Speaking as a non expert owner of a Savage 350 pump with interchangeable barrels, it is more than just relevant. It’s a damn good show stopper.
AFAIK the military still uses them, as do the police. My daughter was in the top of her class in the academy in the shotgun portion.
Assuming you are 100% accurate with center mass shots with your handgun (unlikely), it’s been shown many times that the bad guy can just keep coming after multiple hits. I’ve not seen one story of a single 00 buckshot hit at 12 feet that didn’t do the job. #4 Buckshot is supposed to be good because the pellets are still substantial and the odds of hitting a vital organ are excellent.
The bad guy may believe that he is not automatically going to die from a handgun (Hollywood culture), but even the dumbest of the dumb knows they are dead in the water when a shotgun is pointing at them.
Benelli Nova with 3.5” BB rounds in it put out 93 BBs at 1430fps per trigger pull. I’ll stay with that.
>> #4 Buckshot is supposed to be good because the pellets are still substantial and the odds of hitting a vital organ are excellent.
In my humble opinion — a round or two of even #7 or #8 *game load* delivered by a 12 ga shotgun across a bedroom or down a hall or up a staircase would work wonders to discourage an intruder. And they’re dirt cheap and readily available, even during ammunition droughts.
No matter how you size it, an ounce or so of lead delivered at 1200fps from twenty feet away makes for a serious impediment to forward progress.