Blunderbuss use

Looking at the blunderbuss, it seems super-fun (although maybe not that good? New to mordheim, and thinking of trying them out. A few questions-

1) Is there any value to more than 1?
2) Given it says you can shoot in any direction, can you clip models in close combat? Can you intentionally hit your own models? Could be interesting to charge a few guys in, fire a bunch of blunderbusses and then hopefully your chargers can stab the now-down enemies.
3) How often can you hit more than 1 model? It seems pretty easy to reliably get 2-3 regularly, since you can fire after moving.

1) Yes. Having more than one means you can use it once and then still have it around as a threat. Note that RAW you must have *different* shooting weapons so RAW you cannot give the one model two blunderbusses; a brace of pistols counts as one selection for rules purposes. For what it is worth in my group we houseruled this away and it has not reduced fun for us. That being said, we also enforce WYSIWYG quite strictly and this by itself seems to cut down on a lot of stuff that is dubious, but technically legal.

2) No. The rules say that you may not shoot at any model that is involved in close combat. The rules for the blunderbuss say that any model covered by the template are are hit. Therefore you may not place the template so that models in close combat are hit. That being said, there are a few warbands that have a few rules about specific henchmen being expendable and you can fire on them in close combat. Also, if you are using the multiplayer rules then you can freely fire into close combat that involves only other warbands (hits are then randomised, I think. Haven't played for a while because plague).

3) Initially fairly easily (especially against chaff-heavy warbands like Skaven), but your opponents will quickly figure out how to avoid that sort of carry-on. That doesn't detract from their usefulness though - it just changes them from a hit-generating weapon to a battle-field shaping one.