IMO, the average person who isn't skilled in shooting and doesn't really intend to 'train up'
due to lack of interest in shooting, but wants a gun for home defense would be likely better
served with a pistol caliber carbine than a handgun, rifle or shotgun. Very low recoil, much
lower noise, flash and blast (indoors, likely at night, probably with no hearing protection) than
a pistol, rifle or shotgun. Easy to point, lots of shots. Folks get all silly about shotguns, from
watching movies which show shot scattering 4 ft wide at 8 yds, when in reality the shot will
be no bigger than a fist at typical indoor distances.
Apparently Ruger offered a couple of pistol caliber carbines to police only years ago, in the 90s. I only
heard of them after they had been discontinued. I asked a chief of police friend (an extremely
skilled pistol shooter, too) about them. He said they had been demoed for the PD, but weren't very
reliable. Seems amazingly foolish to try to sell a semiauto when it isn't reliable. They didn't sell,
and they stopped making them. Never have even seen one, never offered for sales to non-police.
Let's hope that this new one is better, and since Bill Ruger is gone, Ruger makes lots of fine self
defense guns for civilians. They even sell magazines larger than 5 rds for their Mini14s, now, too.
For a long time, Ruger seemed to only want to build hunting and target guns, never CCW handguns
or even large cap mags for the Mini14 for many, many years. They seem way past that now.
Hope this carbine works out well for them.
Bill