Shottie

A shotgun to keep bad guys from busting down my front door?  00 buck?  Even a whole handful of bad guys.

Yeah, you can't do much better than that.  And I agree.

But I have a problem.  And this is me.  Not you, necessarily.

Here in the suburbs there is a better chance of finding a place you can shoot a rifle than you can find to shoot a shotgun, sorta.  So I don't even own anything scattery of any halfway decent prowler stopping utility but antique Remingtons.  And none of those are a pump gun.   I can't operate a pump gun. Well, I have barely ever operated a pump gun.  Most of it is easy, yes, but there are little levers and switches and button and such for loading and unloading and locking this or that back...

I'd have to go far afield for familiarization, and further for training.  As my knowledge is woefully inadequate.

Total rounds I've fired in my short shooty lifetime is in the thousands.  But is is like 92% pistols, 7% rifles of all sorts, and 1% shotguns.  A tube of buckshot or a 30 round magazine of 5.56 are both almost certainly a better selection at 3AM for prowlers than a pistol.  Assuming all have a light.  But I should probably go with what I am most familiar with.

Ideally I take it upon myself to get better with a shotgun and get lots of training and practice, but I am getting old and slow.