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Newtonian

Governor (no, not fois gras)

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As I was making my exit from Cherry Ridge this cold, blustery morning, I noticed something interesting a few stalls away:

 

201184154135-gov_m.jpg

 

I asked what it was and my "new best friend" told me. Not only that, he let me shoot two cylinders of .45s and one of shot shells. 

 

HOLY CRAP this is an amazing gun. It's the S&W Governor.

 

Last time I shot .45 ACP I was relatively new to guns. I forget which pistol it was but the recoil turned me off to that caliber. I am now 100% certain it was me and not the gun.

 

Because today I handled this baby like I'd conceived it nine months ago on a hot summer night in Niagara Falls. Despite the gun's light weight the .45s went through smooth, and not a bad group for a relative newbie from about 10 yards. Let's just say that particular target is dead.

 

But the shot shells were AMAZING. Higher recoil than the .45s, but so much fun. 

 

My newest best buddy says he uses it for home defense, with some number of .45 acp and the remainder shot shells, all in the same cylinder.

 

If you can afford to practice with .45s, and are thinking of that caliber for home/self defense, I highly recommend this weapon. Magazine capacity be damned. You might miss with the .45s but you won't with the shot shells. Anyone who gets hit with one of those rounds within 5-10 yards -- I don't care if he's a zombie on bath salts -- is going down like a $30-a-night hooker. 

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Governor / Judge - a solution to a non-existent problem. There are so many better ways to address defensive needs. The problem is relying on one of these type of "cool factor" weapons for your personal defense, when in reality it may only be minimally effective - better than nothing, but money could be better spent.

 

JMHO

 

Adios,

 

Pizza Bob

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Well said PB. Most items built to do everything rarely do anything well.

 

Do some research into the effectiveness of a .410 round out if an 18" shotgun, then ask yourself how well it will really do out of a 2"-3" barrel. Pay close attention to the donut effect of shotshell shot out of a short and lightly rifled barrel.

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Just because it was in Call of Duty doesn't mean it's an effective defensive pistol. It bothers me when people think that just because it fires mediocre shot shell and the all mighty .45acp it's the end all be all pistol... Yea sure.

 

Sorry just had to vent a little.

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I've got the judge with the 3" chamber.   I love it.   I think it's okay to own something that's just for fun.  But, there are some people who believe you should only have sex if it's for procreation.  Too each their own.

 

You should try shooting clays with it sometime.  You have to hand throw them almost straight up and shoot them comming down but it's a lot of fun - at least to those of us who can just have fun.

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No one said that it isn't a fun gun to shoot or to not buy it. The OP posted his thought about this gun as a "self defense weapon", then goes on to "highly recommend" it to the members of this board in that role.

 

If you can afford to practice with .45s, and are thinking of that caliber for home/self defense, I highly recommend this weapon. Magazine capacity be damned. You might miss with the .45s but you won't with the shot shells. Anyone who gets hit with one of those rounds within 5-10 yards -- I don't care if he's a zombie on bath salts -- is going down like a $30-a-night hooker.

Accordingly, the responses that he gets are going to be viewed from using the gun in the HD/SD role. If the OP posted "This gun is so much fun to shoot is is a blast to shoot clays with" he would have gotten 20 people agreeing with him, including me.

 

Unfortunately instead he praised the .410 shotshell out of a 3" barrel as the ultimate 1 shot hooker stopper, even going as far to insinuate the old shotgun myth that you won't even have to aim it to get hits... :rolleyes:

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I have a Governor and agree that it is a really fun gun.  People always focus on the .410, it still shoots .45ACP and 45 Colt.  The .410 PDX pattern quite well at self defense ranges.  People (including myself) aren't always looking for a problem to solve when buying a gun.  I own it because I can, and for fun. 

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I have the Governor and love it. Last year I used it in a uspsa match, no problem hitting the steel at 20 yards using 45acp. Very accurate and lots of fun. For 410, the 3-round buckshot is the most accurate I found, makes waterjugs fly in the air. I also have the lazer-grip on it. I have better for hd, but for a hiking trail, load in the shotshell and you wont have to worry about the poison snakes.

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I didn't realize I'd press so many buttons with my post. All I said was that it was fun to shoot, that the owner uses it for home defense, and that the shot shell rounds have got to hurt. 

 

So we have in our responses that it's not a decent defensive gun (implying that revolvers are not reliable, or that .45 ACP is wimpy? Who knows?), the gun aims to do too many things and achieves nothing even though I witnessed flawless execution, and some silliness about .410 shot shells not hurting like hell at close range. 

 

If you can destroy a clay at throwing distance with it you can pretty much take down a man at the same distance, especially with multiple shots. 

 

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All I said was that it was fun to shoot, that the owner uses it for home defense, and that the shot shell rounds have got to hurt.

First, getting shot with anything will hurt, and second, that's not what you said, what you said is "You might miss with the .45s but you won't with the shot shells."

 

You are perpetuating a myth with this statement.

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First, getting shot with anything will hurt, and second, that's not what you said, what you said is "You might miss with the .45s but you won't with the shot shells."

 

You are perpetuating a myth with this statement.

The myth being that a shot shell's pellets spread, thereby making it easier to hit something? Or that as any shotgun hunter knows you can't hurt something with a shotgun round at 300 yards?

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The myth being that a shot shell's pellets spread, thereby making it easier to hit something? Or that as any shotgun hunter knows you can't hurt something with a shotgun round at 300 yards?

At home defense distances what's the spread on a .410 buckshot shell? The myth is that you can, at close distances, point a shotgun in someone's general direction and spray the room with lead without aiming.

 

If you can't hit someone at close range with multiple rounds of .45 ACP then a .410 buckshot shell isn't going to magically save your a$$.

