I recently researched the history of the term riot gun and specifically why shotguns became riot guns versus any other gun. The answer was ultimately munitions and what you could do with them. Part of the strength of the riot gun in an era before real less lethal ammo existed was its ability to disperse crowds with a little less chance of killing or permanently harming anyone. Ammo was one part of the equation, but the other part was skipping shot.
Skipping shot isn’t taught to police anymore, and I’m not sure when it stopped. The earliest police shotgun manuals I can find don’t list the technique and go back to the 1960s. The method is old and might have never been formally written down. Skipping shot seems dangerous enough to kill a police department lawyer.
What’s Skipping Shot
Shipping shot is the act of firing shot at one surface and having it bounce in the direction of your threat. In the riot gun scenario, the police would skip light loads of birdshot off the ground and into the crowd. Shot doesn’t act like a rubber ball and bounce at the same angle it lands. It tends to ricochet low and follow the ground in a parallel fashion.
This allows the shooter to direct the birdshot. This technique was popular enough that The Peters Riot Cartridge, a .45 ACP loaded with No. 8 shot, was explicitly designed to be skipped against threats. The skipping shot did two things to help prevent serious injury and death.
First, it dropped the velocity significantly. This crap is hitting the ground and hitting it hard. While the ricochets are still dangerous, painful, and even deadly, it’s at least less likely. Second, the shot was mostly directed into the legs of the crowd, which, again, helped prevent death.
Beyond Birdshot
There is nothing that says you can’t skip buckshot. It just seemed a lot deadlier and riskier for riot control. In fact, you can skip handguns and rifle rounds, but since shotguns fired multiple projectiles, it helped ensure hits. With buckshot, you are still losing velocity but throwing a lot of lead per trigger pull.
Theoretically, in some situations, you could skip buckshot under a car or even around a somewhat narrow corner. This helps hit threats behind cover. There are a few factors that will ultimately affect your performance with skipping shot.
Out of curiosity, I went to my range with birdshot and buckshot and practiced skipping shot off the ground. The joy of owning a private range will never dampen. The rule seems to be: the harder the ground, the better. However, you can skip shot off soft dirt, it just tends to work better off concrete. I have soft sand.
I started with birdshot and sent dozens and dozens of No. 8 pellets into an FBI Q Target. The first shot peppered the entire bottom of the target with birdshot. I quickly switched to Number 4 buckshot, gave it a try, and went two for two with eight pellets striking the target. I did it again with 00 Buckshot and landed two pellets into the target.
Cover? What Cover?
I folded another target over the FBI Q Target to act as ‘cover.’ The purpose was to test angles to see how predictable the shot would fly. I found hardly any room to experiment. Too close to the shooter, and the angle didn’t allow for skipping shot. You had a few feet in front of the threat to work with.
When firing within that working zone, I noticed that if you fired the shot closer to you, it would go higher on the target. Closer to the target, and it hit low. I also found that number four buckshot worked best.
I moved to steel poppers, and it became clear that it takes a lot of speed out of the buckshot. The large steel popper got hit and just barely fell over. Lower velocity and likely fewer pellets hitting the target created less force to knock the target over. I’d be curious to do some skipping shots into gel to see how deep it would penetrate.
Skipping Shot – Worth It?
It seems like it’s not exactly science. It took several shots of 00 buckshot to lay down the popper because the pellets kept missing. This calls for additional practice, but I have a hard time seeing how this would be a worthwhile technique for home defense. If I need to shoot around a car with a shotgun, things have gotten really, really bad.
Still, it’s a fun old tactic and just another thing shotguns can do.
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