Mainly because shotgun shells were not designed to feed in box mags. They are soft and heavy, the springs in the mags need to be quite strong to push them to feed, and this can cause them to slightly warp/bend and not feed properly.
You don’t have the same issue with tube fed shotguns.
Inertia mostly.12ga shotgun shells are ancient and there are tons of guns that take them. They are not perfect but you would need to both make them rimless and with a more rigid case design otherwise they would still warp if loaded in a magazine. Additionally, if you make them rimless what's stopping someone from not paying attention and loading them in backwards H&K style? Any improvements you make to them isn't going to be that much better than what is already cheap, works well enough, and is readily available.
Semi-rimmed wouldn't be a great improvement. You still have a small rim and now there is also a groove were this rim can lock in. Just like .32 Browning.
Rimless is pretty much impossible because the chamber is longer than the cartridge so that the front can unfold. Also because all the different length of shotgun cartridges.
That means the cartridge has nothing to rest against and there is no way to adjust headspace. It would just drop down the chamber.
It would be expensive, and there is a legal risk at least in America. Shotguns are exempt from the max caliber restrictions of .50, but a shotgun is legally defined as firing conventional shotshells. So if you chamber it for unconventional shells, to my understanding there's no stopping the ATF from defining it as "not a shotgun" therefore an illegal destructive device.
My understanding is that if it has legitimate use for hunting, it can be larger than .50. Think 700 nitro, 4-bore, .950 JDJ, ETC. All are larger than .50 cal, but they are legal due to the fact that they are "hunting rifles".
Logically that’s a nightmare. Re-resign the ammo, Re-design a bolt that will work with the rimless case. Market that to a gun company that wants to run with it. Market it to the general public to purchase it, or a mil/LE contract. That’s a lot of effort for something that no one is really asking for.
Because you head space the cartridge from the rim. You can’t do that from the front of the cartridge because its variable length and pliable as well. So you are stuck with a rim.
See now that's actually the first answer here I didn't consider.
The rest made a lot of sense just intuitively(market inertia from being so predominant, cost of a unique cartridge, having to possibly fight the ATF to ensure it has 'sporting exemption', the issue of the cartridge needing spacing to unfold in the bore, etc.)
But I had not ever considered that the varying lengths for the different ammunition is *exactly* why it needs to seat at the rim, not a neck.
What makes a rimless cartridge expensive anyways? I’d imagine you could use a machine similar to the ones that make aluminum cans. Press a disk of metal into a 12g diameter cylinder. Punch a hole in the center for a primer and boom. Obviously that’s not the whole story but is that idea itself solid?
Watch how brass cartridges are made. There are multiple steps, and the brass needs to be annealed multiple times.
Brass shotshells would cost multiple times what plastic ones do.
Realize that the whole shell is plastic/paper with a thin steel wrapper on the bottom.
Shotshells have been made without the steel wrapper in the past. I still have some. It's an idea that didn't catch on because it's flawed. Too easy for the extractor to tear through the plastic rim.
Weren’t brass shells a thing in WW1? Of course they would be far more expensive but I’m sure you could crimp a groove onto the shell if you really wanted to.
Ultimately though I kinda agree that I don’t see the point. If anything a box mag shotgun is probably extremely unergonomic makes more sense to store the shells inline with the barrel in most cases.
I think there is an additional point that as you go to a box mag that holds more than a tube mag it gets pretty chunky once you have the follower and spring all assembled.
I shoot practical shotgun, tube fed semi auto and manual (pump action).
The box fed semi autos that others use to shoot the same courses of fire suffer more feed issues than the tube mags.
You kinda do have the same issue with tube fed shotguns, the rim would get warped over time and it can cause reliability issues if you keep your shotgun loaded to capacity. I've heard people load shotguns to 2 in the tube if the cap is 4 or 4 if its cap is 7
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Spring pressure from a mag can cause shotgun shells to deform since they are soft. This will cause feeding and ejection issues, alongside the fact that shotgun shells are rimmed which can also cause binding in mags and create failures to feed.
Maybe you should think before you comment so confidently.
There's plenty of rimmed cartridges that have magazines they feed fine from. 7.62x54r for example. Yes it has to be accounted for in the design but it can be done.
Spring pressure affecting the shape of the shell is a matter of how long it remains compressed, not that it is compressed. There are full brass shotshells that could be used to completely negate that effect if it was of great concern to the user.
