One of the constants in the gun culture is guys seeing a weird gun, getting it, then trying to engineer it into being useful in some odd, niche defensive role. I’m not blaming anyone here, becuase I’m guilty of it, too. And it’s fine. Sometimes you just want something. You don’t have to justify it to anyone. That’s why I own a Mossberg 590 Shockwave .410 and Taurus Judge Home Defender.
I’m not a big .410 guy. I’m a shotgun guy, but I’ve never been interested in a full-size .410 shotgun. What does interest me about .410 is its use in uber-short, uber-light, and totally-not-a-shotguns.
The idea of a defensive .410 shotgun seems largely silly to me. You get all of the downsides of a shotgun without reaching the same level of capability a 12-gauge gives you. Will it work? Sure, but if you’re that recoil-averse, I’d use an AR.
I can see value in a super-short, low-recoil platform that offers at least 5/8ths of a 12-gauge shotgun’s capability. Both the Shockwave and Home Defender offer that capability…and both are generally silly guns. In my mind, they’re both perfect for CQB inside a phone booth.
But I got this silly idea — take two largely silly guns and put them side by side in a series of tests to see which is better. Fighting in phone booths is serious business, so if it happens, we need the best tool for the job.
The Shockwave and the Home Defender
The Shockwave is a firearm, not a shotgun. It has a 14-inch barrel and is about 26 inches long overall. The Shockwave is based on the pump-action 590 platform and features a Raptor-type pistol grip.
Taurus produces the Home Defender as a handgun, specifically a revolver. It chambers both .45 Colt and .410 shells and has a rifled, 13-inch-long barrel. I hated the original Judge for its poor .410 performance, and thought I’d hate the Home Defender, but it turned out to be a surprisingly decent little gun.
Both are oddities in the world of shotgun shell launching platforms. I see them as the pocket pistols of shotguns. They’re small, compact, and don’t pack the punch of their bigger brethren. Both are incredibly niche options, though, and I won’t be rushing out to replace my chosen home defense weapon with either of them.
However, should I find myself in one of the four phone booths that still exist, I’ll need a capable personal defense weapon. And I’m interested in these guns because of the odd niche they fill. Plus, I’m a sucker for two things, weird guns and justifying their purchase.
I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds comparing these two guns to every other home defense option. The goal here is to compare two guns that fire .410, but aren’t (technically) shotguns and are both extremely compact.
Both have some benefits, namely they’re incredibly easy to maneuver in tight quarters. They’re small enough to handle inside a tent or a camper if needed. Both guns sit in this comfortable position between a traditional handgun and a long gun. If you find yourself slugging it out in an airplane’s economy section, these guns would be ideal.
But which one is better?
Patterns and Accuracy
If I were going to use one of these for home defense, I’d load it with either a Remington 000 3-inch or a Federal 3-inch 000 Handgun. Those two rounds perform well and offer five nice-sized pellets that hit hard and dig deep. These are two rounds I’ve tested the most extensively for patterns.
If we compare the results across all buckshot types, the Mossberg wins hands down. On average, it produces tighter patterns with all shotgun ammo types. Shot is made for smoothbore barrels, and that’s what the Mossberg offers. With the Remington ammo, I had a two-inch pattern at seven yards.
On the other hand, the Home Defender has a rifled barrel. Rifled barrels can get a little wonky when launching shot. Surprisingly, the Home Defender patterns much better than the older Judge. With the Remington Buckshot, the pattern was about five inches wide at seven yards.
Due to the Judge’s popularity, both Federal and Winchester made Judge-specific loads. These patterns are quite tight from the Home Defender. However, the pattern is slightly tighter with the Shockwave. With both rounds, the shot cup separated a fair bit from the pattern and landed low.
If you don’t mind buying specialized ammunition, the Judge Home Defender might be for you. If you want good performance across all shot shell types, the Mossberg wins hands down.
What about overall accuracy?
The Mossberg bead sight sucks. Not because it’s a bead sight, but because they mount it directly on the barrel, so it always looks like it hits high. Mossberg always does this and they should stop. I replaced mine with a Defender Tactical HighBall sight.
The Home Defender, however, doesn’t even come with sights. It has an optic’s rail, so you have to provide your own. Arguably both guns are challenged in their standard configuration, so adding a dot to either will help. Both are optic-ready, which is a point for both guns.
The Judge can also fire .45 Colt, and can handle a wide variety of threats, from two-legged to four-legged vermin. It’s surprisingly accurate out to 25 yards in a rested position. Even with the light rifling and the cylinder gap, I can hit consistent A-zone at 25 yards.
Capacity
Both feature a five-round capacity. Kind of. The Mossberg uses a five-round magazine tube like any other shotgun. The Home Defender uses a five-round cylinder.
The Mossberg Shockwave holds five rounds of 2.5-inch shells and four rounds of 3-inch shells. However, with the plus-one, you can add a round to the chamber and increase capacity to five or six rounds, depending on shell length. Keep in mind the Shockwave isn’t drop-safe, so you’ll have to decide whether to store it chambered.
