Note: This is the remembered impressions and opinions of a single person who didn't take notes (and was half frozen (-: ) at the time and has not been seen, let alone approved, by John Farnam. Also note that John has a book in the works that includes a chapter on shotguns. He handed out a draft copy of that chapter as course materials. It's copyrighted, so I can't give it away, but it provides much more information than my brief review.
I've been asked to give an overview of the course. I'd planned to earlier, but got distracted. (It's annoying the way work interferes with your life). As a result, my memories of the course aren't as fresh as they might be, but here's what I remember:
Required equipment (quoting and paraphrasing from flyer):
"... a serviceable shotgun (preferably a riot/police model) chambered for twelve or twenty gauge, one hundred rounds of buckshot and twenty slugs. A pump-action shotgun or autoloader will work best. We recommend the Remington 870, the Mossburg pump, the Benelli Super 90, and the Beretta 1201. A sling is preferred but not required. You will also need your defensive handgun and accessories and one hundred rounds of ammunition. Also required is a service flashlight ..." and the usual eyes, ears and baseball cap.
00 buck is preferred. Standard, 12 ga., 9 pellet round is best. There's little to be gained from the magnum loadings and they're uncomfortable to shoot.
Curriculum (paraphrasing from flyer):
Instruction is intense and fast paced. Includes: Safe gun handling and preventable accidents, shotgun operation, handling, transport and tactics. Also threat evaluation, risk identification and reduction, lethal threat containment and management, the force continuum, precision shooting, discretionary shooting, low-light, cover and movement, holding suspects at gunpoint, performing under stress, close and very close encounters, courtroom savvy, post-shooting trauma, ammunition performance, weapon selection and retention. Safety and correct gun handling is stressed.
How I Spent My Weekend:
First, a note that Vicki Farnam, John's wife, was teaching a women's defensive handgun course in parallel with the shotgun course. We all got together for the lectures on legalities, physiology and such. The final course of fire was the same for everyone, except we used shotguns for one stage while the women used handguns for everything.
Second, it was assumed the people there for the shotgun course had already taken the defensive pistol course. Almost no time was spent discussing handgun procedures. (We never got around to using the flashlights, either).
First thing taught was carrying positions: Low profile, high profile, sling and port arms. Sling and low profile were most commonly used. Slings were used strong side with the muzzle pointed down. This allows for quick deployment. Low profile is muzzle up with your strong side fingers holding just behind the trigger guard and allows for very quick deployment. I found low profile carry tiring, but I'm in lousy shape these days. High profile is butt on strong side hip, hand on grip. Port arms is muzzle up, gun diagonal across the front of your chest.
Next was loading and unloading. John recommends "cruiser ready" (full magazine, empty chamber, hammer down, safety off). We practiced deploying from various positions, chambering a round as the gun was brought to bear. Each time was followed by restoring the gun to cruiser ready by dumping the round in the chamber and the next round out of the loading gate and putting them back into the magazine, then pointing the muzzle down range and pulling the trigger and finally returning to low profile carry. We also practiced completely unloading by removing shells from the magazine (_not_ by cycling the action. John considers this unsafe).
Next came target practice. Lots of rounds. Strong side. Weak side. Single handed on each side. Tactical reloads. One handed tactical reloads, both sides. Speed loading. One handed speed loading, both sides. One handed racking the pump, both sides (that end scene in "Terminator II" was accurate -- amazing). Firing from the shoulder and with the stock under your arm (I forget the technical term for that). Close range. Medium range. Long range (~75 meters). Advancing. Retreating. Buckshot. Slugs. Speed. Accuracy. Oh my aching shoulder.
(Did I mention it was cold, wet and windy? My light thermals were insufficient, so I switched to heavy the next day. One student wore a ballistic vest -- for warmth).
Practice switching from shotgun to handgun. (Six steel plate targets. 4 rounds in the shotgun. When you run out of shotgun rounds, drop it, draw your handgun and keep going).
Night shooting (I decided not to use my flashlight fore-end. Too easy).
I ran out of ammunition at the end of the first day and bought another 40 rounds the next morning. Used most of them, too.
Final exercise:
Six steel plates at distances out to 30 yards. Two moving targets dressed to look like badguys (John calls them "garboons") complete with shirts and masks. The moving targets are supported by heart sized balloons concealed just about where a heart should be. You have to break them to drop the target. At 50 feet. With a strong wind blowing them around. And John yelling "Garboons! Garboons in the living room!" at you. Lots of fun. (-:
The women did the course with handguns only. The men (no women in the shotgun course) used handguns on the steel plates and shotguns on the garboons. Start with your back to the plates. On signal turn, draw and fire. Keep going till all plates are down, then check for other garboons, safe, reload and holster your handgun. John _throws_ your shotgun at you and you run at port arms to the barricade where you take cover and fire at the moving targets. (I'm pleased to say I needed only 6 shots for the plates and 3 for the moving targets. (-: ).
At the end, the women all wanted to try the shotguns with game loads, at least. One also tried a shot with 00 buck. John is of the opinion that shotguns are overpowered for most women. Not PC, but possibly true never the less. None of the women volunteered for a 3" magnum slug, anyway. (-:
Personal observations and final comments:
The 870 Police is arguably the best pump for the purpose. Other pumps present (including an 870 sports model, but no Mossbergs) all had minor quirks that made administrative operations (loading and unloading) awkward. (Unloading the Winchester was so difficult we finally gave up on that exercise).
John believes defensive shotguns should be light and smooth with a minimum of projections to catch on things. He did like my Davis SpeedFeed(tm) stock, was slightly less impressed with the side car shell carrier. I haven't got my night sights and muzzle brake installed yet, but he seemed ambivalent, at best, about the ones on other guns.
Firing a pump action single handed causes the fore-end to go loose sooner than it was designed for. Expect to have to rack it twice, and possibly clear a stuck shell, before you can fire again -- all with one hand.
Anyone who claims you don't have to aim a shotgun at indoor distances doesn't know what they're talking about and has probably never fired one. This is even more true when distance increases as you _must_ get the target in the center of the shot pattern in order to have any stopping power (one .33 caliber ball is just going to piss them off). The necessity for aiming slugs is obvious.
As far as John Farnam is concerned, 12 ga. 00 buck and slugs are the only proven defensive shotgun rounds. Slugs are about the only thing that will penetrate the window or sheet metal of a car and still do useful damage. He has no faith in smaller buckshot loads and considers game loads useless for defense except at muzzle contact range.
Interesting occurrence:
One of the women had a squib load in her revolver. The bullet lodged partly in the forcing cone and partly in the cylinder. Getting the gun to function again required non-trivial pounding with a hammer and wood block, ultimately sheering the bullet in half. In any kind of defensive situation she'd have been hosed. (Amazingly, the revolver survived in usable condition. A Ruger SP101, I think).
That's what comes to mind for now. I enjoyed the course and recommend it. John said he'd be back in late fall and is considering an urban rifle course. He recommends 5.56 NATO (.223) caliber for the purpose. I'm looking into getting a Colt Sporter before they're declared illegal.