Last Sunday I taught a shotgun class. A curious thing happened. I snapped a quick picture and shared it on Facebook the day after the class. Here’s what I posted:
“A thought for all you folks who prefer bird shot for self defense…
In the shotgun class I taught yesterday, a student missed the target and hit the clip holding the target to the frame. This was the result of a load of bird shot from 15 feet away. Not a single pellet penetrated a cheap binder clip.
This is not what you should be trusting for your family’s safety.”
I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The post was shared over 300 times on Facebook and hundreds more times on X. That’s about as close to “viral” as my content gets. I thought my post contained some curious information and some useful life advice. Apparently not. According to all the social media experts commenting on the post, I am on par with Satan for sharing the photograph.
Read a sampling of the social media commentary below:
“Penetration of steel isn’t necessary to defeat a threat.“
“Wrong“
“Turkey load will make someone wish they were dead.”
“That clip is stout, and bird shot will be very effective at close ranges against any human, it will stop them in their tracks, delivering an extreme shock to the body, make them turn to run,,,if they can.
Plus bird shot will be less deadly to anyone as a innocent bystander, like a child sleeping in bed, if it penetrates a wall, it will not deliver a mortal wound to your loved ones on the other side, last but least, most untrained people will be poor shots in a stressful situation like home breach/invasion, you will most likely not miss you target laying down on an invader with a shotgun.
Do not believe this guy who obviously does not know what to use for home invasion,,,use the a 12 gage and nothing else”
“A “steel clip” is not soft tissue. The comparison is not real world. Kinda saying a .22 will not go thru a tank so dont use it. Like I always say, let me shute (so i dont get banned) you with 3 rounds of “bird” shot or 10 rounds of .22 and let me know how you feel.“
“Oh a bird shot does quite a bit to soft tissue. First 2 are bird shot. If that doesn’t get the message across, the next one cuts you in half.“
“The person will still run“
“This maybe a true statement but being shot by anything is better than nothing at all. If you don’t believe me stand down range. Metal is different from soft tissue and cannot yell in pain when hit 
“
“First round rock salt. The rest buckshot. Legally it makes sense.”
“Good things birds aren’t made from metal, doh. The OP whiffed in a basic understanding of physics. Some “bird shot” is quite effective and penetrating flesh to certain distances, but to each his own. Small weak shot on an angled piece of metal is just silliness.”
“Then he missed the target by a ton. You should be ashamed to even post this. Just because you are selling a AR doesn’t give you the right to intentionally mislead people. Makes me wonder about what other misinformation you teach in your class.”
“Oh, yes. The old binder clip argument.”
“I disagree. Skin is not metal. And I prefer my shot DOES NOT go through walls of my house.”
“My youngest brother shot my Mossberg 590 for the first time and he also hit the clip that’s holding the target. With a shotgun, one has to aim a lot lower. For example, aim for the lower abdomen if u wanna shoot the torso.“
Those were just the comments I saw within the first few hours of the post. There are hundreds more that display equal amounts of idiocy. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is real. I was truly perplexed.
I read a lot of information on the internet. To come up with all the articles I post in my Weekend Knowledge Dumps, I read or skim more than 4000 articles a week. I find lots of them that contain erroneous information. I don’t think I’ve ever commented on one of those articles containing bad info. I don’t try to correct the author or make myself seem smart by arguing with strangers on the internet. I just move on. Apparently lots of the bird shot advocates can’t embrace that ethos.
I got my first shotgun instructor certification in 1999. I’ve been teaching shotgun skills longer than some of these commentators have been alive. I carried a shotgun every day in a 25-year police career and used those shotguns to convince some very bad men to submit to arrest. I’ve seen, treated, and investigated gunshot wounds from birdshot, buckshot, and slugs. I’ve killed lots of critters with shotguns in the hunting fields. I’ve attended countless shotgun ballistic gelatin shooting demonstrations and autopsies of victims killed with shotgun pellets. I’ve written 162 different articles on using the shotgun for self defense as well as producing the largest firearms stopping power research study in the last two decades.
I might know a thing or two about what shotgun pellets do to human bodies.
But when I try to share that knowledge with the general public, I get shit upon from the anonymous population of uneducated internet trolls who gain self esteem from insulting other people.
Do you ever wonder why you seldom see genuine subject matter experts sharing their expertise with gen pop internet readers? This is why. They don’t want to deal with the inevitable hassles and frustrations caused by an uneducated readership whose primary goal is increasing their own self esteem and online popularity by denigrating legitimate experts.
Social media is a cesspool. I will be spending less time posting my work there in the future. If you want to see my writing, sign up for my free weekly email updates (on my homepage) or become a Patreon subscriber. That’s where I will be posting all my new stuff going forward.
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