4 weapons cataloged
The shotgun has been declared obsolete by military planners roughly once per generation, and it keeps showing up anyway. The reason is versatility. Swap the ammunition and the same weapon goes from bird hunting to door breaching to riot control. No other firearm category adapts to as many roles with a simple change of shells. The break-action is the simplest design that works. The pump-action is the most reliable. The combat shotgun is the most lethal. Pick your priority.
The break-action shotgun — single-barrel or double-barrel, opened at a hinge for loading — is the simplest and oldest repeating shotgun design. Side-by-side and over-under configurations dominate sporting use. The double-barrel shotgun has been a fix...
The lever-action shotgun applies the same cycling mechanism as the iconic Winchester rifle to a smoothbore platform. The Winchester Model 1887, designed by John Browning, was the first successful repeating shotgun. A lever behind the trigger guard cy...
The pump-action shotgun is cycled by sliding the forend rearward and forward, ejecting the spent shell and chambering a fresh one. John Browning’s Winchester Model 1897 was the first commercially successful pump shotgun and saw extensive military ser...
The combat shotgun is a semi-automatic or selective-fire shotgun optimized for military use. The Browning Auto-5 (1902) pioneered semi-automatic shotgun operation. Modern combat shotguns like the Benelli M4 (adopted by the US Marine Corps as the M101...