here we go again, shortening a shotgun legal questions.

18" & 26" OAL are the only legal requirements under Federal law.

There is no provision concerning sights, or no sights.

Common sense should prevail though.
If you want a useful fighting shotgun??

DO NOT cut the stock off into a pistol grip.

The stock serves several very critical purposes beside making the gun longer in a fighting shotgun.

1. You can aim it.

2. You can hit what you aim it at.
(But a brass or white bead will help a bunch in the dark)

3. Nobody can grab the barrel and twist it out of your grasp when you have the stock clamped under your arm pit.

4. You can't do a vertical or horizontal butt stroke and put the BD out cold on the floor without shooting him if you don't have a butt-stock to do it with.

And most important?
5. Pistol grip shotguns are SO Video Gamey!
(For folks who don't know how to use a fighting shotgun.)

rc

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What rc said.

There's a reason for the Fed min. barrel length of 18"... and if you haven't patterned buckshot on paper from one, then you might not realize the LACK of "scatter", especially! over home defense distances of 25' or less.

One must still AIM, not simply "point" (unless one is a seasoned trap, skeet or sporting clays shooter) an 18" or 20"-barreled shotgun. A 00 buck pattern from an 18.5" barrel to 7', 12' and 25' is surprisingly tight. Off the top of my head, respectively, those distances' patterns might be 2.5" dia., 3" dia, and 9" diameter. All nine pellets' worth go into those small areas.

Keep the buttstock, perhaps shorten it an inch, inch-and-one-half, add a better recoil pad, install a front bead sight (or whichever flavor-of-the-week sight one might prefer) and as the Unforgettable Dave McCracken said, "Buy ammo, use up, repeat".

Have fun. Be safe. And practice.

The 18 inch barrel length and over length of 26 inches are Federal requirements. You still have to meet any local/state laws to remain legal.

Unless you are shooting a single projectile (aka slug) like a rifle at a stationary target, shotguns are POINTED, not aimed, even with 00 buck at HD distances, therefore a bead or any form of sight is not necessary as your pointing finger does the job in conjunction with your two eyeballs.
Removing the regular stock for some cool appearance disallows you the ability to do the above with any degree of success; however, from a legal standpoint, the above-mentioned 18/26 is all the feds care about

The barrel isn't measured "from the receiver end." A shotgun barrel is properly measured for length DOWN THE BORE from the muzzle to the face of the closed bolt or receiver.

Keep the factory stock as is and buy a used Mossberg factory pistol grip. They're abundantly available from people who tried them and didn't like them...

Take off the buttplate a d see how your stock is attached. My guess is a bolt or screw. If you cut down the stock you will have a large hole leaving an imprint each time recoil hits. You can glue in a plug and sand it, you will curse the day you need to tighten the stock a bit.

As stated, do not measure from the receiver, close the bolt and drop a rod or dowel down the length, subtract enough to give you 18.5 or better and don't forget to cut where the rib support is if you have a vent rib barrel

2. i bought a cheap single point sling that i'm going to use "in conjunction" with the PG, so defensively it would be harder to grab and taken out of my hands. I can also push out and use the sling tension to help steady the aim.

Click to expand...

So, you're going to have the BG wait while you get all dressed up in your single point sling?? Or are you just going to wear it all the time.? If so, I can understand why the butt stock might get in the way.

Since I do lots of purchasing for my guide business (fishing -not hunting) on E-Bay I couldn't resist checking to see just how many of those "mossberg pistol grip" offerings there were.... I think you'll see one or two here (and if only half are folks that long ago figured out just how worthless pistol grips on shotguns were....)

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trk...&_nkw=mossberg+pistol+grip&_sacat=0&_from=R40

By the way, years ago I ran into one or two folks that were armed with shorty shotguns... after they were in custody we'd impound their weapons. Pretty sure that I never ran into anyone that had one that had the slightest idea of how to properly use a shorty.... thank heavens.

Have you ever shot a pistol grip 12 ga? They ain't fun.....keep the stock.......chris3

A shotgun originally designed (or redesigned) to be fired from the shoulder must be 26" overall minimum and 18" barrel minimum, but it does not have to keep a buttstock.

The big hangup on shortening the factory buttstock is the through bolt that connects the buttstock to the gun. If you want a handgrip only, you need to locate a shorter bolt, and for the bolt head and washer countersink the bolt hole on the shortened handgrip. I would keep the original stock and pop $20 bucks for a pistol grip and bolt: my son tried his with a pistol grip and went back to the shoulder stock after a few shooting tests in the field.

I have a pistol gripped shotgun, but it stays that way because the way I shoulder a pump gun, the feed doesn't work reliably for me from the shoulder. I have another pump shotgun, different make and model, that does work for me from the shoulder, so it keeps a buttstock.

Personally I would prefer a "youth" length buttstock--2 or 3 inches shorter than an adult length buttstock, but still offering advantages of a buttstock. I believe the issue shotguns in Vietnam had buttstocks with 12" length of pull.

The only shotguns I thought made sense having a Pistol Grip Only were guns in the class some call "Whippets" These are the $200 tax stamp guns with barrels and magtubes cut down to 12.5 inches or even 10.5 inches in some guns. Such guns were used by some police agencies for body guard type work. Before 1934 Americans mostly had nothing like the restrictions on firearms found today. There were factory made models of double barrel and even single shot shotguns marketed for home defense that were pistol grip only and had barrels in the 10.5 to 12.5 inch range to make them easy to store.

Ithica made the neatest in my opinion, a neat 20 gauge double called the Auto Burgler I guess because you pointed it at the burgler and he was automatically gone.

The difference in handling say a Mossberg that has been cut and both barrel and mag modified to allow it to be a two in the mag one in the chamber gun of 10.5 inch barrel length and an 18.5 inch pistol grip only is significant. While the first is a handy little devil the longer gun is just unweildy. The 18 to 21 inch PGO guns I have handled and shot really seemed like as waste of time for any thing except removing unwanted door hinges, Door knobs and dead bolts. The closest I might come to a Pistol grip only shotgun would be a folder. That said I only had to do one session with the old Remington 870 top folder seen above to decide I did not want one and would fight being issued one. I did not get cut but it was very uncomfortable to the point of bruising my check to the point someone asked if I had been punched a day later and that butt plate bruised me around its edges despite having it tucked in well.

Your mileage may very but no pistol grip only for me thank you very much.

-kBob