Several years ago I purchased Combat Handugnnery by Chuck Taylor.  It covered the basics of choosing a handgun, shooting, defensive tactics, and how to properly choose a CCW system.  A new updated edition of the book, written by Massad Ayoob is now available from Krause Publications.  Ayoob is the founder of Lethal Force Institute, and is widely respected in the firearms industry as solid teacher and expert witness. The updated version of the...

Chuck Taylor (not the Converse guy) has an interesting article on his website about the combat shotgun.  It describes some testing that his school did with pumps and autoloaders.  They were trying to answer the question of whether or not there is a clear winner of the best combat shotgun designation from a test and evaluation standpoint.  They tested, Remington, Mossberg, Benelli, and Browning by shooting them with multiple types of shot at...