I'm going to respectfully disagree.

If I'm protecting myself or others, I want the best penetration I can get and 7 1/2 shot at 8 yards isn't the best option.

Say it's wintertime and the bad guy is wearing a leather jacket and some base layers the bird shot isn't going to do squat in that scenario.

Some of you are going to say shoot him in the face. Are you sure your nerves of steel are going let you get that shot every time and the bad guy is just going to stand there to let you shoot him in the face. Center mass is a better option.

I definitely agree on the two inch group, thats why I want 0000 buck or better.

LOL, please don't confuse my post as my endorsement of birdshot as the BEST for personal protection. I still want people to think I'm relatively sane, LOL. It was only my intention to dispell any myths that birdshot from 25 ft would be ineffective. Sorry for the confusion.

My personal favorite, aside from "cutshot", for home defense in a populated area is my own load I came up with and have done basic testing on so far. It starts life as a Winchester, 3 inch, #4 steel waterfowl load with a speed of 1550fps, I think. It ends up with 5-6, 9.5mm steel shot, buffered by #4 steel shot that moves at around 1200 fps, I think.

The idea is the less dense, and lighter steel shot, having a higher cross section would have more opportunity to come to rest inside the target and not overpenetrate as lead buckshot is known to do.

DO NOT try and replicate this load. Modifying any factory load is extremely dangerous and should only be done by experience folks. I don't want anyone hurting themselves trying to do something I do. I've been doing shotgun shell mods for about 25 yrs and worked this load up slowly to ensure safety.

Back on topic though. My vote goes to the sawed off Baikal for defensive purposes.

cutshot

Remington does make a 20ga pink camo shotgun. I don't have it on either site yet but here's a link to Remington's site:
http://www.remington.com/products/firear...-pink-camo.aspx

Don't pay attention to the MSRP, I sell them for about $350.

Here's another idea on the handguns, they make hot pink Mosquito's for about $320, maybe you can get her to be happy starting with a 22

The reason to use bird shot for intitial shot durring home defense is to prevent killing your own family. 7.5 will penetrate sheetrouck, but not maintain enough energy to kill if some one were sleeping on the other side of the sheet rock.

Now once said intruder is rolling around on the floor from being shot in the head with bird shot, buck shot wont riquochet to much!

Thanks for the feedback guys! I knew it'd be difficult to find a HD semi-auto in the $300 price range...I'm probably gonna have to increase my budget a little. Afterall, we're talking home defense here, don't really want to sacrifice safety over a couple hundred bucks. Thanks again for all the input and I'll bump this thread once a purchase has been made to let everyone know what route we went. Who knows, maybe I'll even get some action shots of my wife shooting the gun (at the ranch).

Those saiga 12's on youtube look cool.

There's a couple of Mossberg 12 ga pumps for 200 & 225 in the classifieds right now. You would have to cut the barrels though.