...make a donation to the Armed Citizen Project.
What is the Armed Citizen Project you ask?
The Armed Citizen Project is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to training and arming residents in mid-high crime areas with defensive shotguns, for free! In training and arming law-abiding residents, we are saturating neighborhoods with defensive weapons, and measuring the effect that a heavily armed society has on crime rates.
You can learn more about it
here. And you can donate to the project
here.They take donations of both money and firearms. However, they use one particular type of "defensive" shotgun, a single shot break action. Here is their explanation:
Why use a break action, single-shot shotgun?
Not only are these weapons inexpensive, but they are some of the easiest to use weapons that exist on the market today, while accounting for an insignificant amount of unintentional discharges and accidents. One of the biggest reasons to choose this weapon is that it is of little to no value to criminals. If the Journal News map fiasco taught us anything, it is that thieves may target specific homes in order to steal weapons of worth. The great thing about this weapon, is that it has low worth to criminals for the purpose of committing crimes. You would be hard pressed to find a criminal that would be eager to commit a crime with a large, single shot shotgun. At the same time, one will find a general agreement from criminals that staring down the barrel of one of these defensive weapons is certainly not ideal. I consider this weapon a hallway gun. If a home invader enters my home, this weapon is sufficient to cast a large spread that is capable significant damage, while reducing the potential of innocent bystander damage, due to the fact that the shot will not likely travel through walls or over longer distances without losing great amounts of energy. I can simply point 15 feet down my hallway, while aimed in the general direction of the intruder, and fire a shot that may take care of the problem.
Another BIG reason for using this style of defensive weapon, is to challenge the anti-gun lobby on a claim they often make. We are now quite used to hearing arguments along the lines of "why do you need an "assault weapon" for home defense?" These gun-control proponents often insist that they do believe in the right to bear arms to some extent, and we are challenging them to prove it. If an "assault weapon" is too extreme to be used for home defense, then there must necessarily be a weapon that is acceptable for home defense, or else the gun-control proponent is being blatantly intellectually dishonest. This style of firearm is likely to be the most palatable to any gun-control proponent that claims to believe in the right of self-defense, and we challenge them to reveal who they really are.
Does this mean we advise against higher powered/capacity defensive weapons?
Absolutely not. For the purposes of this project, we aim to keep it simple. Of course the stronger the firepower, and more shots that are able to be fired will increase the odds of success. If a gang of four breaks into your house, it is best for your wife to be equipped with 30 rounds of .223 if possible, and we fully support the decision of firearm owners to be prepared for all eventualities.
Interesting. Very, very interesting.
They are currently working on Tucson and Houston. They intend to expand to Dallas, Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit and New York. This is a project worth keeping an eye on.