Power

[eddiememphis]

The police chief in Indianapolis said they took a shotgun from the murderer and he was able to buy a "more powerful weapon than a shotgun".

Assuming the idiot bought an AR in .223, is it really more powerful than a shotgun?

At distance, it would be but it got me to thinking about a shotgun's power. The energy is never listed.

So when trying to calculate the "power", how do you do it?

Hornady has a 12ga #4 Buck listed at 1350fps. 24 pellets at 20grains each. Do you add them together for a 480 grain projectile? 1940 foot pounds at the muzzle. Or do you look at each one for a paltry 80 foot pounds?

It is potentially more lethal since it is sending 24 rounds at once, but more powerful? I don't know.

I chose #4 since it is close to the same diameter as a .223

[DFBrews]

Temporary wound channels vs permanent will have a role as well

[Jamnanc]

12 gauge recoil is much more significant if that helps.

[whitewalrus]

Could it be that a lot of eastern states see shotguns as less of a problem when hunting as they are limited range compared to rifles? Many have restrictions on hunting with shotguns or straight walled cartridges.

They tend to say that things like the 223 are high powered and I?ve even seen it called things like large caliber and other terms to make it sound scarier. Press conferences are rarely about using technical terms.


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[Great-Kazoo]

Could it be that a lot of eastern states see shotguns as less of a problem when hunting as they are limited range compared to rifles? Many have restrictions on hunting with shotguns or straight walled cartridges.

They tend to say that things like the 223 are high powered and I?ve even seen it called things like large caliber and other terms to make it sound scarier. Press conferences are rarely about using technical terms.


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Or being truthful, when it comes to the powers that be, agenda.

[whitewalrus]

Or being truthful, when it comes to the powers that be, agenda.

Why let truth get in the way of getting what you want?


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[Little Dutch]

The police chief in Indianapolis said they took a shotgun from the murderer and he was able to buy a "more powerful weapon than a shotgun".

Assuming the idiot bought an AR in .223, is it really more powerful than a shotgun?

At distance, it would be but it got me to thinking about a shotgun's power. The energy is never listed.

So when trying to calculate the "power", how do you do it?

Hornady has a 12ga #4 Buck listed at 1350fps. 24 pellets at 20grains each. Do you add them together for a 480 grain projectile? 1940 foot pounds at the muzzle. Or do you look at each one for a paltry 80 foot pounds?

It is potentially more lethal since it is sending 24 rounds at once, but more powerful? I don't know.

I chose #4 since it is close to the same diameter as a .223

This is an interesting semantics issue with shotgun ammunition. When leaving the barrel, 3/4 ounce (for ease) of birdshot has the same kinetic energy as anything else with equal mass. However, at 100 feet the birdshot's kinetic energy is spread out and fading quickly as wind resistance works on each individual pellet. At 100 feet the stack of dimes wont (reliably) penetrate cardboard as their kinetic energy is spent. Yet the same mass in a slug will damage your steel plate.

Hollywood has given people a deeply underserved confidence in their understanding of firearms, including a lot of professional lawmen. 5 or 10 years ago we had one of our local guys saying he "didn't need to see it to know" that jacketed bullets start grass fires from sparking when hitting rocks. If memory serves, this was in response to trying to shut down people shooting at Rainbow Falls (between Deckers and Woodland Park). Anyone remember that?

[JohnnyDrama]

I think Little Dutch hit the nail on the head when he used the word "semantics". The police chief may have also had magazine capacity in mind.

To get to the OP's question, and I don't know how accurate this is, I've seen "power" of a shotshell load computed by using the combined weight of the load. I believe this was for buckshot.

[ManOnTarget]

It could be too that the PC just ment "Powerful" as a proxy for lethality. Arguably, for someone doing bad things, a rifle's range would make it more lethal.