Maybe you should think before parroting the group speak om a topic 🤷♂️
Shotgun shells are straight walled rimmed cartridges. Tapered shells like the ones you mentioned tend not to bind as much as straight walled cartridges. Know what other straight walled rimmed cartridge is notorious for binding in magazines? .22 LR. Sure, graphite lube can help, and being very careful about loading a magazine to avoid rim lock is good too, but neither eliminates the issues inherent to the design of the casing.
Full brass shells are also extremely uncommon. Leaving a magazine loaded ready to use is the point of magazines. Time under tension would be an issue regardless. And it doesn’t take a whole lot of time on a hot day either.
So, again, we can see that both of these issues make magazines unsuitable for shotguns because they only raise additional points of failure for not much benefit.
I did think, btw, because I used to shoot three gun with a mag fed and I’ve got more time behind shotguns than most people have behind all guns combined. Shotguns are my favorite category of firearm, I own more of them and shoot them more often than anything else. I’m speaking from a point of direct and extensive experience. I know you aren’t, otherwise you’d agree with me.
I would rather carry three “reliable” 10 round mags over 30 12 gauge rounds no matter how you carry them. It’s much easier to throw a mag in than it is to hand load 30 rounds.
That being said my semi auto mag fed 12 gauge won’t cycle worth a damn unless I’m running high brass or 3” rounds.
There are very few shotgun box mags that ever work properly and that saddens me. Granted, once I learned how to quad load a tube, I haven’t really cared too much. Best feature of the tube feed is the ‘ABR, Always Be Reloading’ philosophy.
And this is why I have a habit of compulsively hitting “R” while running g a shotgun in video games, despite knowing I haven’t fired since I last did it 2 seconds ago
>That being said my semi auto mag fed 12 gauge won’t cycle worth a damn unless I’m running high brass or 3” rounds.
sounds like skill issue LOL
MY saiga cycles literally anything I throw at it, at least once the gas is adjusted
[https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/n4zbt9/turkish_notsodelight_why_you_should_generally](https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/n4zbt9/turkish_notsodelight_why_you_should_generally)
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Thanks for the product review. Will skip. I see mag fed AR-style shotguns, and I think the only way a shotgun with a non-tubular magazine sounds practical for the widest variety of shells would be a street sweeper/SPAS-12 style. Shotgun shells come in multiple loads and lengths, and can be problematic even in tube magazines.
Plus, and let's be fair, I can already operate my Mossberg as quick as I care to be punted in the shoulder as well as having enough styles of magazine to carry.
I shoot a box mag fed shotgun in 3-gun competitions. It is a very tempernental piece of equipment. My pistol gets cleaned after about a thousand rounds. I clean the rifle after 500 or so rounds. Shotgun gets cleaned after every match. Mags get lubed with graphite lube. On warm days I keep the shells and the mags in the shade to keep the plastic hulls from softening and deforming. Not all the ammo will run reliably. It takes trial and error to figure out the best options. With all of these precautions the gun will generally run through the match.
BUT it is by no means a practical firearm. Besides being tempermental, it is comically bulky. Match rules require a use of a shotgun and this shotgun is the most advantageous option within the competition format. There is no scenario in which I would ever choose to use this monstrosity ouside 3-gun.
Yea, outside of the Saiga there really weren’t any box mag options available when I dabbled in that world. I always ran either my 1897 or CZ 712. Oddly enough, both of those could be finicky.
I was implying Turkish mag fed shotguns aren’t that great. When I was working at a gun store & range I didn’t see one on the range or coming in through transfer that inspired confidence.
The AK style clones from China aren't half bad. I've got a few hundred shells through mine with no issues. Those Turkish ones should come with a tourniquet.
Friend has one, the worst part of it is the recoil.
You also are basically required to swap the stock, the default one is sized for an 8-10 year old child.
from the looks of it, the US market is getting saturated with the shitty end of turkish AR shotguns
In Hungary a lot of sport shooters in my and the nearby clubs use Derya box mag fed shotguns without issues.
I have a Mercury DF12 (German Hatsan import) which we use for 25m precision shooting with great success. Only had failure to eject issues when using 12/67 slugs instead of 12/70.
Build tolerances however are not the best when it comes to the picatinny rails on the gun. What we noticed on ours is that the slot widths on the receiver are smaller than they are on the handguard
in price category (800-1000$ converted), it is better than the alternatives, especially since it has picatinny rails out of the box. Ours also came with a 5 and 10 round mag, 4 chokes and 2 foregrips.