The Home Defender can hold five 2.5-inch or 3-inch shells. It doesn’t change depending on shell length, which is nice. It’s also drop-safe with a traditional transfer bar.
As mentioned, I’d use 3-inch rounds for any kind of defensive use. So both are five-round guns at max.
Ergonomics
The guns have a lot in common, but they’re fundamentally different in how they operate and handle. If you’ve ever used a pump-action shotgun, you know how to handle the Shockwave: shoot, pump, shoot again and repeat until it’s time to reload. For me, the benefit is that I shoot a lot of pump shotguns, so picking it up feels natural and easy.
The downside is that it requires two hands to shoot more than one round. You’re always engaged on the gun to keep it going bang.
As a really big revolver, the Home Defender has its own advantages. In a pinch, you can shoot it one-handed. That won’t be easy for everyone, but with a little upper body strength, you can make it happen. That’s a decent benefit.
The Home Defender has a big downside, though. You catch some blast from between the cylinder and barrel on your forearm. Taurus installed blast shields on either side, but they don’t catch it all. Shooting a few cylinders isn’t a big deal, but long range sessions start to hurt.
What about malfunction clearances? The Shockwave has Mossberg’s famed skeletonized lifter, so you can easily rip out a malfunction. The .410 receiver doesn’t give you much room to work, but luckily malfunctions are rare with the reliable Mossberg 500 series.
With a revolver, well, you just pull the trigger again. You won’t run into common operating issues until you go to eject empties and one gets stuck. It can happen, typically with uber-cheap ammo.
Reloading
Reloading a tube-fed gun can be fairly quick, but it’s a little more challenging with a .410. Maybe it’s my sausage fingers, but putting a skinny round in a tiny slot is tough on the fly. So what’s easy with a 12 gauge isn’t as easy with a .410.
Reloading a revolver is always slow. The Shockwave ejects each spent round as it’s fired, but with the Home Defender you have to remove the shells, which can sometimes stick.
Neither is fast, but with speed strips I can load the Home Defender a little faster if I start with a completely empty gun. Judge-specific speed loaders also exist, but I’ve found them clumsy because of the .410 shell length.
Like any tube-fed shotgun, the Shockwave can be continuously topped off and kept loaded as you shoot. Plus, in a pinch, you can conduct an emergency reload. You can’t do that with the Home Defender.
In the end, it’s tough to say which is better. It comes down to personal preference and which you think is easier.
Which is faster on target?
Both guns are pistol grip-only designs, and when we fire a shotshell from a pistol grip-only option, recoil is a concern. That’s a major reason why I think the .410 shines in these ultra-small platforms. So how do the Shockwave and Home Defender stack up?
I ran a simple two-round drill. From the low ready, at seven yards, I aimed and fired two rounds of buckshot as fast as I could, putting both rounds of three-inch buckshot on a 10-inch gong. I fired the drill three times with each gun.
The Shockwave’s best time was .89 seconds. The Home Defender could consistently complete the drill in under three-quarters of a second. There wasn’t a major difference in recoil, but rather in operation. The Shockwave requires you to pump the gun between shots; the Home Defender is just two trigger pulls.
I shot a lot of rounds from both guns, and the Mossberg Shockwave has a smoother recoil impulse. The lower vertical pistol grip, if we can even call it a pistol grip, creates less upward recoil and less felt recoil in the wrist by pure hand positioning.
The Home Defender doesn’t feel like a wrist breaker, but you can feel more recoil in your wrist. The gun wants to fight itself upward a little more, but since it’s still just a .410, you can keep it on target.
Meme Gun Defense
Are either of these guns optimal for most defensive needs? No, I don’t think so. If I had the option between one of these guns and a GLOCK 17, I’d probably have to stop and think about it. However, these guns are infinitely more interesting than a G17 and a lot more interesting to shoot.
The part of me that inherently loves Mossbergs wants me to pick the Shockwave. I like that it throws a tighter pattern with all kinds of shot. I have a lot of experience with pump guns and I have more trust in Mossberg’s shotguns.
That said, the Home Defender’s double-action trigger lets you shoot a little faster and its one-handed handling is quite nice. Plus, it’s easier to add a red dot and light. It also fires .45 Colt rounds, which can be quite potent with modern projectiles.
We also have to consider the gun from a legal standpoint. The Home Defender is clearly a handgun, which can offer additional legal protections if carried in a bag or in a vehicle, depending on your state’s laws. The Shockwave is something else, and while the NFA seems to be on its deathbed, it can create a complicated web of state laws regarding concealment and even ownership.
If you force me into a phone booth for a fight, I think the Home Defender might be the gun I grab. It feels crazy to say that, but which would you pick? I’m happy to be talked out of the Home Defender and into accepting the Shockwave if you have a good argument.