Hello. I have had no experiences with shotguns before the last 18 months or so. During my tour of duty in the Army, one of the weapons I was trained with was the Remington 870 Police Magnum. The trainers did not speak too highly of them (nothing very specific though), and we often experienced failures to function with them. (Specifically, the weapon would lock up after being fired. Ejecting the fired shell involved striking the butt of the weapon against something hard while working the pump action. There were also other failures to feed/eject from time to time.) But then again, these were not individually issued weapons, so their mainentance was piss-poor at best. Anyway, all in all firing a shotgun turned out to be fun as hell. I'd be interested in getting one myself sometime in the future, once I can afford it. After my experiences, I'd be willing to forget the 870 in favor of some other brand. However, people on these forums seem to like theirs very much, if I have understood correctly? So was the poor performance of the Army's guns the result of their lousy mainentance? (Would some other weapon survived better, or are pump shotguns generally sensitive to mainentance?) Is the 870 a good gun?
(And no, I have not decided to exclude other types of shotguns. More questions to come later...)
(And no, I have not decided to exclude other types of shotguns. More questions to come later...)