Why not get Barett M-82 knockoff so you can take oout the robber while he’s still planning his home invasion in his appartment a mile away?
Did he beat you with it or something?
I don’t own any guns, but it seems to me that the best “plan” if you have an intruder is to call 911, throw on the lights, aim center of mass and blast away.
An even better plan is secure yourself and your family in a single room and call 911. The last thing I would think anyone would want is to engage in a shootout with an unknown number of intruders.
It was in response to this post.
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To address the OP, the only method I am aware of is the Vline quick access safes. That being said, they are large and expensive - relative to what you get. The in wall versions are nice, though they wont stop a determined thief. Mostly I’d only store your quick access weapon there, knowing that if you were to be robbed you’d likely lose it. A $300 shotgun is not a great loss for the ability to have quick secure access.
Not to discount the other folks’ opinions, but anyone who does not have children will likely not be able to answer this question with the proper frame of reference. It’s not a “put it high up” or “show them how serious it is” kind of thing. You need to be certain they wont get to it unauthorized. So certain that you are betting their life on it, and yours.
In the end, I thought the in wall version was a bit too cumbersome myself. I opted for a similarly mechanical locked pistol safe. More practical for my situation, and I have kids.
Regarding other stuff in this thread - a lot of misinformation. A couple quick hits. Anything that will penetrate human will penetrate drywall. Know your house and your lines of fire. Bird shot is for birds, not humans. Use a load meant to take down human sized objects. Progressive loads are probably a bad idea. You dont want to need the bigger load and only have available the smaller load. You also dont want to have to testify that you didn’t feel you needed to use the larger load and therefore your justification for the firearm is weakened.
You could also stick with the rifle, and look into rifle shot-ammunition.
I keep a .22 rifle loaded up with Snake Shot all the time, as we have a number of vicious, venomous water snakes around here, and the snake-shot doesn’t bounce off the water surface. Something like this,. You can also get it more powerful.
Another nice little, inexpensive smaller shotgun for keeping around is a 410 Snakecharmer.. I use that for the same reason as above.
If you’re going to use these glorified BB guns, you might as well use your nine iron for home defense. If you are going to use a firearm for defense, I say go all in and use whatever is best for taking down an armed crazed meth addict with one shot.
It’s not stopping power I’m concerned about, it’s spread. Gotta figure the first shot is going to be the shakiest, so go with the load that gives me the biggest spread. The shot distance is never going to be more than 15 feet, so #4 shot will pattern about 18" or so at maximum range. Enough to drop someone in light clothing (around here we don’t worry about heavy winter jackets!) Inside that distance it will hit just as hard as the buckshot. The follow-up rounds can have smaller patterns.
Of course what would probably happen is that the invader would kick down the door, trip over a cat toy, plunge headlong into the basket of dirty laundry waiting to be washed, choke on the fumes from my socks, and stagger back into the night without anybody hearing over the sound of my snoring.
I’m not sure that shot distance will be inside of 15’ in all cases. There are plenty of angles inside my house that will provide for greater than 15’ line of sight. I also may not be inside when I need that weapon. That and I want to know if I only have time for 1 shot it will count. Even at 25 yards, 00 buck will still have enough pellets in center mass for effective stopping power.
I dunno. I got a box of 200 rounds of #8 shot for skeet shooting a couple of years back, and have not used it all. If I shoot someone with it at the ranges that are possible in my 1 bedroom apartment, they’re going to be hamburger. The other side of it is that I have no worries about any ideas of some overzealous anti-gun prosecutor poisoning my jury with “intended to shoot a Human with these loads”, or “meant to kill him”. No sir, my shotgun was intended for hunting birds and skeet shooting. I didn’t want to shoot that man, but I didn’t want to die either. 
My father’s idea was a load of bird shot, followed by a slug, followed by another bird shot. The first was to stop, the second was to kill if the intruder didn’t stop, and the third was for a last chance if you missed with the slug. My father felt that if you couldn’t stop the invader after that mix, you’d probably end up dead, anyway.
As for the safety factor. Gun up high with trigger lock. Key in nightstand.
The time you have to access your firearm is always an issue. Having some experience with a home invasion, I feel that a pistol or a semi-auto rifle is best. With either you can keep the firearm separate from a loaded magazine (very easy to hide). Should the need arise, there’s nothing quicker that slipping a magazine into the pistol or rifle. And from a safety perspective, it’s comforting to know the firearm and the ammunition are in different locations.
