So I was considering getting a home-defense firearm, as I often do (but never can quite justify the expense).
I’ve recently become aware that police teams are now using less-lethal rounds for shotguns that consist of essentially beanbags with a reduced powder load, so there’s at least a decent chance you’ll only disable (rather than kill) the intended target. Obviously, this is beneficial.
However, several of the online sites I came up with in a cursory google search would only sell these rounds to law enforcement or government agencies.
My question for you dopers, therefore, are the following:
Are these types of less-lethal rounds available for civilian use generally, as a hard-to-find item, or not at all?
Are there specific laws or regulations that would make these rounds illegal, especially in Pennsylvania? (I’m already presupposing that I’d have to justify deadly force, same as any other firearms discharge, if I ever actually engaged a target with these rounds, lower lethality or not)
Non-bloodthirsty second-amendment supporters want to know! (I tried asking this on more gun-oriented forums, and they uniformly blew past the questions to chide me for not just using regular ammo loads, since they performed better and you shouldn’t fire unless you intend to kill anyway. Sorry, guys, but the idea is to stop the criminal, ideally with the lowest level of force possible.)
One solution is to load your own shells. My grandfather and I believe great-grandfather as well had 12-gauge pump-action shotguns loaded with three shells - the first two had rocksalt in the shells along with a relatively low powder load, the third had No. 4 (fairly heavy) lead shot. The idea was that the rocksalt, especially if aimed low, would be a sufficient deterrent to any would be thief prowling around the farm buildings. Should someone press the matter, the ‘real’ shell would follow.
Neither ever had any cause to use the guns in this fashion though a couple times my grandfather thought he heard someone snooping around, went outside and put a couple shots in the air, which was likely enough to scare anyone off. And yes I know you should be prepared to shoot someone if you have a gun, thats why he would stick a revolver in his belt as a back-up.
I don’t see any restrictions other than “the buyer must be 21 years of age or older, be fully and legally qualified to receive ammo, and have no felony convictions of any kind.”
At 20 yards, you might scare a dog or some other animal, but you sure wouldn’t break the skin.
At 10 yards, you might break the skin with a couple of grains, but nothing very serious.
At 12 feet, you might get the desired effect, if the desired effect is to “burn” the target with the rock salt.
At 4 feet, you might cause a wound requiring a visit to a hospital for a human, or maybe death to a small animal.
Movie plots that show someone “burning” a bad guy at across-the-yard distances are hogwash.
Rock salt makes a pitiful personal defense load, as if we didn’t already know that.*Loading rock salt in a shotgun shell is balderdash.
To the o.p., while trying to avoid being slated into the “Bloodthirsty Gun Nut” category, I’m also going to suggest that you reconsider using these rounds. First of all, just because they’re advertised as “less-than-lethal”/non-lethal doesn’t mean that they won’t kill, and if you’re aiming a shotgun at an intruder you will be legally considered using lethal force whether your load is #00 buckshot or rock salt. It’s a bad habit to get into thinking of a firearm as being anything but a weapon capable of doing severe damage.
Police use these rounds (which have been around since the 'Seventies) for crowd control and in situations in which they need to subdue a perpetrator who is not armed; the shotgun clamped to the dash of your typical patrol cruiser, however, is loaded with #00 or #0 buckshot. Why? Because in the rare situation that a peace officer would need to wield a shotgun, he wants it to be as effective as possible. Ditto for someone owning a firearm for home defense; it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever have to point a firearm at a home intruder and say, “I have a shotgun, and if you don’t turn around and leave right now I will shoot you,” but if you do, you don’t really want to hit the guy with a beanbag and then have him get back up and charge or fire at you. Then there are the liability reprecussions of shooting someone, even with a bean bag round, who is permanently injured and sues for damages. “Minimum force” is great, in theory, but in the case that you are legally justified in pointing a firearm at someone, “minimum force” is “If you don’t turn around and walk away now, there’s a good chance you’ll die.”
Rather than compromise the effectiveness of your ultimate recourse, I’d suggest hardening or layering your defensive perimeter such that having to fire a weapon at an intruder is truly a last resort. If an attacker can’t get in, or enters only to find a dog barking at him and decides to engage in discretion, all the better.