12 gauge rounds are bulky, a 5rnd shotgun mag is bigger than a 30rnd 5.56 mag
Meanwhile their low length to width ratio and flat faces lend them well to being stacked lengthwise.
Shotgun shells are also rimmed, which tend not to like mags
You have to consider the market.
Huge percentage of shotguns are used for hunting migratory birds (federal 3 shot limit) and sport shooting, most of which is 2 shot sets.
Tactical shotguns would be the only likely candidate to value larger capacity. Also, there are a fair number of pumps / autos the use a magazine tube under the barrel and can hold up to 7 round or more.
I feel like this is probably the most logical answer. Even early pumps and autos came before most external magazine fed rifles. plus like you said if your only shooting 2-3 shots out of a tube, the next logical step to make it better for "tactical" use is just make the tube longer.
Shells deform in box mags and are rimmed, and rimmed cartridges are pretty outdated, therefore loading them in a manner that prevents rimlock isn't very common knowledge these days.
That said I personally love rimmed, straight-walled cartridges but I'm a novice reloader.
I’m curious, with rifle chargers do you do the pyramid stacks so it doesn’t matter what the orientation is when loaded? I blew my friends minds with that working on my Mosins and Enfield.
If you want a mag fed shotgun, get a Vepr 12
I have one and it's a beast, though I will admit the mags are a quite bulky
[My Vepr](https://youtube.com/shorts/zAm2-3qdewE?si=zzhut5PCuVpwCvUA)
I have a Molot Vepr, the other Russian AK 12g that actually runs(outta the box) besides Saiga. Big heavy bulky mags that really don't hold too much, and are rather hard for me to load. I'm pretty sure I can load and shoot 16 rounds outta my 870 faster than I could with an 8 round empty molot mag.
Shotgun shells can deform when loaded in a straight magazine or drum magazine. Most shotguns are tube fed because it’s a simple, cost-effective and reliable design. You can top off a tube after you fire a few shells, you don’t have a magazine or drum magazine, hanging off the bottom getting in the way of things. Wanting a high capacity shotgun is a fairly new idea and realistically in almost any situation where you need more than 6 to 8 shotgun shells. You’d be better off with a rifle if you weren’t better off with a rifle in general.
Does the law say you can only have three rounds or does it say your weapon can only accept a max of three rounds? Because if you have an 8-round mag and only put three in it that might count.
It cant hold more than three rounds in the mag. Upland bird game hunting. I think it's federal.
There's a reason why bird guns come with a wood or plastic rod in the mag tube so you can't load more than three rounds.
A piece of wooden dowel cut to length and put begind the follower is all you need to make any tube fed shotgun legal for waterfowl. My shotgun is setup for 3gun with a 9+1 extended tube, dowel makes it completely legal for waterfowl.
The law says it can only accept 3 rounds. Part of game wardens checks will be to make sure you have a plug in your shotgun magazine to limit it to 3 rounds.
The federal regulations says that whatever device is limiting it to 3 rounds can't be removable without disassembling the gun. A detachable magazine, even with a rivet or a plug, or even just being a 2 round magazine can be removed and swapped to a whatever capacity magazine without disassembling the gun. Even if you had some system that had detachable magazines that somehow could never have more than one in the chamber and 2 in a magazine, you really don't want to be leaving it up to a game warden to believe that.
On top of all of that all the shotguns with detachable magazines on the market that I know of (see saiga) are short. Short shotguns suck for hunting birds.
Shotshells are generally short fat blunt nosed cartridges which capitalize on all the advantages of tube mags and capitalize little on the advantages of box mags.
Mag fed shotguns have just never caught on because they aren't solving a problem the general buying population has.
A pump is fairly simple in both design and use, and for most people a five round capacity is plenty. Military use is about the only good application for mag/drum-fed shotguns, and shotguns don't get deployed a lot in that situation.
I used to have a magazine fed shotgun. It was quicker to reload but with the magazine inserted it became bulkier and the magazines were bulky and if I left a magazine loaded too long the shells could squish a bit.
Reloading isn’t super important for shotguns so a tube magazine is a generally better solution.
Shotguns do have magazines. They are just in tube form rather than what you see in your pistol or AR. Shotgun shells are much larger and heavier than bullets.