Most of this progressive loading of different types of rounds and so forth is really grossly overthinking the issue. The reality is that you want to use the most effective round to stop (not specifically “kill” an intruder) with as few shots as possible while minimizing the risk to other occupants and neighbors. If a “overzealous anti-gun prosecutor” is inclined to take issue with the fact that you acted in (what is presumably legitimate) self-defense, he’ll make that point whether you used #8 birdshot or #000 buck, and juries–which are largely selected from the pool of potential jurors as being the most credulous and least able to contrive their way out of service–aren’t likely to appreciate such nuances. The true fact of the matter is when you point a gun and drop the hammer on another human being, regardless of the loading or what you indent to occur, you are accepting the significant likelihood that that person is going to die or sustain serious, life-altering injuries, and therefore your actions should be both within the boundaries of what a “reasonable person” would consider a justifiable use of lethal force and (when possible) within the statute constraints of the application of said force.
The attempt to use a less-than-lethal force on the first go-around isn’t some kind of mercy or will be viewed as indicating your reluctance to impart mortal injury; instead, it puts you at risk tactically as well as legally, i.e. if you didn’t fear for your life why did you discharge a firearm at another person? From a liability standpoint, while you obviously don’t intent to “kill” the intruder, if he isn’t around to make suit for injuries caused which impair his ability to make a living (albeit by burglarizing other people) then that is one less lawsuit you have to worry about. On the other hand, if he lands in the E/R with non-life threatening but permanently debilitating injury, there is no end to the number of bottom-feeding personal injury lawyers who will bring suit even if it is strictly a nuisance, on the hopes that you’ll settle out rather than engage in a more expensive and protracted legal defense.
The long and short is, if you find yourself in a situation where it seems appropriate to drop the hammer on some nefarious asshole, your best option from pretty much every avenue is to eliminate the threat as quickly and effectively as possible, posing the least hazard to yourself or anyone else without consideration for the well being of the perpetrator. The other niceties that are normally in effect in polite society don’t apply to a life or death situation, and your ultimate justification to judge, jury, and whatever gods you kneel to is “It was him or me.”
Stranger
No, they’re not. There is a chance you will incapacitate them, but there is a much greater chance you will not. Tests of #8 birdshot through ballistic gel show penetration around 5-6", which translates to humans wearing clothing as not enough to do major vital organ damage. You wont stop someone. If they are armed as well, they wont be shooting back with birdshot either.
I mean sure I’d think getting hit with #8 would pretty much guarantee you’d be having a really bad day, but it isn’t enough to get the job done.
Ummm, what? My heart, aorta, lungs, brain, kneecaps, and testicles are all less than 6" below the surface of my skin.
6" in ballistic gel is not the same as impacting a human wearing clothing. You will likely break flesh, but not incapacitate. Even if the damage done would eventually incapacitate, it would not be quick enough to halt whatever the bad guy is doing.
I strongly dispute this notion that, at ranges of roughly 20 feet, an ounce of #8 shot would be less than lethal.
Show me the ballistic science behind that supposition.
http://thetruthaboutguns.com/2010/02/robert-farago/shotgun-penetration-with-various-rounds/
Top of the article shows that cavity destruction only occurred reliably in the first 3", after that the shots came to rest within about 6" total depth.
[quote]
Small sized birdshot such as this #8 heavy dove load is a poor choice for deployment with a tactical shotgun. Wounds inflicted from birdshot tend to be gruesome yet shallow as they lack the penetration required to reach vital cardiovascular or central nervous system structures./quote]
Excerpted from the Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness by the FBI (it is about handguns, but this part is relevant (page 11 of the pdf):
Ballistic gel mimics flesh only. The presence of bone, tendon, clothing, or other objects means that penetration through gel is closer to the maximum effectiveness of the ammo, and in real word scenario it will likely perform worse. Skin alone will have a greater density than flesh and will prevent greater penetration.
Just as well that my primary defense weapon is actually my .357 magnum. Big and Bad looking with the 6" barrel. Loaded with semi-jacketed hollowpoints.
Of course, where my computer is, the closest thing at hand is my Katana, and if I’m grabbing it off the stand, I’m out of LOS from the front door and you won’t see me until you round the corner into the living room, at which point it will already be on the downward stroke.