Shotguns

A shotgun is the most effective home-defence firearm most people will ever own and the one they practise with least. Recoil is the reason. A 12-gauge with buckshot is decisive and genuinely unpleasant to shoot a hundred times; 20-gauge gives up very little inside a house and is far easier to run well.

Pump actions are cheap, reliable and forgiving of poor ammunition. Semi-autos cost more, kick less and reward practice. For clays and birds the choice moves to over-unders and side-by-sides, where fit and balance matter more than mechanism — a gun that comes up to your eye naturally will out-shoot a better gun that does not.

Whatever you buy, pattern it with the load you intend to use. Two shotguns of the same gauge can throw very different patterns at across-the-room distance, and that is the only distance that counts for defence.