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At home defense distances what's the spread on a .410 buckshot shell? The myth is that you can, at close distances, point a shotgun in someone's general direction and spray the room with lead without aiming.

 

If you can't hit someone at close range with multiple rounds of .45 ACP then a .410 buckshot shell isn't going to magically save your a$$.

I never said you didn't have to aim. You said I implied it, but that's not true either.

 

This is the same old shotgun BS. In the last 20+ years of reading about shotguns I've seen lots of reactions like yours, where you jump on someone for allegedly saying you don't have to aim. 

 

But I don't recall ever actually reading or hearing "This danged gun is so good you don't have to aim." Never read or heard it.

 

Although, truth be told, shotguns were designed to be more forgiving than other firearms. Do you disagree with that??

 

As for the .410, at self defense distances: ARTICLE

 

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I'm being sincere as I ask this. Are these patterns (top birdshot, bottom buckshot) totally inappropriate for self defense situations?

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So tell me, what is in these .410 shells you plan on using for defensive purposes? How many pellets? What size shot? How much "spread" are you getting? Do the math - With the number of pellets and the size of your spread, how many hits per square inch? Per square foot? What's your margin of error? How "Accurate" do you have to be to get what you consider enough adequate hits to stop a determined human attacker? Keep in mind a hole in a paper target or a burst clay do not equal adequate terminal performance in human tissue. The required penetration is simply not there.

 

These are not 12g 00B shells. They are .410 with very limited capacity. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you want more "chances" to hit so you don't have to be as precise than you need to use smaller, less effective shot so you can pack more pellets in. You want larger pellets that will do more damage, well there goes your coveted spread. At the end of the day you are still shooting a .410 - which is universally accepted as being inadequate for self defense out if a 18" barrel - and now you are shooting it out of a 3" barrel and expecting it to perform better.

 

Yes, shotshells take their payload and spread them out a bit in 3 dimensions. When used against larger game this is done with the intention if increasing the overall damage by allowing multiple pellets to hit simultaneously creating multiple wound channels and maximizing damage, not to increase the chance of hitting something with a single pellet. If you want the full advantage of what a shotshell can do, then you need to be as precise as if you were shooting a single projectile or slug. You want all of the pellets to hit as close as possible in a vital area. A human is not a clay disk that breaks into a satisfying puff of smoke if nicked with a BB sized pellet. A peripheral hit with one or two small pellets are simply not going to be devastating, and barring serious luck are not going to stop a determined attacker anymore than the sound of a racking a shotgun will. While we are talking about peripheral hits, what about the pellets that miss because you trusted the forgiving spread to do the work? Each of those pellets has a lawyer attached that points right back at you.

 

Smaller shotshells loaded with even smaller shot do not spread as much as you think and if used against larger game/threats the smaller the shot the better your aim has to be because you need more of the shot to hit to do any damage - not to mention that the smaller shot has serious penetration issues and while gruesome to look at is generally a very superficial and shallow wound. Ask me how I know - I have seen a few suicide attempts with self inflicted .410. Ugly yes, deadly no - and these were point blank into vital areas of the face and chest.

 

Also, the light rifling required to shoot the .45 even semi-accurately creates a "donut" effect on the shot, giving you a pattern with a hole in the middle, which makes it impossible to concentrate your pellets in one spot.

 

Conversely, the because the rifing is light to facilitate the use of shot, the .45s are not as accurate as they could be.

 

There are no half measures in self defense.

 

ETA: read this - http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot41.htm

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I did not say I was using it or planned to use it for home defense. That's what the guy at the range said he used it for. I don't know him from Adam. He could know less about guns than even I do. 

 

I never said you don't have to aim. The targets I showed (at 15 feet) speak for themselves, however. I figured that if the shot doesn't go straight through, that 100% of the energy would be transferred at short range. I thought that was one of the objectives of a self defense round. 

 

I don't own a Gov or plan to purchase one. I could think of better choices for .45. I was just conveying that it was fun to shoot .45s in a revolver, that it was powerful and accurate in that caliber, as well as in .410, and that from what I'd read and the guy told me, that it was appropriate for home defense. 

 

If my comments about .410 being a decent defensive round was wrong, then I stand corrected. 

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It's so rare for one poster to come to the aid of another, this was special.

 

This is must-viewing for anyone who's contributed. The first 2.5 minutes are spent discussing the gun's drawbacks in its initial (ca. 2009) configuration. The remainder present a resoundingly positive view of the Judge (not the original gun I mentioned) for precisely the task my range buddy mentioned, which is home defense using .410 buckshot. 

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I hadn't watched the video linked by Newtonian prior to posting about the BOT#53. I have to say that the video he linked was very informative. It was, in my opinion, a fairly balanced and honest look at the handgun type. Thanks for posting it.

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Since I can't seem to add links to this thread via the system...If you have an interest in the Box of Truth , check out #53. It's a more current review of the Judge and .410 ammo.

What you do is first select some text. E.g. in your post, "#53" or "check out #53." In a different window, copy the URL of the page you want to reference. Come back to your post, and with the text still selected, go to the toolbar above and click on the "insert link" icon. It's the 9th icon, right after the one for a numbered list. A dialog box will open. Paste your URL in the appropriate box, close, and you're set. Continue your commentary and post as normal.

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I've got the judge with the 3" chamber.   I love it.   I think it's okay to own something that's just for fun.

I absolutely agree, I can see the appeal of something like a Judge / Governor for fun. 

 

As a defensive tool it's a terrible choice.  It's marketed to civilian shooters who know their marksmanship and skills are inadequate, and are suckered by the notion that by using a handheld shotgun that requires little aim or accuracy they can skip all that difficult and time consuming training.

 

It's the ShakeWeight of handguns.  Fun, if you're into that sort of thing, but totally ineffective and no substitute for hard work.

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