Ok.....where do I start? First of all, wow!!! When it comes to shotgun owners there is a lot of enthusiasm out there. When I started this I had no clue the Pardner Pump/Chinese made guns were such a hotbed of opinion or had such a following.
This is the rundown so far; its a clone of the Rem 870, its reliable, I got it at a fair price used, parts are interchangeable with the 870, its Chinese made by Hawk industries to NEF specs, and that NEF, Marlin, H&R, and Remington are all owned by the same American company. Huff..Huff..Breath..Keep typing...Which if you are one of those stimulated by political morality raises the question of who is truly responsible for all of this controversy? The consumer for buying, big industries for selling, or our elected government for allowing the outsourcing to begin with? That aside I would like to note some other things that came out of this so far.
There are other affordable clones out there such as the Savage/Stevens 350 which is a clone of the Ithaca 37. YouTube can be an excellent source of additional help, and lets face it, a picture does say a thousand words. Some good pictures were posted, thanks Hunterdad. Thanks to 19-3 Ben for the link to the manual, I needed that because I bought it used. AMD0709, I hope that you get your shotgun working and as we found out together Max100 knows a lot about these guns. Cornhusker77, there is something almost divine in the peace that can be found in a forest trail, some mud, an ATV, and a firearm to do some plinking(or even better hunting).
BigBill and BCCL....... Hummmm....... If Idaho and Illinois did not face each other in civil war they sure did now. And by God if you did not shake hands, make up, and talk about grandkids in the end. How poignant (I hope thats spelled right), is not our children's children the true benefactor of practicing our rights. Ill sum up Recklesscarolina and Almond27 in saying I agree that a gun is better than no gun and the bad guy will never know the difference between an expensive gun and a inexpensive one if you "SQUEEZE" the trigger and it goes "BANG".
The difference in gun ownership is clearly individual and ultimately what matters is defending yourself and your loved ones. If you can afford to buy one gun over the other because of you deepest convictions, then be happy in doing so. If saving some much needed cash in times of hardship is your goal, then be happy in doing so. So, in answer to the very first post. Could I have done a simple search for info and learned the same things? Yes. But, would it have been as dynamic? No. Would it have had the same human connection to other like minded people? No.
I have been so entertained and educated by this post. Thanks to all, and if you feel like doing so please keep it up.
