Franchi introduced the Special Purpose Automatic Shotgun (SPAS-12) for Italian military and police agencies in 1979 and it quickly because popular worldwide. Based originally on the gas-operated Franchi 500, that SPAS-12 was robust, reliable, and designed as a semiautomatic action with a backup p...

Today I'm taking the SPAS-12 out to the range, to try a variety of ammunition and see what runs in it. The SPAS is a gas-operated shotgun that can be switched to manual pump operation for use with underpowered ammunition. This was originally intended as a way to allow things like beanbag and othe...

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The High Standard Model 10A and 10B were a pair of bullpup police shotguns produced for about 10 years in the late 1960s and 1970s. They were built around a regular High Standard semiautomatic shotgun action, which was put into a plastic chassis to give it a bullpup configuration. They were chamb...

Today I am out at the range with Matt Haught of Symtac Consulting to test out a duckbill choke. Also known as a spreader, this was a muzzle device used briefly by SEALs in Vietnam – the idea is to spread shot in a horizontal oval pattern instead of a circular pattern. This improves the likelihood...

All that is tactical is not necessarily new...and this shotgun is a perfect example. It was put together by a Tucson police officer in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and has all the elements of a very modern "tactical" combat shotgun. It is a Remington Model 11 semiauto shotgun (a licensed copy o...

Armalite was a company founded as an offshoot of the Fairchild Aircraft company, and working with aluminum was their specialty. This was a fairly novel material to the arms industry, and they were able to exploit it fantastically in the AR-10 and AR-15 rifles. The AR15 rights were sold to Colt in...

The Cosmi is a very high-end boutique Italian sporting shotgun. It has all the looks and lines of a single shot break-action gun, but hiding inside is a long recoil self-loading action and 8-round magazine tube.

The video I have today is really only half a video - I filmed this footage back i...

Matt Haught joins me one more time to try out some practical testing of the Diverter and Duckbill shotgun chokes. We are using a 2-liter bottles of seltzer water on strings at 10 yards, and testing the A&W Diverter and Duckbill, using a standard cylinder bore riot gun as a control. So, it's not r...

The A&W Diverter was designed by Clifford Ashbrook and Wilson Wing to change a shotgun's circular pattern into a horizontal linear one. They applied for a patent in 1967, and it was granted in 1970 (US Patent #3,492,750). Their invention was similar in purpose to the "duckbill" chokes tried out b...

The SPAS-15 was Franchi’s successor to the SPAS-12, improved with detachable box magazines (6 round capacity) and a construction of simple sheet metal samplings and polymer. Like the SPAS-12, the -15 allows the used to switch between manual pump action and semiautomatic at basically the touch of ...

When John Browning developed the self-loading shotgun that would become the Auto-5, he decided to depart from his existing standard business relationship with the Winchester company. Browning had historically sold his patents to Winchester for a flat fee, but with his new shotgun he decided he wa...

In the late 1970s, H&K decided that it wanted to offer a tactical shotgun for the police and security market. Having no experience with shotgun manufacture, they turned to Franchi in Italy - for whom they already handled sales outside Italy. Franchi produced a gas-operated semiautomatic shotgun ...

I have a number of interesting custom guns, and I figured it would be fun to do videos on a couple of them...let me know if you enjoys this and would like to see more like this!

Today's example is what I call my Remington Auto-8. It's a recreation of the FN Police Model Auto-5. Those guns were...

The Clair brothers were three men from Saint Etienne, France – Benoit, Jean Baptiste, and Victor Clair. They submitted their first patent in 1889, which described in general a gas-operating system for firearms. This was followed by a British patent (#15,833) in 1893 for their system, which they c...

The Remington 870 is one of the most popular shotguns ever made, but some trap shooters decided they preferred the lighter recoil of the gas-operated Model 1100. This gave someone at Remington the idea to replace the 870's magazine tube with a gas piston much like that in the 1100, which could ac...

When I filmed this, I had limited time and figured I would do the shooting first and then film the history and disassembly of the gun afterwards. Alas, I ran out of time and never did get that part completed. I will follow up with a video on the history of the Sjogren the next time I have access ...

The Striker shotgun was designed by a Rhodesian named Hilton Walker in the late 1970s, although not manufactured until after he had emigrated to South Africa. He partnered with the owner of the Armsel company to finance production, which was actually done by a company called Aserma Manufacturing....

I am normally more interested in military small arms than sporting ones, but the Browning Auto-5 is such an important firearm that it deserves the recognition of and proper small arms enthusiast. It was not only the first long recoil firearm, but also the first viable semiautomatic shotgun - and ...

Between the world wars, the Walther company designed and marketed a short recoil, toggle-locked 12 gauge shotgun for sporting use. It was patented by the Walther brothers, but actually manufactured by the Deutsche-Werke consortium, which was organized by the German government to employ German wor...

John Browning's Auto-5 long recoil shotgun was the first mass-produced semiauto shotgun, and would eventually become the second best-selling semiauto shotgun in the world (not bad for the first one to hit the market). It was patented in 1900 and initially manufactured by FN in Belgium, with Remin...

The LAW-12 was a sister product to the much better-known SPAS-12 shotgun made by Franchi in the 1980s. The SPAS was a selectable pump or semiauto system, and the LAW was semiauto only. This made it simpler, less expensive, and about 2 full pounds lighter. It was intended for the law enforcement m...