Interesting perspectives, and about what I expected:
Stranger, the dog is in the process of being selected, actually. Otherwise, the perimiter is as hardened as it needs to be for the neighborhood (good fencing, secure door/window locks). I also acknowledged, or tried to acknowledge in my OP the questionable nature of the “less” in “less-lethal”. And yeah, rock salt isn’t going to help at all against an armed intruder unless you shoot him in the head, point blank.
silenus, can you tell me why without turning this into a Great Debate? What if I told you that in my neighborhood, there are a decently large number of home invasions/robberies/burglaries but that most of the perps are unarmed? Is there a reason I have to be willing to kill simply because I wish to have a more effective weapon for dealing with any potential situation? Are tasers and other purpose-built ranged incapacitation weapons in the same box for you?
Mind you, I would have no problem engaging an armed attacker with lethal force, I’m just minimally likely to see one in my present situation, compared to having to run off a drunk vandal or meth freak looking for a stereo.
I regard guns as lethal weapons, as does the law. Using one raises the ante in any confrontation to an extreme level. The only reason to use one is if you or yours are in immediate danger of life or limb. Unarmed intruders can be dealt with by other means. Loading non-lethal rounds into a defensive firearm just means that you won’t be able to stop the only person you *should * be shooting: the armed assailant. All non-lethal rounds do is give a lawyer something to sue you over.
This is exactly the kind of loose thinking that concerns me. The degree of force you may apply to deter a perpetrator varies from state to state, but in general you have no justification in wielding a firearm to deter a “drunk vandal”. A “meth freak looking for a stereo” may or may not be considered a legimate threat depending on whether he has entered the home, with what he is armed, his size and behavior relative to the defender, and again, the applicable statutes, but if you’ve made a reasonable effort to drive said attacker off (or otherwise deem that to be an imprudent act) and he continues to pose a threat to you or your family, do you really want to reduce the effectiveness of your defensive ability?
Consider this: what are you going to do after you’ve stunned an aggressor? He’s in your home, so it’s not as if you can just walk away. Even if you’ve called the police they’re at least a few minutes away. Are you going to try to restrain him? This is one of the most dangerous things you can do, and is typically when police officers are attacked or have their sidearm grabbed. Do you just stand over him and shoot again once he gets up? Presumably the perpetrator is a real threat (or you wouldn’t have shot at him in the first case, non?) and is no less so for having been stunned.
When you point a firearm at a human being and pull the trigger, you are applying lethal force, whether you’re firing buckshot or styrofoam peanuts. That’s not only the legal standard you’ll be held to, but also what the perpetrator is going to respond to; if he’s armed (and he is, or again, you wouldn’t be shooting at him, would you?) he’ll respond in kind, and I guarantee that he’s not going to be shooting bean bags at you. Reducing the effectiveness doesn’t change your liability, but it does increase your risk; the only advantage I see is that you’ll also reduce the potential hazard to bystanders, but that is countered by the threat a not-incapacitated aggressor may pose. There is no magic bullet (either metaphorically or in reality) that will reliably let you disable an attacker without doing injury or death.
As for other methods, I don’t have any experience with Taser guns, but I’ll note they’ve received only limited and lukewarm enthusiasm among law enforcement. Using OC pepper spray in a confined area is likely to be as disabling to your as to your attacker, and I’m personally unimpressed with the effectiveness thereof. I wouldn’t care to trust my life to either.
Stranger On A Train: Yeah, I know. To clarify, there are a disproportionate number of home invasions nearby to me, but not usually many in which the perp is armed but usually when one is substance-impaired and unpredictable. As far as my old county sheriff (from one county over, granted) informed me, it’s almost totally legal in Pennsylvania, both by statute and by general jury tendency in the redder parts, to fire upon a recalictrant home intruder. Given that, and my general feeling that disproportionate response is unethical, I was just looking for a ranged alternative to my current solution, which is ‘being a 6’+ owner of a baseball bat and a deep voice’. I mean, either way, a stunned target is almost certainly one I can then overpower in relative safety (having studied akido) and, well, being a tech geek, almost every room in my house sports duct tape.
Unfortunately, my research mirrors your last paragraph, namely that pepper-based stuff is almost pointless in close quarters, and that tasers are mostly looked down upon by people who should know better. I’d HEARD about the existence of less-lethal loads for shotguns (and to a lesser extent, other weapons) from a few sources, and wanted to know more–too bad it looks like a dead end, from a practical standpoint.
