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flechero wrote: ↑Thu Jul 23, 2020 9:06 am My Dad asked me for some help/recommendations on a home defense weapon. He is mid 70's and has never owned a real gun. He asked about a pepperball pistol advertised on Hannity but then said he was sure he couldn't hit anything with a pistol.... ironically enough with a Red Rider BB gun he can shoot bottle caps with ease and handles the platform well. He joked that if it were more powerful, he'd be fine. SO... my first thought was a henry lever gun with .38 spl. I then found out that henry also does a 410 lever shotgun. These are basically the grown up's Red Riders.

It was a pretty helpless feeling to have Dad admit he was scared and knew if anything happened he could no longer protect Mom. I didn't want to knee jerk out a suggestion, so I look to you guys for some guidance, or to confirm that the levergun may be his best option.

What have you guys done or what do your elderly parents do for HD?

Thanks for any help!

I can only speak for myself and everybody's situation is different. I'm 79 years old and I've owned and shot shotguns, rifles, and handguns off and on since I was 13. Even though your Dad doesn't have a lot of experience with firearms, I don't think it should be too difficult for you to train him to a reasonable level of proficiency with most platforms in a fairly short time--if you will get him to practice regularly, both dry and live fire. I have a Mossberg 500 pump in 20 ga with an 18 1/4" barrel, a Browning M92 lever-action rifle in .44 magnum, and a 9mm S&W Shield EZ. Your Dad should be able to learn to shoot any of these fairly well if, again, he will put in the time practicing. Two suggestions:

1. Don't use full-power .44 magnum loads in a light lever-action--your shoulder won't like you. If the gun will feed, fire, and eject .44 Specials, use them instead. My Browning won't feed .44 Specials reliably, so I use .44 magnum Cowboy Action loads. The HSM Cowboy Action load with the 200 grain round nose flat point supposedly gets 975 muzzle velocity from a revolver (don't know what barrel length), so I'm guessing that it gets more than 1200 from my rifle and that should be enough to dissuade someone from "unsociable" behavior.
2. If he wants to use a pump-action shotgun, make it a 20 ga, not a 12, especially if he's not a big guy. Just as with the full-power .44 magnum loads, your shoulder won't like you if you use 12 ga ammo in a pump.

Just my suggestions, YMMV

Crash