Shotguns are a misunderstood and often misrepresented genre of firearms. A lot of this misunderstanding comes from what I call shotgun snake oil. Snake oil is a term used to describe the varied tonics, elixirs, and cures sold by traveling salesmen during the old West era. While people aren’t buying snake oil in the form of tonics and elixirs, they are buying it in the form of guns, ammo types, and a misunderstanding of how shotguns should be used.
There is some snake oil and garbage out there for all genres, but shotguns, in particular, seem to attract it more than other firearm types. It’s prevalent and annoying as a shotgunner. It makes it really tough to defend my stance on the utility of shotguns when you see shotgun snake oil being pushed by major manufacturers.
Take, for example, one of Winchester’s tactical birdshot. They produced and advertised a defensive load of birdshot, effectively undoing a great many hours of online discourse that birdshot is for birds. Ammo is a huge draw for snake oil. We’ve seen a variety of exotic ammo types that are snake oil.
Why are shotguns so prone to snake oil? That’s the thought experiment I wanted to undertake today.
Why The Snake Oil?
One of the hard parts about being a shotgun guy is dealing with other shotgun guys. I don’t consider myself an expert, but I do study and continue to learn, train, and work on being a shotgunner. A lot of folks don’t do that. We know this from the sheer number of Turkish magazine-fed bullpups that are on the market.
Low information is the reason for shotgun snake oil. People buy dumb things because they don’t take the time to learn how their weapon works, how it incapacitates, and what works best. A lack of training and education allows the varied salesmen with stupid accessories, ammo types, and gimmicks to infect the shotgun world.
The other obvious answer is that there is room for snake oil. Literal room in the barrel for it. Ever since the days of the blunderbuss, you’ve had lots and lots of room to shove things down a shotgun’s barrel. That’s the excuse we have for all the exotic loads. We aren’t expecting the projectiles to need rifling, so they don’t necessarily interact with the barrel. This gives us the stupid ammo types we see.
Shotguns are also a huge market. Large markets create lots of potential sales. Even people who are anti-gun own shotguns; people like Tim Walz and Joe Biden own shotguns. It makes a large, fairly uncontroversial market.
People also just want to be special. That’s fine. The CZ-75 sells because people want to be different and special. In the shotgun world, it draws in snake oil, and people like to think they have the best option that no one knows about and they certainly don’t want to use something as boring as 00 buckshot.
What Can We Do To Snuff It Out
We bully it. Seriously, gun bullying works. We fight it in every corner it shows up. Let’s make fun of people who use birdshot for home defense, we make fun of Turkish bullpups, and we don’t tolerate snake oil from major companies. We don’t let it stand. At least I won’t. I like shotguns too much to keep suffering from this type of B.S.
