Shotgun

• 1. Introduction

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  The shotgun has a name that first appeared in writing in 1776, in correspondence traveling to and from Fort Boonesborough in Kentucky. It was flagged at the time as part of the "Frontier Language of the West" by the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, whose work The Oak Openings helped spread the word into common use. From that frontier origin, the weapon became one of the most varied and widely deployed firearms in history. How did a smoothbore long gun built for hunting birds become a trench weapon, a tool of riot police, and now a drone-hunting instrument in modern warfare? And what makes its design, in most essential respects, nearly unchanged since a landmark patent of 1875, still considered the ideal solution for a remarkable range of problems?

• 2. The Fowling Piece

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  Fowling pieces first appeared in 16th century Europe, designed specifically for shooting birds on the wing. By the early 17th century, gunsmiths were extending their barrels to as long as 6 feet in pursuit of greater accuracy. The Brown Bess musket, which served the British army from 1722 to 1838, had a 19 mm smoothbore barrel roughly equivalent to a 10-gauge shotgun and measured 157 cm in total length. Records from the Plymouth Colony describe fowling pieces that ran shorter than a typical musket, capped at about 137 cm. Military users also found uses for shot: the buck and ball load combined a musket ball with three or six buckshot pellets and was used throughout the era of the smoothbore. The earliest breechloading shotguns came out of France and Belgium in the early 19th century, and makers like Robert and Chateauvillard produced hammerless designs in the 1830s and 1840s. The most consequential early hammerless design was the British gunmaker T. Murcott's 1871 patent, nicknamed the "mousetrap" for its loud snap action. It was the first meaningful challenge to the hammer gun's dominance, but it was quickly overshadowed by Anson and Deeley's boxlock patent of 1875, a four-moving-part design so simple and reliable that the double-barreled shotgun has changed relatively little since.

• 3. John Browning's Inventions

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  Daniel Myron LeFever introduced the first American hammerless shotgun in 1878 while working for Barber & LeFever in Syracuse, New York. That gun used external cocking levers. By 1883 he had patented a truly automatic hammerless design that cocked itself when the breech was closed. But the transformation of the repeating shotgun is most closely tied to John Moses Browning, working for Winchester Firearms. In 1887, Browning introduced the Model 1887 Lever Action Repeating Shotgun, the first successful repeating design of its kind, loading a fresh round from an internal magazine with each operation of the action lever. Before this, nearly all shotguns were break-open types. In 1893 he followed with the Model 1893 Pump Action Shotgun, introducing pump action to the market. Then in 1900 he patented the Browning Auto-5, America's first semi-automatic shotgun. The first semi-automatic shotgun in the world had been patented in 1891-1893 by the Clair brothers of France, but Browning's Auto-5 became the definitive mass-market version, remaining in production until 1998. Lever-action designs that followed Browning's Model 1887 lost favor once pump-action guns arrived around the start of the 20th century, and production of lever-action shotguns was eventually discontinued in 1920.

• 4. War and the Trench Gun

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  By the late 19th century, the shotgun had largely disappeared from European battlefields, replaced by breechloading rifled firearms that were far more accurate at long range. Its military value returned in the First World War. American forces under General Pershing deployed 12-gauge pump-action shotguns to the Western Front in 1917. These were fitted with bayonets and a heat shield so soldiers could grip the barrel while the bayonet was deployed; the U.S. Army called them trench guns. Germany filed a formal diplomatic protest against their use, alleging a violation of the laws of warfare. The judge advocate general rejected the protest on the grounds that Germany had objected to the use of lead shot, which would have been illegal, but military shot was plated. It remains the only time the legality of the shotgun in warfare has been formally challenged. In the Second World War, shotguns were rarely used on the European front by regular forces, though the French Resistance carried them. In the Pacific, the dense jungles and fortified positions made the shotgun a preferred weapon for U.S. Marines, who favored pump actions because they were less likely to jam in humid and dirty conditions. The most common models were the 12-gauge Winchester Model 97 and Model 12. Industrial centers including the Gopher State Steel Works were guarded by National Guard soldiers carrying Winchester Model 37 12-gauge shotguns. In Vietnam and the Korean War, in Iraq's urban combat environments, and now in conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine war, where shotguns have become one of the most effective tools for shooting down fast-moving enemy drones, the weapon has continued to find new specialist applications.

