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Question of the Day: Which is More Deadly, Shotgun or AR?

Robert Farago - comments No comments

Mossberg 500 (courtesy shotgunworld.com)

“[Darion Marcus Aguilar] passed a state-mandated FBI criminal background check within minutes, paid $430 and walked out of the store Dec. 10 with the shotgun,” baltimoresun.com reports, “which authorities say he used Saturday to kill two employees at a skate shop in The Mall in Columbia before taking his own life . . . Maryland law does not place the same restrictions on hunting weapons such as shotguns as those that govern other weapons. A law passed last year banned the sale of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, and some said that change may have prevented Saturday’s shooting from being even more deadly.” True story?

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Robert Farago

Robert Farago is the former publisher of The Truth About Guns (TTAG). He started the site to explore the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns.

0 thoughts on “Question of the Day: Which is More Deadly, Shotgun or AR?”

  1. The FSA2013 doesn’t matter at all in this case. All the weapons that are now banned in MD required that you be 21 anyways. He couldn’t have bought a standard AR legally if he wanted to.

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  2. A law passed last year banned the sale of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, and some said that change may have prevented Saturday’s shooting from being even more deadly.

    Funny, they didn’t say that after the Clackamas Town Center shooting, in which a guy with an AR-15 and high-capacity magazines killed exactly the same number of people.

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    • I couldn’t disagree more. Otherwise BBs guns or Paintball gun would be the most deadly, since they can fire hundreds of times before reloading.

      At close distance, quite simply, no firearm is as dangerous as a shotgun. Since attackers get to chose their engagement range, the lack of distance in a shotgun is not a hindrance.

      One round from a 12 gauge 00 Buck is 9 pellets, which is far more devastating that getting hit even a couple of time from a 5.56 round.

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  3. I’d say they are quite different firearms, but at the end of the day they can both be equally lethal in the hands of a madman and this just illustrates the futility & stupidity of banning certain classes of firearms based on how scary they look.

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  4. RF; did you really state “high capacity magazines” when you actually meant ‘standard capacity magazines’ over 10 rounds?

    Now even you are becoming subverted by the new propaganda vocabulary rooted in anti-gun rhetoric.

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  5. Perfect example of why banning EBRs does nothing. He had many more rounds, but only shot two people before turning the gun on himself. Had he used a 30 rounder or even a beta mag I’m not sure if this would have turned out any differently.

    Don’t get me wrong, some POS having to stop and reload after 5 shots rather than 30 can provide and advantage to somebody equipped to strike back. But if you are talking about a gun free zone, the shooter can wreak havoc and reload at will with no worries about taking fire until the cops arrive.

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    • You are forgetting an important aspect.

      A shotgun can be reloaded while firing, without a waste or rounds. Sure, you can tactically reload an AR, and save the magazine, but you can’t top off.

      With a shotgun, someone can shoot 3 times, still have 3 rounds left, put in 3 more rounds, and always have at least three rounds loaded.

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  6. that change may have prevented Saturday’s shooting from being even more deadly

    What an incredibly infantile statement by a gunhater. Okay, so I’m being repetitively redundant.

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  7. And a Politician will protect his or her herd… often to expence of the herd al a the Shepherd… but for the purposes of the RAM NOT THE HERD. hence power over the herd.

    That doesn’t make ANY sense. How does a ram standing up to a predator benefit the ram, not the herd?

    You raise sheep… never seen a ram kill or maim a young rival for control over the herd?

    No.

    Sorry, doesn’t work … not every child fancies themselves a sheepdog

    That doesn’t matter one bit regarding my statement. The fact is that every person passes through some period of childhood in which they’re not fit to protect themselves. They follow where they’re told, they depend on others for their needs, they’re oblivious to danger. If that doesn’t qualify as “sheep”, nothing does. Yet some of them grow up to become adults who fancy themselves “sheep dogs”.

