You can always find a viewer in every dry-wall test video asking what would be best for his shotgun in his attached town-home or apartment. The answer is always NONE OF THEM. There are situations, i know it can be hard to admit, that a shotgun is not the appropriate weapon. I agree it's an amazingly versatile weapon with some wide-spread variable that just wouldn't fly in a semi-auto. The fact of the matter is, as small of a spread it may be in a town-home, it's still a spread, and that means a chance that some pellets can travel past the target. We are shown over and over that even bird-shot get's through several layers at times and can assume that bystander injury is a possibility when a miss occurs. Let's try to keep one projectile at time under our control if neighboring with other families. It's scary that these subject are so popular on the YouTubes with obviously not very well trained, armed apartment dwellers. Every shotgun loading i have ever seen, even "reduced-recoil" will penetrate 2-4 sheets of drywall, and although that is really almost as good as it gets, you still have a spread. It's seems just too easy to have rounds go unplaced especially in an extreme situation. Most newbies always a assume the pistol HAS to be the safest option for bystander safety, of course we all know that not only is it the hardest type of firearm to control, we all have seen a million times over that any standard design Ball, HP or Frangible from a .380 to a .45 will penetrate at least 6 and up to infinity pieces of drywall, and also being the most difficult to control, which tends to make the handgun the WORST choice(speaking only in terms of not hitting the people on the other-side of shoddy drywall). I used to have my go-to answer to the HD overpenetration debate already memorized. I always went with....... light for caliber, high velocity small-bore rifle, and for cost reasons that would be the .223/5.56 loaded up with some hot 30gr "Varmint Grenades". i would spit out words like powder and dust that even if it had the energy to get through the walls, it didn't have the mass to hurt anyone, perfect right? fast, accurate, high capacity, safe, affordable, ability to have attach multiple hood ornaments at one time and super intimidating. I was regurgitating the mass consensus of so many previous posts and threads before this one. But of course, like the other 75% of my post, all my info was incorrect and simply poor advice to a serious question. So what IS the best round for city dwellers that can stop an intruder in it's tracks and not kill baby binky next door. My extensive ballistic research by way of YouTube and my backyard has proven that NO FIREARM fits into your criteria......sorry, get melee weapon and start training and sleeping with your dominant eye open.I have yet to see a round that has any bad-guy penetration and also lacks dry-wall penetration. Frangibles pass through like ball, hollow-points pass through like ball, buck shot pellets pass through as ball and the specialty fang-rip-face-nitro-liquid-hyper-"delayed"fragmenting-liberty-freedom-murica-"blue"saftey bullets zip through with ease, many times worse than their heavier counter-parts. Simple fact that the dry-wall offers no resistance for any, now available, bullet construction to begin it's intended deformation process that shows up these beautiful, yet gnarly, low penetration gel shots. Even though it could be proven that bird-shot may be the only round that "sometimes" doesn't penetrate more than two layers of drywall, i have decided that my new answer to the question(disclaimer: as stated, all of my posted answers have a 75% failure rate and it is not suggested to take any internet post as fact, ESPECIALLY MINE, and find out what works best for you and your situation by independent testing procedures) is a compact, maneuverable firearm that has a load found to penetrate LESS than 8" in ballistics gel and that you are EXTREMELY well-practiced and accurate after training in a multi-tude of scenarios. There is NO WAY to safely fire a gun at a wall with bystander on the other-side no matter the action, caliber, velocity or construction of projectiles. They all go through, video evidence in the extent that we have available all but makes it fact. Stop looking for bullets to fix the problem and definitely don't want.expect/demand your bullets to be safer even if it is for "the children". Practice your scenarios and perfect you tactics and practice to be crazy accurate in a stressful environment. Pick a pistol/carbine/SBR or whatever allows you to shoot fast and shoot on point from the longest distances in your home to the shortest. The best gun/bullet for this kind of work is the one that you can keep control of all the bullets all of the time and that doesn't need a different loading to be safe in your hands. Obviously there are some limitations to the size of caliber you want, but keep in the big 5 and you'll be good so long as you practice/train.
There is nothing wrong with the discussion or the practice of trying to minimize collateral damage in the case that an unintended shot is fired, but the hyped up advertising from the bullet manufacturers would lead the un-informed to believe that simply buying these bullets they have negated the possibilty of hurting their neighbors, obviously we know this isn't true and is a dangerous sales tactic. we know the odds of any of this over-thought crap coming to fruition is ridiculously low, but i have a feeling that sometime/somewhere a saftey bullet has killed a neighbor. It's homicide no matter the circumstances and apartment/trailer/townhown owners really need to play out their situations and find a way to always hit thier target or keep the fight on a safe side of the house, maybe retreat to a higher position to allow shooting from downward angle......i have no clue to be honest. i am not generally the one to say that everyone needs professional training, but in this instance i would seek help, maybe a one on one advisement from a well known trainer/expert. i live in a home with a good distance between my neighbor and none directly beside or in front of me. I just know it's a scary thought that these types of questions are so frequently debated and makes me very happy that i won't be living in apartments again, at least until i need someone to feed me my pill and change my diapers, at that point i don't really care what comes through the walls. be careful guys........and don't shoot your neighbors, geez.