• 5. Gauges and Ammunition

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  The gauge number on a shotgun is determined by the weight, in fractions of a pound, of a lead sphere whose diameter matches the barrel's interior. A 10-gauge shotgun barrel has an inner diameter equal to that of a sphere made from one-tenth of a pound of lead. By far the most common gauges are 12, with a bore of 0.729 inches, and 20, with a bore of 0.614 inches. At the extreme end, punt guns reached up to 4 bore, too powerful to shoulder, and were mounted to small boats for commercial waterfowl hunting. Shot itself is divided into birdshot and buckshot. Birdshot pellets carry a diameter below 5 mm, buckshot above. A typical defensive 12-gauge 00 buck shell contains 9 pellets roughly 8.4 mm in diameter, each comparable in damage potential to a .38 Special bullet. At the other end of the ammunition spectrum, specialty rounds include flechette rounds carrying 8 to 20 aerodynamic darts for extended range and light armor penetration, Taser International's XREP electronic projectile announced in 2007 that travels at an initial velocity of 100 m/s and delivers a twenty-second electroshock burst, and breaching rounds built from brittle material that destroys a lock mechanism and then fragments into dust to protect anyone standing behind the door. Dragon's breath rounds produce a gout of flame up to 20 feet from the barrel. Non-toxic shot, including bismuth, tungsten-iron, and tungsten polymer loads, is required by U.S. federal law for waterfowl hunting, since lead pellets can be ingested by waterfowl and cause health problems.

• 6. The Choke and the Pattern

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  A constriction built into the muzzle end of the barrel, called the choke, controls how tightly or loosely the shot disperses after leaving the gun. Chokes can be cut into the barrel at manufacture or screwed in as interchangeable tubes. Briley Manufacturing, a maker of interchangeable shotgun chokes, uses a conical section roughly three times the bore diameter in length to gradually squeeze the shot without deforming it. A skeet shooter targeting close-range clay pigeons might use 127 micrometres of constriction and produce a pattern 76 cm in diameter at a distance of 19 m. A trap shooter targeting distant clays might use 762 micrometres of constriction to produce the same 76 cm diameter circle at 37 m. Special turkey hunting chokes can reach constrictions as high as 1500 micrometres. At the other end of the scale, shot spreader chokes work in reverse, deliberately widening the pattern beyond what a cylinder bore produces; the Briley Diffusion line uses rifling in the choke to spin the shot, with a 1 rotation in 36 cm twist. Oval chokes, which produce a shot pattern wider than it is tall, appeared on some combat shotguns of the Vietnam War era and were available as aftermarket additions in the 1970s. The Ithaca 37 with a duckbill choke was used in limited numbers by U.S. Navy SEALs during that conflict.

• 7. Sport, Law, and Specialty Uses

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  Skeet and trap shooting, both featured at the Olympic Games, involve firing at clay discs known as clay pigeons thrown by a mechanical launching device called a trap. Modern innovations like interchangeable chokes and subgauge inserts have made the double-barreled shotgun the preferred choice in competitive shooting disciplines. Specialty gunsmiths such as Krieghoff and Perazzi have produced elaborately finished double-barrel guns for wealthy hunters in Europe and America; these weapons can cost US$5,000 or more, with some presentation pieces selling for up to US$100,000. In law enforcement, a variety of less-lethal 12-gauge rounds have been developed specifically for police use, including tear gas shells, bean bags, rubber projectiles, explosive sonic stun rounds, and flares. The bean bag round, a fabric bag filled with birdshot, is by far the most common less-lethal option; its large surface area causes it to lose velocity rapidly, making it effective only at moderate range. At ranges under 3 m, it can cause broken bones. Australia offers a case study in how law changes shape the shotgun market. When pump-action and semi-automatic shotguns were effectively outlawed after 1997, lever-action sales increased notably. Bolt-action models, including a 12-gauge manufactured by Mossberg with a 3-round magazine, were marketed to fill the gap, though they were considered slow and awkward. Straight-pull bolt-action designs such as the Turkish-made Pardus BA12 and the Australian-designed SHS STP 12 have since become popular for their ergonomic advantages when cycling the action.