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Assault-Style Tactical Shotguns

Most tactical shotguns are adaptations from sporting guns.  The advantage of this heritage is a reduction in the cost of design and manufacture, and proven reliability in the field.  There are a few drawbacks, however.  Primarily in regard to ammunition capacity and the time it takes to reload. 

In an effort to solve these problems, a number of manufacturers have developed radically different shotgun models based on assault-rifle and military designs.  Unfortunately, most of these have not been successful, primarily due to their propensity to malfunction.  There is a clear advantage to being able to make design refinements based on the feedback and experience of hundreds of thousands of sportsmen, before undertaking design modifications necessary to build a tactical shotgun.

Though large police departments do have many of these assault-style tactical shotguns in their arsenals as the manufactures claim, I don’t know of any SWAT operators or military spec-ops units which actually use these shotguns in field operations.  Generally, they simply aren’t reliable enough.  Hopefully this will change in the near future, but at this point, none of these new designs have sufficient field testing to earn my recommendation. 

New models of assault-style tactical shotguns, such as the Kel-Tec KSG (MSRP $880) pictured above, will eventually be sufficiently refined to be trustworthy as a self-defense firearm.  The KSG, a pump-action which holds 13-shells (12+1) and is only 26.1-inches in length, is a promising but insufficiently tried-in-the-field new tactical model.  Though Kel-Tec firearms have a reputation for being rough in manufacturing quality, the company is making noteworthy improvements.  Since the KSG is a pump-action gun rather than a semiautomatic, it is more likely to pass the test of field-use reliability. 

If the Kel-Tec KSG can be obtained at a significant discount, it might become a viable contender.  But with a street price that is not far from the street price of a reliable high-quality semiautomatic tactical shotgun, it’s a nonstarter.  A gun like the Benelli M2 or M4 shoots faster and has reduced recoil, and Benelli has a proven track record of reliability in combat, so it’s difficult to justify the KSG. 

Over the last decade the Benelli M4 and Mossberg 590 have proven to be reliable in combat in Iran and Afghanistan, and the Benelli M2 has proven itself in many real-world encounters by SWAT operators, so these are trusted firearms.  Yes, the KSG’s impressive 13-shell capacity and compact size make it attractive, but these benefits are of little value if the gun proves to be unreliable.  For now, it’s probably safer to select a tried-and-true pump-action or semiautomatic home defense shotgun than one of these newly designed assault-style tactical shotguns.