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Comment by delinka | Hacker News Reader

The inverse of the list is a collection of targets that are "safe" to invade.

Edit: added quotes. Some criminal will certainly, without thinking, decide these are safe targets. And statistically speaking, they'd probably be right more often than not. At the least, it's a great list of targets to avoid if you're planning to loot a neighborhood.

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Not safe. They just don't have a registered gun. They have knives, security systems, gates, locks, police driving by.

And the ones with guns may well be easy to invade. It happened to the mom of that killer last week.

It's not a good argument but the gun fans do make it repeatedly.

Registration is generally not required for a shotgun, which is what is commonly recommended for home invasion defense. While there is certainly going to be an overlap between owners of registered handguns and owners of unregistered shotguns, "house is not on the map, no guns to worry about in there" is a false assumption.

"Home invasion defense" sounds like the basest from of scaremongering I can imagine. What is the actual incidence of "home invasion"? Does it even exceed the incidence of firearms accidents and domestic assault with firearms? There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of better things waste your time and money worrying about, and most of the "solutions" to those don't put your family at risk.

How is this in any way related to the fact that unregistered shotguns may be present in the homes not marked as having gun owners on this map?

Who recommends a shotgun for home defense? Its a poor choice as it is less maneuverable, ranges are very short and gives the attacker a lot of leverage to pull it away from you. Of course, people selling shotguns might recommend them...

"Where local laws permit possession and such use is legally sanctioned, pump-action and semi-automatic riot shotguns in common law enforcement may also be available on the civilian market,[citation needed] and such shotguns are a very popular means of home defense for many of the same reasons they are preferred for close-quarters tasks in law enforcement and the military."

Merits of the recommendation aside, it is a very common recommendation made by many, not merely shotgun dealers.

There is a popular school of thought that suggests a shotgun does not need to be fired or even seen to be an effective home defense.

The primary line of reasoning is that a buckshot shell is going to pack more force than a handgun (12-gauge #00 buckshot is 1.2k-3k ft/lbs of force spread out over 9 pellets, depending on the shell and weapon versus ~500 ft/lbs of force from a .40 handgun round), but because it's spread out over multiple pellets, it will be more easily stopped or slowed by walls or other obstructions, reducing the chances of a round penetrating a wall and harming a bystander. Additionally, a shotgun requires far less precise aiming to operate effectively, specifically because of the physics of it being a short-range weapon. Since most people don't have training in precisely aiming and firing guns in high-stress situations, a weapon that requires less precision to use effectively is going to be much more useful if you ever did find yourself in a situation that you needed to use it.

A shorter barrel would obviously be more maneuverable, but shotguns must have a minimum barrel length of 18" by law, specifically in order to prevent them from being easily concealed.

Try shooting a shotgun at the distance you would indoors and you will be surprised I think. The pellets only spread out about 1" per 3-5 ft. Shooting across a room and hitting something is still going to require some precision.

Funny story; when I was in the Army we had shortened Remington 870s used for breaching. One of my friends was trying to convince everyone that the "shorty" would be ineffective when used in a hanger because of the potential distance between target and assaulter. Another friend offered to help test the theory out by being the one behind the shotgun. It turns out that the shotgun doesn't do much when shortened but there is a strong physical reaction that occurs when someone fires one in your direction.

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