Varmint bullets for home defense (2024)

Was thinking about this while looking at building the wife a home defense gun. Probably just gonna go with a shotgun. 20ga pump , add a light ,mabye a laser , keep it simple for her.Gonna be buying factory home defense ammo and stuff but again just a thought.

One of the big talking points with home defense and using a rifle is over penetration,though walls and stuff possibly hitting your kid or something.... Well one of the big things about varmint bullets like VMAX's is they very rarely exist.... Just dump all their energy and explode in the target....

So aside from people who might be wearing body armor ( even then taking one pretty close will knock the wind outta someone) seems like a varmit bullet could be a decent home defense option as far as rifles go...at least in my head .. 110 vmax out of a .300blk seems like a nasty lil deal..... Thoughts ?

Edit :
I'm getting her a shot gun ,not really asking for suggestions her asking about thoughts on the subject of a Varmint bullets usefulness as a home defense round

What length barrel you use the 110v maz in in black out makes a huge difference. In my 8.5" it is slow enough I get 15" penetration yes the jacket core separate but core is still a nice size chunk. Now Green county uses a 16" and they come apart on him enough he won't use them for anything but a neck shot on deer. That 200fps difference makes all the difference on that bullet.

Body armor = shoot at hips. Big target that won't move as much as a head, lots of bone becoming 2nday projectiles and very large arteries will cause fast blood loss. Also not going anywhere with busted hip.

That was my thought on the laser sight as well. I sure wouldn't want to have to deal with that if someone was trying to kill me. I just want to point, and shoot. One reason I keep a loaded 20 gauge in a rack above the door...no sights, just the bead.

A S&W Govenor Revolver would make things uncomfortable unloading on someone across a bedroom .410/.45 ACP/.45 LC.

WS

When my wife though she needed to have a gun close by when I was gone. We'd just set her duck gun out with same loads we used for duck hunting or simple trap loads. It was the gun she was most familiar with. You turn a 12ga trap load loose on someone in side a house. At that range your basically shooting a slug.

Terrible awful truth about home defense. Is keeping your cool not panicking. Then have the actual ability to take action or pull the trigger if need be.
Fear and Panic are the mind killer. That applies to many survival situations where your action is required.

Mac

"Never Forget Which Way Is Up!"

LE has a different name for 55gr 5.56 V-max it is called T.A.P urban (tactical application police ) the urban is of course meant to not punch every trailer in the trailer park/apartment building that is what our local department uses and the reasoning
if you have to use your rifle here it is most likely your serving a warrant or responding to active shooter.
in either case the department went with caution because warrants are 50% of the time at the trailer park it is by far the most densely populated part of town.

of course anything that works decent will punch at least one wall the idea is the pieces don't aren't lethal when they punch the second wall if they do make it through.

the 110v-max will go into a sheep's or deer's neck and not come out the other side in my testing , but it is very much dead.

if they are wearing body armor then they probably thought a lot more ahead , if they thought to wear better than level 3A which 223 will punch right through, then they are a very special criminal indeed.

run her on Bill Drills and failure to stop drills if your that worried about it.
body armor doesn't typically cover all of a bad guy. Ok unless they set out to rob a bank in Hollywood but probably low risk of that in 110 degree heat and 100000000% humidity

Pretty hard to beat a shotgun under 30 yards. Especially with the right choke/load combo. Take it out to 50 pretty easily.

I’d be worried about varmint bullets especially on bigger guys.

Don’t discount the amount of lead a person can take and still be “in the fight”. Even if it’s just for an extra five seconds. Thats an eternity at “danger close” distances.

20ga youth model.

Use 4s, 5s, 6s......birdshot.

We're talking perp in same room with her...

I know you had dogs at your parent's place. If you don't have dogs at your current place together, I suggest getting 2 protective dogs. Even with a gun, without warning that someone is approaching, a gun is pretty useless, unless you have it on you or very readily at hand. Most people fear an aggressive dog. Criminals are more deterred from breaking into a home by the presence of dogs, than even alarms.

Bird shot is safest to use if you are worried about wall penetration.

Hopefully your wife will never have to use the gun to defend herself, but it is best to be prepared.

Somebody breaking into our home, would be unlikely to survive the process intact, because of our dogs.

Keith

I'll 2nd the dogs idea ^^^^^

My dogs know everything that's going on....at all times. And they let us know when something is around.