justme

(of pellets in the 10" vitals circle) it has 1/4 as much coverage as a10" wide pattern. Which is why a typical riot gun, with standard 00 buck, aint waf beyond 25 yds on fully exposed, frontal, erect men.. Some loads/barrels aint waf beyond 20 yds, especially not on cover users, or head-on-prone men wearing helmets.

the typical riot gun has a 20" wide pattern at 20 yds. 20" diameter means 10" radius, 10 squared is 100x pi is 314 square inches. Divide 314 by 9 00 pellets and you get 35 square inches per pellet. The 10" vitals circle is 78 square inches. So even at a mere 20 yds, the best you can expect to get is 3 00 pellets in the kill zone. THATS IF there's no arm in the way, IF he's not turned sideways, and IF your pattern is reliable and IF you've centered it well on the target. at 20 yds, the 00 pellet will have slowed down to 1100 fps, most likely, so it will hit like a 380 blowback Seecamp does, Whoopee, So impressive, right? 2 such hits are SO overwhelming, ya know!

John in AR

Ok. But it's still three hits with one pull of the trigger, isn't it? I'm not a shotgun guy and I'll probably never again carry a shotgun for defense, but three hits with one pull of the trigger certainly doesn't suck.

And all those caveats you list - arm blockage, front-facing, good centered hit, etc - are all just as true with the carbine (that I prefer) as they are with a shotgun.