Tuesday, December 10, 2013

SHOTGUN!

Brigid put up a truly wonderful post on her blog about the Remington 870 shotgun today:

The Remington 870 - Dressed to Thrill

It was such a wonderful article that I felt the need to post about mine as well.

I have two 870s of my own, both of which started out as police-surplus 12-gauge guns with 18" barrels. However, over the years, I've modified both for different roles.
The top one now sports a 28" field barrel with a vent rib and a removable choke tube. This 870 is prime for hunting fowl and for shooting trap and skeet should I wish.

The lower one is a defense/fighting shotgun which I've modified a fair bit to increased it's utility, as described in this earlier post:

The practical home-defense shotgun

This is the one that stays by the bed at night as a cure for things that go "bump" in the night. It sports a Surefire weapon light and holds 16 rounds of 12ga. in it's magazine tube, sidesaddle, and stock tubes. This is a "grab-and-go" weapon.


The 870 is a platform that handles either role exceptionally well as Brigid states so eloquently in her article, and I feel extremely well served having these two here in the Lair, one in the "social" rack in the living room and the other in the "on-deck circle". Remington scored a home run with this classic design when it first came out in 1951, and that's why over the last sixty years, they've made and sold over ten million of them. And they're still making and selling them today.

Edited to add: Keads has another nice post about his Remington 870 here:
Shotgun!

They're everywhere, folks. Because they're that good.

7 comments:

  1. I don't currently have a shotgun, but I've always been partial to the Ithaca Model 37, myself. That one started out as a Remington, also, and was designed in a collaboration between John Moses Browning and John Pederson. I like the clean receiver with the bottom ejection; makes it good for use by right- or left-handed shooters.

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  2. Yep, and just racking the slide CAN get somebody's attention... ;-)

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  3. Sigh, here I am with just ONE pedestrian Wingmaster. I'll be over in the corner.

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  4. I got me an 870 tactical 12 gauge + loys of 00-buck rounds in 10 minutes at a gun shop in an (unnamed) Southern State after moving here recently from the Libtard state of New Jersey where even the mention of the word "gun" has the Liberal a**holes foaming at the mouth and unleashing a litney of: "if there were no guns there would be no murders".

    Guess they never heard the story of Abel & Cain.

    Lesson: If fatso Rino Gov. Christie runs for president in 2016 vote for Biden. At least he approves of shotguns.

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  5. A 12 ga with 00 buck is a devastating weapon for sure.
    They are kind of like ammo, can't have too many of them.

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  6. Anonymous6:31 PM

    I have one also loaded with buck and ball

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  7. Brigid hit on what I think is the main flaw of the 870 - the safety location. A tang safety is the best, IMHO, followed closely by a crossbolt safety in the front of the trigger guard. It may be that this prejudice was influenced by all my younger days shotgun hunting done with a Mossberg pump and various Winchesters. That said, I still have two 870's. I'll be down to one after Xmas, when the 20 goes off to the daughter's house for a home defense piece.

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