“There are two things upon which one may always depend:” the old aphorism goes, “death and taxes.” I’d like to propose the following amendment:
There are three things upon which one may always depend: death, taxes and the utter idiocy of Vice President Joe Biden.
About three weeks ago I published an article at Gun Values Board relating Mr. Biden’s comical and absolutely dangerous gun and personal safety advice. Well, the Vice president has done it again, and has not only recommended violating the law, but additional bits of lunacy that are even more dangerous to self and others. I’ve updated the original article accordingly. By all means, pay the brief article and briefer update a visit.
The country is truly in the very best of hands.
This is interesting, because I recall a fairly knowledgeable gun advocate suggesting a shotgun with a smaller load than buckshot for home defense purposes. (I remember it because he also suggested a laser sight to make the gun easier to aim under pressure) I think it may have been your former host, Bob Owens.
Also, correct me if I am wrong, but the police use shotguns as a common squad car weapon. Why would they use a shotgun if a carbine is a lot easier to handle?
O, read the article detailing Biden’s advice. You will better understand the issues and Biden’s lunacy.
Dear OmegaPaladin:
Police agencies are very much traditionalists, and they have always carried shotguns, even if no one can really recall why. There are many problems with shotguns. One is that most aren’t equipped with slings and as such, render any officer carrying one unable to do anything but carry and safeguard the shotgun. In addition, they really are weapons with essentially the same distance characteristics as handguns, but in a much more unwieldy package that is slow to load and has limited ammunition capacity. Understanding this, many police agencies have begun to replace them with carbines of the AR-15 type, which makes far more sense as they provide much greater useful range and a much higher degree of accuracy than even handguns, to say nothing of more ready ammunition in standard magazines.
While shotguns can be used in the home defense role, they do have a number of inherent downsides, as I note in the GVB article.
Please don’t take my argument as defending Biden. He’s a blustering fool, almost like the democratic caricature of GW Bush. His idiocy is willful and completely unamusing. In this case, he’s running off the idea that shotguns have supernatural powers of terrifying bad guys and basically deliver a 90 degree cone of death in front of you.
My comment was just surprise at the fact that shotguns were fairly poor home defense weapons, as I had heard arguments from seemly knowledgeable people that the shotgun was a superb home defense weapon due to depositing all of the energy into the bad guy, to make sure the only person dies is the criminal.
I love this website! And you Mr. McDaniel are a scholar and a GENTLEMAN.
Dear Keith Sanford:
You’re most kind. Glad to have you visiting.