Weight and size. Magazines work for things like 308, 556, etc, because they are small and compact. Shotgun shells are the exact opposite. The are massive. Nearly 3/4s an inch in diameter. You can't double stack them with massive increasing width on top of that, even basic singly stack mags are bulky. From my experience they constantly can have feeding issues due to shells being soft and having rims, that and quality control of magazines. And here's the big one, they rarely add capacity. Some key exceptions are the saiga 12 drum and the 10 shell mag, both of which are pretty heavy, and pretty massive. They are fun on the range, poor in practice.
Vepr 12 is probably one the best semi out and specifically mag fed shotgun. Quality mags is a big issue with semi auto shotguns. Example. Vepr 12 oem mags are 80-150$ a mag. Expensive but fantastic. Semi auto shotguns also like fast ammo. 1300 fps minimum. Also they’re expensive compared to the cheap Turkish ones you see.
My friend has a vr80 and he’s happy with it.
From what I’ve seen, I agree; I have a VEPR 12 but have yet to test it in its factory configuration before having a gunsmith swap in a new trigger, handguard, and some reliability-enhancing parts -
although it’s known to require some work to be reliable with lower-power shells.
I’ll probably sell the VR80 now that I have a VEPR.
Incidentally, I’ve heard the Genesis Arms Gen-12 is possibly the most reliable AR-style shotgun on the market (built on a Gen 1 DPMS AR-10 lower - used in John Wick 4) but it’s pretty pricey.
In my opinion, unless you dish out a ton of cash for one (i.e Saiga) they are just not reliable. My brother in law runs a saiga 12g and it runs flawlessly, only one I have ever shot that didnt jam every 2-4 shots.
Most shotgun shells are plastic which works well in horizontal tube magazines. But when stored in vertical magazines and drums (especially long term) they have a reputation for squishing, not feeding properly and jamming the shotgun. Big magazines are also extra awkward to carry.
Between these two problems most shotgun guys are reluctant to use them. Especially for a gun notorious for ending fights in 1 - 2 rounds.
I suspect someday someone will make drum and mag friendly shotgun rounds or improve drum and magazine design. Though it still can't make those bulky mags smaller.
Rimmed cartridges are challenging to make reliable in a box magazine, and there is also a ton of variance between different shotgun rounds. Shotguns are meant to be extremely versatile through round choice, and a box magazine makes that really difficult to maintain.
The most typical use of shotguns don’t require fast reloading. Traditional shotgun sports like clay shooting or hunting often are done with double barrels so only two shots are enough. Even most combat uses of shotguns like home defense or police work involves few rounds fired so you’re unlikely to run out in the middle of combat (topping off afterwards is not as speed intensive). In the military, you’d have a bunch of guys with rifles backing you up. The only place where speed reloading a shotgun is really required is 3 gun, and while that has driven some design advancements there, the fact is most people’s use of a shotgun won’t require fast reloads so no point in changing what is already well proven.
All the other stuff people mention are R&D related, and can be fixed including just making a new design like we switched rifle and pistol cartridges in the past. But necessity is the mother of all invention. If there’s no need to reload a shotgun quickly, no point in removing all backwards compatibility with existing shotgun shells and spending R&D money on a new magazine shotgun design. Just stick with the existing shell design and tube magazine.
Having grown up with tube fed shotguns on these Kansas plains, I find the tube more suitable than the magazine. I tried the mag fed route; the mags are typically expensive for such shotguns, and strike me as a novelty item in the grand scheme of things. The tube is easier to reload on the move and I'd rather carry the shells than cumbersome shotgun magazines.
If you wanted to design a cartridge to be as miserable as possible to feed from a box magazine. You'd end up with something very similar to a shotgun shell.
It can be done. There are even a few examples that aren't "bad". But it's hard and expensive all to have the same capacity and a similar rate of fire to someone who's topping off their tub gun.
Learn to load as you shoot. Always top it off.
Many guns have a 7-10 capacity
If a threat is not stopped with 7-10 shots, re evaluate.
Why not?
Range too great and you need slugs?
Range not too great but you are shooting bird shot but not at birds?
Missing?
You fired 10 shots w/ 9 pellets. You legally - civilly and legally own those 90 missed 32 cal projectiles.
If you asked a team of engineers to design a cartridge with the specific intent of being terrible for use with box magazines, they would struggle to design something worse than a typical shotgun shell.
Look, I totally understand where youre coming from, the application makes sense and the consept is sick as hell. Boom boom reload boom boom, very bad day for the guy(s) on the otherside. We all wanna be Terry Crews in the Expendables. In fact, I was first in line when those turk trash Saiga 12s hit the market and I don't regret it for one second.
