Originally Posted by
Hurricanespg
In most home invasion situations you have an average of 3 seconds to identify the intruder as hostile or friendly, gather your weapon, aim, and hit your intended target.
In the "standing at the foot of the bed situation" you have approx. 1 second or less (usually less) to wake up, identify the person as hostile or friendly, gather your weapon, aim, and hit your target.
To put that into perspective, an average person usually takes 1 second to draw their weapon from a holster. As you can see in the above situation the odds (no matter the weapon) are definitely not in your favor.
I can't agree more (although I'd say that if you HAVE one second, then to win, you'll need to get your work done in HALF A SECOND, but now I'm just being conservative). If you wake up to someone standing over your bed, in that ONE SECOND, a person has to gather their thoughts, focus their vision, identify the threat, process the situation, reach for their weapon, ready the weapon (which is why I have a Glock on my nightstand, "no fuss, no muss, Go bang!"), re-acquire the target, and place their shot. The attacker/invader, on the only thing is already alert, has already identified the target/victim, so all they have to do is process "oh sh**, he has a gun", and either run, or dive onto the bed. I have 10 steps, he has 2.
Play with a shot timer some time. Laying on a bench outside with your weapon on or leaning against a "mock nightstand", compare how long it takes you to reach for, secure, and fire your shotgun, and then try out your handgun.
You mentioned objective thinking to help reason through these decisions. I'm a professional engineer with a case of aspergers, attention to detail and objective reasoning BASED ON FACTS is my bag (great for engineering, but I ruin movies for my fiancee a lot). The facts as I see them, based on objective testing, is why my shotgun is in the closet, and my pistol is on the nightstand.
WHEN WE TESTED THIS, the shotgun takes longer in the "time to first shot test", and it takes both hands to control and operate. If someone gets ahold of you, YES, with proper training, you can maintain control of the weapon and re-acquire the target, but it's a FIGHT FOR THE WEAPON scenario at best, and the "time to first HIT" is much longer than for a handgun...
But I'm not EVERYMAN... If you run these tests, and somehow you're faster with a bolt action Enfield than you are with a handgun and you're strong enough to control the muzzle even with a 200lb man pulling on the other end, then that's the weapon for you. For me, and dozens of other people I have trained in home based self defense, the same results have been true... Handgun = safer bet than shotgun.