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  8. A Mossberg Persuader shotgun can hold 7+1 shells of 3″ buckshot. Each shell contains 15 .33 caliber pellets. Each pellet weighs 53 grains and moves at about 1200 ft/s. Each pellet has 172 ft-lbs of energy, which puts it between a single .32 ACP round and .380 for muzzle energy. Multiply that back out by 15 and you get 2580ft -lbs of energy. Multiply again by 8, the number of shells in a combat loaded Persuader, and you get 20,640 ft-lbs per magazine with a cheap $300 shotgun. The 62 grain 5.56 NATO round flies at 3100 ft/s, and has a muzzle energy of 1323 ft-lbs. Times 30 is 39690. This from a gun that costs at least $600, if you can find it that cheap, and is restricted in a lot of states. If I had to move somewhere where AR-15s were verboten, a cheap boomstick can still solve a lot of problems, up to 120 of them per loaded tube. And if I’m going to be ghoulish about it, if I want to go out with a bang on a budget, the shotgun is the answer.

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  9. When you pick a gun free zone; as the D.C. Navy yard mass murderer did; then kill the only armed individual that could immediately respond; as The navy yard shooter did; then have at least “8 minutes” to have a free fire zone where no one will be armed to stop the murderer; as the Navy yard shooter did; then use a standard capacity shot gun with 5 shots that can be leisurely reloaded; as the D.C. Navy yard shooter had and did; then you can murder “12 people and wound 8” with a shot gun as effectively with an AR-15 with as high a body count; as the Navy Yard Murderer did.

    So the Evil black gun with “high capacity clips” isn’t needed to be an effective mass murderer; just an innocuous 5 shot pump action shot gun (with the properly disarmed population as promoted by our “betters”), the gun promoted as the perfect self-defense gun by our eminent Vice-president Biden?

    Hmm, does this mean it isn’t the gun that makes a person an “unstoppable killing machine” but in fact, a regular man just has to have the intent to kill a lot of people and then he will find a way?

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  10. The ‘ED:’ version sounds more plausible to me. Oblivious shopper steps in front of car. Driver ‘slams’ brakes, stops close enough for shopper to lean on hood. Both get a jolt of adrenaline, both get pissed, driver pulls to intimidate shopper, shopper freaks and pulls in return.

    What doesn’t seem plausible is that no shots were fired, which says to me both parties knew they had no business pulling their weapons. I mean the cop gets out of the car facing a pointed weapon and doesn’t shoot? The shopper pulls on a driver waving a gun, who is getting out of the car, and doesn’t shoot? Mexican standoffs, two guys pointing guns at each other, not shooting, only happens on TV.

    I’m going with whoever pulled first was in the wrong.

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  11. A violent criminal could use either firearm to great effect in a spree killing. It would all boil down to location, tactics, and ammunition selection. Spree killers have killed virtually all of their victims at close range so let’s talk about that and assume that the spree killer is able to put all shots on “center of mass”.

    Shotgun:
    If the spree killer is “smart” enough to use sabot slugs, they could easily kill two to three people with each squeeze of the trigger in a crowd, say 2.5 people on average. (A 300 grain .50 caliber bullet with a muzzle velocity of 2000 fps is going to punch right through an average human with plenty of retained velocity, mass, and surface area to be plenty lethal to whoever is behind the first casualty.) If the shotgun has a standard 5 round tube magazine, the spree killer could therefore kill about 12 to 13 people without reloading. But keep in mind that the spree killer can also reload “on the fly” without rendering his shotgun inoperable. In other words he/she could shoot two or three times, add two or three shells to the magazine, and repeat until he/she has no more shells. However, the substantial recoil of a 12 gauge shotgun shooting sabot slugs would increase the time to come back on the next target.

    AR-15:
    An AR-15 would probably kill one person with each trigger squeeze. If the spree killer were using standard 30 round magazines, then they could kill 30 people before reloading … and reloading would take less than four seconds for someone who is under stress and not practiced.