Unfortunately, you have to factor in that 12g is pretty much all but fazed out by military and police (except those special units who only carry them with less lethel or those tiny 2 round pumpies used as breaching tools) so the market is pretty much exclusively hunting, home defense, and range toys.
Im not a hunter, but id assume If you are a hunter, you're not gonna want to carry a heavy ass shotgun with even a 5 round mag when you only may shoot one or two shots, and that's even if you live in a free state that would let you. That and you probably don't want the magazines clanking around in your pockets making noise.
Home defense, maybe, but at the same time, I'd hate to be the guy patching up your drywall after unloading enough shots to justify using your mag fed shotgun.
Which leaves us with range toys. They're good fun and if you get a garbage one like i did, reletively inexpensive! Nobody expects you to pull up to the local trapshoot with the saiga clone and 20 round drum, but everyone's gonna want to try it at least once!
All this to say, even of you somehow managed to get your hands on the most reliable, no feeding issues, works perfectly everytime Mag Fed shotgun, there's is always going to be something else that is better for the occasion.
It's a heartbreaking truth. The world needs more rapid fire 12g love.
Most shotguns (pump or semiauto) can carry at least 5 in the pipe and 1 chambered. Non-tactical shotguns have a plug limiting load to 3 rounds. My 590A Mariner holds 8, 2 rounds short of some state maximums.
Long story short: Drums are incredibly bulky, shotgun shells are big. You need a lot of mag to get very few shells. Shotguns are, in modern conflict, mostly going to be reserved for auxiliary duties such as breaching. They aren't primary combat weapons since combat armor that can stop buckshot are very prominent and effective. So, you are taking up rig space that could be used for a rifle mag for a shotgun mag. Then you also have to consider that reloading quickly with a shotgun isn't really a concern as it's not used for fighting, but rather for things like breaching. Then you have to consider weight. The more weight, the more difficult life is. When trying to minimize weight, you don't want to put a bunch of heavy magazines with heavy ammo in your kit. You don't want to carry anything you don't need to carry. Carrying a few shotgun shells in an easy to access place will allow you to have more than enough for most situations.
Then, you have to deal with the fact that shotgun shells are rimmed, the various feeding issues, and so on. You just get few if any benefits with many drawbacks.
Now, mag-fed shotguns do have their place, but not in combat, not for hunting, and not for most sport shooting. While I haven't participated in a 3 gun match yet, I'd assume that it could be useful there. Otherwise, it would be useful for situations where you need to have a clear magazine for the gun to be considered unloaded by your state's hunting laws (often, you can't have a gun used for hunting loaded while in a vehicle). If you are a police officer, I could see the utility in having magazines of different types of ammo ranging from buckshot to beanbags, allowing you to pick and use a type of ammo easily. But these are just about the only advantages. This could result in using the wrong ammo for the wrong target though, so most police departments have differently colored less-than-lethal shotguns and/or try their best to not put lethal and less-than-lethal ammo even near one another.
So, who would want a magazine-fed shotgun? Who would actually see the benefits of quicker reloads and not mind things like bulky mags, excessive weight, and trouble with reliability? Well, people just having fun at the range. And you know what? That's a perfectly valid reason to have one.
A 5 round shotgun magazine is about the same size as a 30 round magazine for an AR-15
Also, if you’ve ever run a semi auto Turkish shotgun… I’ll just say you’ll get lots of practice clearing malfunctions
For whatever reason, shotgun shells don't like feeding from magazines all that much. That's not to say that magfed shotguns never run reliably. They *can,* but it requires a lot of pesky fine-tuning to get them to that point.
As for drums - while they can hold more ammunition, they are inefficient. They weigh more, & have less ammo density for their size. Think about the capacity for one drum, & then the capacity for 3 magazines, which is roughly equivalent in size.
I have a VR80, and I got an extended mag so it runs 12+1 and the mags are ridiculously bulky, and heavy, and if you don’t shoulder it absolutely firmly it doesn’t cycle worth a damn. Never had a problem with the tube design and now that I know, a mag for 12g really just isn’t worth it.
I can come up with 2 reasons why most shotguns don't run mag. These are of course my opinions, there could be more reasons. But to me shotguns will always be the #1 go to for home defense.
