Study Shoots Holes In Shotgun Safer than Rifle Idea

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Pennsylvania Study Shoots Holes In Shotgun Safer than Rifle Idea
In 1998, a Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) task force proposed that deer hunters in Lancaster County and seven other growing southeastern counties be forced to shelve their rifles and use only shotguns.

After all, it was widely assumed that slower-moving shotgun slugs would provide safer hunting around suburbs. Surrounding states such as Maryland, Ohio and New York had already mandated shotgun-only in many areas, The Lancaster New Era reported.

But the outcry by local hunters and sportsmen?s groups was so vociferous that the PGC wisely asked for proof showing that shotgun slugs would be safer than rifle bullets.

Now, after nearly seven years of gathering statistics in Pennsylvania, it turns out that not only are shotguns not the panacea for hunting in close quarters, but less powerful shotguns might actually increase the incidence of buildings or people being shot when the bullets fly.

Many Pennsylvania hunters fond of their high-powered rifles should breathe easier, the newspaper said.

And the study results have some Game Commission officials wondering if they did the right thing in going to shotgun-only deer hunting in suburban counties around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh years ago.

The area around Philadelphia went to shotgun-only in 1964, with expansions in 1984 and 1986. The PGC allowed Allegheny County (Pittsburgh area) to forbid rifles in 1979.

?I?m no expert, but I look at the data and I end up concluding that shotguns are perhaps even a greater risk than rifles,? says Mike Schmit, the PGC?s deputy executive director who shepherded the rifles vs. shotguns study.

359 Incidents
PGC staff examined 359 known shooting incidents around the state during all hunting seasons in which stray bullets struck personal property.

The items struck most were homes, but also hit were barns, businesses, an airplane, a boat, above-ground swimming pools, a backhoe, vehicles, horses, cattle and a garbage can.

Using an assumption of four shots per harvested deer, the PGC estimated that deer hunters fired 12.5 million shots at deer over the seven-year study period.

That comes out to a shooting incident once every 34,818 shots. Obviously, this is no epidemic.

But more to the point, even though only one in eight deer hunters use a shotgun, shotgunners caused 25% of the shooting incidents.

Shotgun hunters were twice as likely to hit a man-made object or livestock. And an overwhelming majority occurred during deer seasons.

Incidentally, another myth punctured by the study is that the trouble occurs mostly in heavily populated areas. In truth, 79% of the incidents happened in areas of 300 or fewer people per square mile.

Stephen Mohr, Lancaster County?s representative on the Game Commission board, could easily wag a ?I-told-you-so? finger.

He?s just glad statistics bear out his cautionary stance when, as a freshman commissioner in 1998, he doubted the rationale behind the shotgun-is-safer movement.

?What?s really ironic,? he says, ?it amazes me that all the states around us that use shotguns-only never took the time to determine why they use shotguns.

?In 1998, I spoke to New York, Ohio and Maryland officials and they said they use them because shotguns sound safer. That?s not a very good reason.?

The reason shotgun slugs are more likely to strike an unintended target, he says, is that while they do not travel as fast as a rifle bullet, they retain their energy and are more likely to bust through brush and keep on going.

?I?ve hunted New York with slugs. I witnessed those slugs skipping across fields for hundreds and hundreds of yards. There were people accidentally shot with slugs that were completely out of the view of the shooter.?

Schmit gives a similar explanation. ?It gets down to an expandable bullet fired from a rifle versus solid lead (projectile) fired from a shotgun.

?The expandable bullet is designed to lose all its energy the first time it touches a target. Whether it?s a twig or whatever, the bullet stops forward motion at that time and fragments into many pieces.

?A shotgun bullet is a solid mass of lead that continues to drive forward until it loses all forward momentum. It, perhaps, is more prone to ricochet and move on.?

Risk Assessment
The PGC still might move forward with a professional risk assessment to finally answer the rifle vs. shotgun issue, The New Era reported.

But there was no move to do that when the results of the study were presented to commissioners in November.

Regarding the bans on rifles already in place, Schmit observes, ?In the past, these issues have been driven by emotions. Given the information we have now, I?m not sure the same decisions would have been made or not.?

As for the future, both Schmit and Mohr predict headlines from an accidental shooting may prompt worried municipal officials to press for a rifle ban.

?I would think that with these results that we?d surely move forward slowly if we?re going to change any more areas,? Mohr says.

Schmit says the revelations may encourage the agency to, rather than eliminate rifles, consider other alternatives in populated areas.

One example might be to reduce the number of bullets that can be loaded into a rifle during deer hunting, hopefully eliminating the Hail Mary shots at departing deer.
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