    Conclusion:
    I believe an average spree killer would kill a few more people with an AR-15 (with standard 30 round magazines) than with a 12 gauge shotgun (with a 5 round tube magazine) shooting sabot slugs. However, if victims are running around making shots to center of mass much more difficult, a spree killer using a 12 gauge shotgun with #00 buckshot could be more lethal than someone using an AR-15. Like I said, it all boils down to location, tactics, and ammunition selection.

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    • Edit:

      A standard shotgun holds five rounds in the tube magazine plus one round in the chamber. Therefore a spree killer using such a shotgun with sabot slugs could easily kill 15 people (2.5 on average per trigger squeeze) without reloading … and reloading “on the fly” without making the shotgun inoperable means they could kill as many as they want until they either run out of shells or someone stops them.

      This really is close to a toss-up.

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  12. I think the question of which is deadlier is moot. The answer may vary depending on the circumstances, but against unsuspecting civilians at indoor distances, the fact is that both are more than deadly enough to inflict all the carnage seen here and much, much more.

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  13. Sounds like he had a personal grudge against these two people otherwise he could have continued killing with shotgun just like he could with a “assault weapon”

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  14. Obviously, the AR has the advantage regarding ammo capacity, with a 30 round magazine. A 12 ga. shotgun with 00 buck or a slug hitting humans leaves massive destruction. 5.56 does not have a great reputation for instant knock down. I remember having to use multiple M-4 rounds in OEF/OIF to stop attackers, so in my experience I would NOT want to face a shotgun.

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  15. “some said that change may have prevented Saturday’s shooting from being even more deadly.”

    Dumbest thing I’ve heard in a while. He had plenty of ammunition, and explosives at his immediate disposal. If he had wanted to kill more people he could have done it easily. He chose not to; the weapon used is totally irrelevant.

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  16. bought one of these. did not shoot right straight out of the box. now at the factory for a month for repair. wished I had not bought this gun. no ammo at stores anyway. save money and throw knives.

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  17. Slick video, quality graphics, smooth talkers, WRONG MESSAGE. I’m sure most all of the left leaners just ate it up. I am very concered about this opposition to our rights and freedoms.

    We, as People of the Gun, need to come up with a counter initiative equal to or exceeding this. I know we have the NRA, and they are very capable. It just seems this MDA/MAIG/Bloomberg coalition is going to be a serious challenge to us.

    Yes, we can flame them all day long, but the result of that is losing our credibility. Let’s put our collective heads together and resist their opposition. Politically. Logically. Rationally.

    Like I have mentioned before, I’m all tied up in a 2A battle at my school. I challenge the rest of my fellow TTAGers to present a battle plan.

    Dirk, go ahead and spew, your audience awaits.

    DTD

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  18. “The Congress of the United States has failed its responsibility to protect us from those dangerous and mentally unstable people. ”

    “I sit in our City Commission meeting week after week anxious and frightened because a civilian with a gun is in this chamber.”

    “Carrying a gun always, always represents the threat to use that gun to kill or maim another. That, after all, is why these people carry their guns.”

    Sigh.

    Lawdy! Lawdy! I think he caught a case of the vapors!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtcCvH9hDFI

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  19. I’m a lifelong democrat. Worked for the party, ran elections, etc. In an area where Dems are pretty much all pro-2nd and if they are not, they know better than to make that an issue.

    This is becoming a polarizing issue for the democratic party. It does not seem like it nationally, yet, because the issue really bas not been forced, but if they keep trying to force this truly shortsighted policy through and ignore the issues of mental health and poverty which are the TRUE issues at play, it will tear the dems in half the way the tea party is tearing the GOP in half.