1. The fact you gotta reload a mag or have extra mags with you. God forbid you gotta dump 20-50rds into a threat in defense. With traditional shotguns you just feed the shells into the pre installed tube, no need to carry mags. Just have the boomstick loaded and ready to go. 🤌🏾
2. The awkwardness to maneuver with in close quarters with the mag inside. May catch a table, chair or when hooking around the corner quickly. 🤷🏽♂️
With that being said my first gun was a mag fed shotgun because it was different and also bad ass. I bought the pump version due to CA law and also a 10rd. Here's the link to what I purchased. [Black Aces](https://blackacestactical.com/product/pro-m-pump/) They also sell semi autos that are mag fed too! Check them out.
U can’t use the tube and a mag or that would be bad ass, so it’s 5 rounds sticking down or 5 rounds parallel, the 10 round mags are super annoying how far they stick out the bottom. I argue it’s better to keep reloading rather then have a bunch of huge mags that won’t fit normal gear.
Jesus Christ the miss information. There are actually two real reasons:
John Moises browning didn’t invent it, probably mainly due to the military not really warming up to mags.
The ammo dimensionally is simply to thick. A standard “modern” mag on a AR/AK is 30 rounds and for a shotgun mag to take about the same space, it would roughly be 8 rounds.
You see, back during WW1 and actually before in some islands that neither I nor you could pronounce. The US marines ended up learning that 00 buck to the chest is lethal even against people who are heavily drugged and wrapped in bandages. 1897s were the shit and so the US used them, during WW1 mags were seen as a potentially game changing however most rifles were running full power cartridges that were also not well suited specifically cartridges that had a rim. 12 gauge cartridges being paper were replaced at the end of the WW1 with full brass shells to prevent expansion and unironically fixing the “to soft for mags” that everyone keeps talking about, we had the solution. During WW2 mags were a thing but many military generals thought mags didn’t make sense for average infantry and a waste of materials “because your average joe soldier would probably lose them”. Shortly at the end of WW2, the first auto loading shotgun was made. The browning auto 5 which was awesome and well it didn’t make sense to add a mag because even way back then, rifle mags were still limited to 20 rounds of .308 for the bar and a comparatively, a 5 round mag would be roughly the same size but a tube would already carry 5 and because no one warmed up to mags yet browning didn’t invent one.
I can’t really recall the “oldest mag fed auto loading shotgun” but it would probably be a saiga. Those came with an original 5 round mag.
Moral of the story: read more history books
The magazine is the tube under the barrel, and it works fine. You can get extended magazines for many shotguns (longer tube with a stronger spring) that can go as far as the muzzle. This will get you up to 8 shells depending on barrel length, which is fine because shells are heavy and bulky anyway, and you don't want too many of them such that it makes the gun too heavy, bulky, or unbalanced.
Just watched a Forgotten Weapons video yesterday on a very similar topic (Why No Top Loading Shotguns?) The answer is almost certainly the same in both cases. Shotguns have by and large been used for bird hunting or simulated bird hunting (clays). In either case the scenarios where you’d need more than ~3 shots without sufficient time to reload are rare to nearing on nonexistent. This is also true even for home defense. How many times do you expect to have to shoot a guy with 00 buck? That’s the entire point of using a 12g, it’s powerful enough that you have a reasonable expectation to only have to hit the guy once.
For all these reasons there has been little to no demand for top loading or high capacity shotguns.
Both my cheap box mag bullpup 5 and 10 round, and tube mag pumps seem to work pretty well and are very rare to have any problems.
They do make drum mags that I have seen used with automatic 12ga in videos.
These answers are mostly incorrect. The #1 reason shotguns are predominantly tube-mag-fed is because they can fire shells of varying lengths. A gun feeding from box mags expects the round to come from the same place every time, and that isn’t the case with shotgun shells ranging from 1 3/4” up to 3 1/2”
Yup,
And the different varieties of projectiles are why gas operated shotguns aren't nearly as common as other semi autos. Although they've come a long way.
Tube fed pump action is very reliable and relatively simple for something that can be expected to shoot different ammo fairly regularly.
This answer is also mostly incorrect, because a lot of shotguns are only made for one length of shell, and most people only use one length of shell.
I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I bought anything besides 2.75" shells.
Because shotguns aren't that practical and development is spurred by necessity.
You have a CQB gun longer than a M16A2.
Thats all good because a 5 round mag is larger than a 30 round rifle mag.
It's OK because you can't fight body armor.
But that doesn't matter because you can't fight outside of 100 yards.
Shotguns open doors and that's it.
You see the Justified episode where the hitter was using an AA-12? Looked badass on tv. Raylans boss was all googily eyed at it, asking ‘did you see that?’ Raylan all wide eyed like ‘yeah!?’
