistic forensic anglo time signature, as I utilize catch words or phrases to reintroduce them.
The subject today my children is the 8 gauge shotgun. Before those groans come, the idea of this is for your home defence and not for having to become an expert in firearms or warfare, as I have learned this already in my career leaving all of you time to play.
Think of the shotgun as a small cannon as that is what it is really. It is a device which uses controlled explosions for the purpose of directing projectiles in a direction away from the firer, and so soundly constructed that it does not kill the firer.
A shotgun fires from one slug to hundreds of projectiles in a direction meant to destroy the object fired upon. The projectiles are round in most cases and range from the slug, double OO buckshot, four buckshot, BBB's, BB's, 2's to 8 shot in larger to smaller sizes.
It should be obvious that the slug and buckshot is used to kill deer and the 8 shot or bird shot is used to kill small game as quail and doves.
8 shot is approximately pin head sized and double OO is ball bearing size in layman's understanding. By size, meaning weight, the shot carries further in killing effect due to size. The reality is though a shooter can in normal assailant distances kill anyone with 8 shot as the shot carries the charge and will penetrate just as deadly as buckshot within 20 feet or as you know less than home room distances.
Real history shows that the buck and ball Civil War armed Soldiers were very deadly. The buck and ball is one large ball or slug and 3 buckshot behind it. It is like shooting 4 rounds at once from a pistol.
In Vietnam in the more salad days, the Marines armed themselves with Winchester Model 12 (Created in 1912) and buckshot loads against the terrorist communist North Koreans with great effect. This harkens back to the trench warfare of World War I where United States Soldiers used trench guns of shotguns with the same deadly effect.
50 yards would be consider an effective range, although one can spray balls at greater distance to disable an enemy. The point is in this that a shotgun "patterns" or due to air effects causes each shot or ball to spread out, as there is not rifling or spinning on the ball as in rifle bullets to keep the projectile on target.
Those little dimples on a golf ball are "rifling" of a sort in order to keep a ball where it is aimed on the golf course. The dimples break up wind resistance and the ball flies true in tragectory in flight.
See isn't learning fun in physics and geometry with algebra if you have already seen it and you just understand the dynamics of what you are seeing without the math.
So we come to a point in the 8 guage. Shotguns are measured by bore size or the size of the hole in the barrel. 8 being larger bore than 32 as that is the way the English measured all of this.
Early cannons had no shells, but were loaded with a charge of powder in drams, followed by a wad to seperate the powder from the shot, the shot rammed home, and then a wad placed on top to keep the shot against the powder charge for effective transfer of chemical reaction explosion.
Shells came later, but the reality is all operate on the same principle, including TOW missiles in a chemical reaction controlled delivers a projectile to source, which then in a controlled nature delivers that projectile with lethal effect.
21st century loads for shotguns are 12 guage for the most part, and without getting into the machinations of disarming Americans, the American shooter being a large market was asked in the early part of the 20th century what kind of gun they would shoot, and most said the 10 guage on the top end, so the larger bores of 2, 4 and 8 were put on the sidelines.
I focus on the 8 in this for an important reason, and I will mention an American that all of you will owe your lives to in John Olin, the entrepeneur who purchased Western Cartridge and Winchester firearms, and started pouring money into those operations advancing cartridge development to arrest it from the British.
The 8 guage was a charge which would fire 5 drams of nitro powder and propel a shot charge of 1 3/4 ounces of shot to be chiefly used for waterfowl market hunting as people did have to eat and that is how food was harvested.
These shotguns or punt guns were 16 pounds and had 40 inch barrels. While you can not now legally fire these guns for hunting, there is no regulation about owning them nor in firing them for fun or defence of yourself.
To explain this a bit further, the Sharps Buffalo Rifle was in the 45 caliber, 16 pounds and barrels in that 40 inch range. This is to show that these are not cannons being hauled around, but are weapons of capable use.
Now we are going to visit John Olin and his work, in the modern shotgun. The 12 gauge which is of current them will fire a 3 inch shell. They can be had with 2 drams equivalent powder and 2 ounces of copper plated lead shot in an 8 pound firearm.
I will point out something I hope you have noticed in that 8 guage was requiring 5 drams and the English would fire up to 8 drams, but have 1 3/4 ounces of shot and the 12 was firing 2 drams equivalent and capable in a 3 inch shell of delivering 2 ounces of shot.
John Olin and his engineers created a better cannon at Winchester Western. They created a way to put an 8 gauge into a 12 gauge for heavy waterfowl hunting. That is what I desire you to understand in this, that the modern shells which John Olin pioneered produced a more effective shell in smaller loadings than the original larger loadings.
That is to a point though as the wider the bore allows better pattern delivery and in bore sizes for Sacred Geometry reason in the Golden Spiral the perfect bore to shot match is the 28 gauge for a loading, although that is not something one could use for defence or hunting large wildfowl due to limits on shot and the ability of the shooter to actually hit what they aim at.
The same Golden Spiral for rifles is in the 270 group of diameter.
Before I digress, the reality is that properly regulated, a home defence system using single shot Harrington Richardson relatively cheap shotguns mounted in place, could in survival riot situations produce such an effective line of fire that 4 such barrels in pattern and cover area would end all such attempts in approach zones to giving you any more problems.
Literally, those four in pattern would be like firing over 80 rounds of pistol ammunition in one firing.
Granted there is reloading as these are single shots, but the reality is with legal firearms used as cannons to protect property in dire situations, that a home defence is more than possible. Providing one would mount these shotguns on a turret for movement, and implement a string on the triggers so when the charges are released that you will be somewhere else as that will draw fire from any criminal survivors, this available system is a cheaply made home defence.
If one invested up to 4000 dollars on such system in using semi automatic shotguns which would reload automatically in firing, one could in a 10 gauge have 12 rounds to fire, and in a 12 gauge have perhaps 20 to 28 rounds. That is a tremendous amount of legal firepower in a fixed home defence. I would imagine that the BATF or some New York police would try to arrest you on something, as would the media go Obama wild over this system, but the reality is this is all a functional reality and legal.
If you prefer, you can still purchase from Dixie Gun Works, vintage Napoleon scaled down cannons of the Civil War era legally. Those require understanding the use of blackpowder cannons in charging and firing and reloading to not blow off body parts, as reloading is the problem without swabbing or wetting out the bore as I have witnessed a pre charge igniting from a fired cannon in blowing off a person's shoulder, of course killing them as arteries so severed pump more pints of blood out than a human can donate.
This will be closed out here, as the point of the article was showing that Americans developed superior firepower to gather food in order to make up for lack of gunning practice, which fits the modern 21st century American.
The shotgun is a superior weapon for the most situations, like the mule was superior the fast horse. I am off to read Charles Askins The American Shotgun, as I am at the 16 gauge which is close to that Golden Spiral also.
nuff said
agtG