    They are literally having to make up new laws out of thin air to try and think of things that would stop these shootings now. ‘No whistling on a tuesday.’ Pump action hunting shotguns have been around and readily available for over a century, so, is immediate action needed to legislate making them harder for law abiding people to get? Where do these people learn to reason? How do they come up with this drivel and recite it with a straight face?

    Apparently, whatever Moneyman Mike Bloomberg wants, these two puppets are willing to deliver. He says ‘dance,’ they dance. I wonder how much they sold themselves for to him? How much were their souls worth?

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  20. I don’t know what NC laws are, but even here in California, CCW carriers are exempt from the GFSZA (unless the issuing agency puts a specific restriction on your license, which some are wont to do).

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  21. The shotgun is much more deadly because amunition is easily available. .223/5.56 still isn’t abundantly available here. I can buy shotgun shells at any Walmart, sporting goods store, or gun shop in almost unlimited quantities. The cost is lower for both the gun and the shells – this shoud be an important point because many of the crazy killers aren’t rich. AR-15 habits are expensive.

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  22. That’s not a full grown bear… just a small cinnamon colored black bear. Probably a juvenile as pointed out above. That makes some of them more dangerous though – like people, they’ve got curiosity but no judgement to even it out. I saw the original report and the bear ended up chasing the couple off camera.

    Definitely good to stay aware.

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  23. They are kids, they are curious,learning, observing just like I/we did
    Take the mystery out of any lesson, advice,request, have a reason, explanation
    I am stunned that the kids wanted to handle the pistols
    My son and the 2 grand kids, now 16 and 11 have handled my firearms along with the offer if you want to handle anything just ask me along with all the safety lessons
    My son while much younger would ask during dinner with my fork heading towards pie hole
    Ok, Which one?
    “Teach your children well”

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  24. I love it! Mr. Lambert used a play right out of my playbook to great effect: all you have to do is listen to gun grabbers and then simply apply their statements against them … exactly as Mr. Lambert has done.

    This is the beauty of having both facts and logic on our side: all we have to do is give gun grabbers enough rope and they will proverbially hang themselves.

    It also shows how the gun grabbers are desperately playing their last cards.

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  25. I’m in agreement with the Yankee Marshal.
    Really no different than car rallies, 4-20 rallies, or any other rally.
    Some are there to shop, some to gawk, some to participate.

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  26. I know of a gun shop that has a “night watchman”.. he would be lying in wait for them to jump out of the car. He is trained to go for the magenta’s.. they would have been found lying on the floor holding on to what ever was left.

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  27. I’ll say it again.
    The anti’s are running out if ideas. When it’s so bad that people are PUBLICLY OWNING these guys at their own city meetings, it gives me hope.
    Their arsenal of strategies is like a broken record. They use the same tactics OVER AND OVER AND OVER. The media is actually playing right into our hands as the young people of my generation are starting to see a pattern. Even the hardened anti’s are getting sweaty palms at this point.
    Once the wheel starts turning, it can’t be stopped. Onwards, ladies and gentlemen.

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  28. The fools who voted for this libtard (RE-ELECTED) on this forum need to wise up. Never vote libtard (democrat) again! 14′ midterms in Nov. Elections matter.

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  29. See what she did there?
    Businesses should “make their place, gun free”
    There, done.
    What is involved in the “making” It gun free?
    Putting up a circle pistol slash is like moving your Kings pawn out on your first move and looking across the board and expecting your apponent to concede the match and thinking your apponent is a a CCW/CHL.

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  30. At least he backs citizens right to defend, Milwaukee, WI police chief is a liberal douche, HOWEVER, the Milwaukee County Sherriff is another great top LEO…

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  31. Though my original opinion of the TSA was that it’s a necessary evil, I have to say that discussions on here have swayed that point of view. Though I don’t think TSA employees are any better or worse than anyone else, I am now questioning how they are anything other than “security theatre” as someone on here once said.

    And they also may create another prime target by having so many people caught up in bottlenecks at security stations.

    And back on topic – I also agree with not arming them.

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