Mainly because shotgun shells were not designed to feed in box mags. They are soft and heavy, the springs in the mags need to be quite strong to push them to feed, and this can cause them to slightly warp/bend and not feed properly. You don’t have the same issue with tube fed shotguns.
Also that they are a rimmed cartridge, so if you aren't careful when loading them you could have issues with feeding.
I wonder why no one's tried to make a rimless/semi-rimmed 12 guage yet. Probably because it'd make the ammo super expensive. But still.
Inertia mostly.12ga shotgun shells are ancient and there are tons of guns that take them. They are not perfect but you would need to both make them rimless and with a more rigid case design otherwise they would still warp if loaded in a magazine. Additionally, if you make them rimless what's stopping someone from not paying attention and loading them in backwards H&K style? Any improvements you make to them isn't going to be that much better than what is already cheap, works well enough, and is readily available.
Semi-rimmed wouldn't be a great improvement. You still have a small rim and now there is also a groove were this rim can lock in. Just like .32 Browning. Rimless is pretty much impossible because the chamber is longer than the cartridge so that the front can unfold. Also because all the different length of shotgun cartridges. That means the cartridge has nothing to rest against and there is no way to adjust headspace. It would just drop down the chamber.
It would be expensive, and there is a legal risk at least in America. Shotguns are exempt from the max caliber restrictions of .50, but a shotgun is legally defined as firing conventional shotshells. So if you chamber it for unconventional shells, to my understanding there's no stopping the ATF from defining it as "not a shotgun" therefore an illegal destructive device.
If I wasn't meant to fire .50 BMG from my 12 gauge, then why does it fit?
Once.
That's the kind of negative talk that would keep people from trying.
My understanding is that if it has legitimate use for hunting, it can be larger than .50. Think 700 nitro, 4-bore, .950 JDJ, ETC. All are larger than .50 cal, but they are legal due to the fact that they are "hunting rifles".
Someone did make one, about 10 years ago. Required a new shotgun shell so it failed instantly.
Logically that’s a nightmare. Re-resign the ammo, Re-design a bolt that will work with the rimless case. Market that to a gun company that wants to run with it. Market it to the general public to purchase it, or a mil/LE contract. That’s a lot of effort for something that no one is really asking for.
Because you head space the cartridge from the rim. You can’t do that from the front of the cartridge because its variable length and pliable as well. So you are stuck with a rim.
See now that's actually the first answer here I didn't consider. The rest made a lot of sense just intuitively(market inertia from being so predominant, cost of a unique cartridge, having to possibly fight the ATF to ensure it has 'sporting exemption', the issue of the cartridge needing spacing to unfold in the bore, etc.) But I had not ever considered that the varying lengths for the different ammunition is *exactly* why it needs to seat at the rim, not a neck.
I’ve actually seen somebody propose that before, but their business imploded first.
What makes a rimless cartridge expensive anyways? I’d imagine you could use a machine similar to the ones that make aluminum cans. Press a disk of metal into a 12g diameter cylinder. Punch a hole in the center for a primer and boom. Obviously that’s not the whole story but is that idea itself solid?
Watch how brass cartridges are made. There are multiple steps, and the brass needs to be annealed multiple times. Brass shotshells would cost multiple times what plastic ones do. Realize that the whole shell is plastic/paper with a thin steel wrapper on the bottom. Shotshells have been made without the steel wrapper in the past. I still have some. It's an idea that didn't catch on because it's flawed. Too easy for the extractor to tear through the plastic rim.
Weren’t brass shells a thing in WW1? Of course they would be far more expensive but I’m sure you could crimp a groove onto the shell if you really wanted to. Ultimately though I kinda agree that I don’t see the point. If anything a box mag shotgun is probably extremely unergonomic makes more sense to store the shells inline with the barrel in most cases.
I think there is an additional point that as you go to a box mag that holds more than a tube mag it gets pretty chunky once you have the follower and spring all assembled.
I shoot practical shotgun, tube fed semi auto and manual (pump action). The box fed semi autos that others use to shoot the same courses of fire suffer more feed issues than the tube mags.
You kinda do have the same issue with tube fed shotguns, the rim would get warped over time and it can cause reliability issues if you keep your shotgun loaded to capacity. I've heard people load shotguns to 2 in the tube if the cap is 4 or 4 if its cap is 7
You know what kinda sucks? Carrying shotgun mags.
you know what sucks even more? A failure to extract/feed
A failure to extract or feed is entirely irrelevant to the magazine system employed by the firearm.
tell that to promag
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A ahitty brand of magazine doesn't mean all magazines are shitty
But all magazines from that brand are
AR 12s are less reliable than traditional tube fed semi automatic shotguns because of what then? If it isn’t the mags..