Assuming the thread doesn’t get locked for a broadening of the initial topic, Do any of you have any suggestions beyond the baseball bat approach? Assume that while I’m not a gun nut or a maniac, I do have a wife and I will have kids soon, and I prefer to be aggressive in terms of defending my home. (the wife and kids issue is another good reason to worry about excessive penetration with regard to standard loads.)
(I’m also not quite as ignorant as my phrasing makes me seem, honest, I’m just not really all that great at conveying my thoughts without a few rough drafts first, which is why I stay out of GD here. ducks)
Your state may vary but few if any states, even CA as I understand it, does not require you to withdraw any further than to within the walls of your house to avoid engaging. If an intruder pursues you into or forces entry into your home, their degree of armament is irrelevant and they can be considered a lethal threat.
The difference between armed and unarmed is the nearest hard object that can be used to throw or strike you with.
Never bet your life or family on the moral compass of someone who just broke into your house.
Also, to the OP, using a bat WILL BE considered lethal force.
That’s not Great Debate material. If you pull out a shotgun, you are escalating the situation all the way to infinitely. The supposed group of “unarmed” robbers may be armed this time or it may trigger a retaliatory reaction that you have no way of knowing about. What you are asking about is self-defense as in defending oneself and family without regard to anyone else. In this case, you need to shoot to the center of mass to the best of your ability and expect the person you shoot to perish. Anything else defeats the point of the whole strategy and can end up with more people hurt or killed (like yourself) than would have to begin with. These are not stray cats, they are criminals who have already demonstrated aggression and may not be in their right minds. Your duty is to shoot to kill until your home is clear of aggressive, deadly threats.
Less lethal rounds are not illegal for civilians (In most jurisdictions). But the most important thing to realize is that they are classified as Less than Lethal ONLY when used by trained law enforcement! If you shoot some person with a bean bag round from your shotgun, you better have met all the same requirements as if you were using slugs. Shooting your bean bag rounds at a person is “deadly force” and if your situation did not warrant the use of deadly force in your jurisdiction, then you’re in trouble.
You dont get to shoot earlier or more often just because you have rubber batons in your chamber. With that in mind, do you really want something less lethal in your firearm? You can only use it when the situation calls for lethal force anyway.
Seconded on this. I’m not aware of any statute that requires someone be armed for you to use lethal force on them. While some states define self-defense in an incredibly broad manner, some do not. Florida and Louisiana do not require you to flee (see: “Stand Your Ground Law”.) Louisiana also respects the “castle exception” allowing virtually unlimited use of force to remove a threat from your home, Louisiana is also noteworthy for legislation termed “the Kill the Carjacker law” which likewise makes exceptions to normal justification for using self-defense when presented with a carjacking situation.
In any case, in my experience even the states which most strictly regulate when and how you can defend yourself, the standard is typically that if in an act of self defense you kill someone, you’re legally excused from criminal liability if you can show you had a reasonable belief that the person was trying to cause you serious harm or death–you do not necessarily have to demonstrate that the person was armed in order to do this.
I’m not a lawyer nor even someone who is particularly learned in regard to statute, I’m just someone who has read a few pages on the internet in regard to self defense laws, so I could be totally off base ;).
I will make note that I’m aware of a case in West Virginia where a young man aged ~20, living at home with his mother mortally wounded his mother’s boyfriend when the man came into their home drunk and disorderly and refused to leave. The boyfriend was unarmed, the son produced a gun after the man had repeatedly refused to leave, the man approached the son in what is interpreted as an attempt to seize the weapon and the man was then fatally shot. The son was arrested and charged with manslaughter, around one month later the prosecuting attorney decided to dismiss all charges and the shooter was released free and clear.
Well, this is turning into the answer I expected to get–namely, that there’s no effective midway point, legally speaking, between wrestling with the guy and shooting him.
Any thoughts on the follow-up question–that is, is it potentially worthwhile to use beanbags in a smaller, older house in order to avoid potential excessive penetration of walls (the bedrooms are one wall away from the front and back doors, and I especially worry about my wife since the master bedroom is in one of the two lines of fire I’d be shooting from to hit a target at the back door–the same applies to the bedroom that’d be our kids (when said kid appears) and the front door.
Standard drywall over frame, so I’d worry to some extent about 0 or 00 buck or slugs, which are about the best loads for anti-intruder as I understand it.