Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Shotgun vs. Drywall.

The recent thread on home defense debating the use of a shotgun and its potential downrange lethality on family members or neighbors got me thinking about assumptions I was making. Since the wife frowns heavily upon indoor recreational shooting, I’ve never had any real firsthand experience with the interaction between drywall and shot shells. Gut instinct tells me that 00 buck would be a bit much for indoor use, but left me wondering what would be appropriate. Since I have firsthand knowledge of what a load of birdshot will do to deer size game at close range I thought low brass eights might be the best choice.

To that end I cobbled together a low tech redneck test rig and decided to try some various shotgun loads against it to see if anything jumped out at me. The test rig was intended to duplicate two non-insulated internal walls of an average home. Just four panels of half inch dry wall separated by common 2 x 4 studs. Nothing fancy, but sturdy enough to withstand the proximal blast of a 12 gauge.

During the course of the test I used # 1 buck, high brass # 4, high brass # 7.5, and low brass # 8. All loads were shot from a fully choked 870 at 6 yards to approximate the confines of a family room. Results were sobering ( for me at least ).
All loads easily passed through the fours layers of dry wall and did considerable damage to the backstop used to support the test rig. Going into this I would have bet my left jewel that the low brass # 8 load would have been contained inside drywall layers 3 and 4. That assumption was an eye opener to be sure.

Entrance and patterns at 6 yards. I was surprised that the bird shot was already dispersing radially at that range to the extent that it did coming from a full choke. Also note that in all cases the plastic shot cup penetrated the first layer of drywall. We have dug them out of several does we shot while bird hunting.









Exit view of all loads.



Just for grins and giggles I also tried several pistol calibers with Hornady Critical Defense ammo against the rig. As expected the .45 ACP and 9 MM sailed through all four layers, but I thought the lowly .380 would have been trapped somewhere inside. Wrong again, as it too penetrated much better than expected.

Yes I know this one off test has absolutely zero scientific value, and was not intended to claim such. I simply wanted to see how shotgun loads might perform inside a home.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, if during the course of a home invasion your MIL is sleeping in an adjacent bedroom don't be tempted to swing wide with a couple of loads of shot. You just might fetch the old girl.