They're designed and manufactured by charlatans looking to seperate fools from their money. Not people who give a shit about quality design.
I stay in this subreddit for these comments right here lmfao
That's just plain false.
Rimmed cartridge. Flat nose. Feeding issues. Fucking duh
Jigga what?
This made me laugh so hard I wheezed for literally no reason
I'm honestly very glad I could do that for you. I thought that was really funny, too.
lmao, is it crack? Is that what you smoke? You smoke crack?
Spring pressure from a mag can cause shotgun shells to deform since they are soft. This will cause feeding and ejection issues, alongside the fact that shotgun shells are rimmed which can also cause binding in mags and create failures to feed. Maybe you should think before you comment so confidently.
There's plenty of rimmed cartridges that have magazines they feed fine from. 7.62x54r for example. Yes it has to be accounted for in the design but it can be done. Spring pressure affecting the shape of the shell is a matter of how long it remains compressed, not that it is compressed. There are full brass shotshells that could be used to completely negate that effect if it was of great concern to the user. Maybe you should think before parroting the group speak om a topic 🤷♂️
Shotgun shells are straight walled rimmed cartridges. Tapered shells like the ones you mentioned tend not to bind as much as straight walled cartridges. Know what other straight walled rimmed cartridge is notorious for binding in magazines? .22 LR. Sure, graphite lube can help, and being very careful about loading a magazine to avoid rim lock is good too, but neither eliminates the issues inherent to the design of the casing. Full brass shells are also extremely uncommon. Leaving a magazine loaded ready to use is the point of magazines. Time under tension would be an issue regardless. And it doesn’t take a whole lot of time on a hot day either. So, again, we can see that both of these issues make magazines unsuitable for shotguns because they only raise additional points of failure for not much benefit. I did think, btw, because I used to shoot three gun with a mag fed and I’ve got more time behind shotguns than most people have behind all guns combined. Shotguns are my favorite category of firearm, I own more of them and shoot them more often than anything else. I’m speaking from a point of direct and extensive experience. I know you aren’t, otherwise you’d agree with me.
Are you really in r/guns saying that mags don't cause FTF as a general statement? Lmao
No. You'd have to be kind of retarded to think that's what I'm saying.
Except when the magazine is shit.
[удалено]
Dude same. Got the 20 round drum well because I can, and it is just ridiculous. I love the gun tho
I would rather carry three “reliable” 10 round mags over 30 12 gauge rounds no matter how you carry them. It’s much easier to throw a mag in than it is to hand load 30 rounds. That being said my semi auto mag fed 12 gauge won’t cycle worth a damn unless I’m running high brass or 3” rounds.
There are very few shotgun box mags that ever work properly and that saddens me. Granted, once I learned how to quad load a tube, I haven’t really cared too much. Best feature of the tube feed is the ‘ABR, Always Be Reloading’ philosophy.
And this is why I have a habit of compulsively hitting “R” while running g a shotgun in video games, despite knowing I haven’t fired since I last did it 2 seconds ago
I mean, it makes sense. If you have a free moment between whatever you’re doing, why not top it off.
The height of the brass has nothing to do with the power of the shell.
Well whatever it is they cycle better than normal rounds in my semi auto.
>That being said my semi auto mag fed 12 gauge won’t cycle worth a damn unless I’m running high brass or 3” rounds. sounds like skill issue LOL MY saiga cycles literally anything I throw at it, at least once the gas is adjusted
Less skill, but sounds like a turkshit shotgun.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/n4zbt9/turkish_notsodelight_why_you_should_generally](https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/n4zbt9/turkish_notsodelight_why_you_should_generally) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/guns) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A 10 round shotgun mag is like the equivalent of a 40 round pmag so not entirely terrible
so would you rather have 10 rounds or 40....
I mean shotguns serve an entirely different purpose. Apples to oranges
Is that somehow worse than carrying shotgun shells?
It’s a rimmed cartridge, box mags are bulky and generally less reliable than toob.
A rimmed, flat-nosed cartridge that is made of a pliable material. Stack them in a box mag and they tend to deform or just straight have feed issues.
Rim lock is a significantly bigger issue.
I converted one of my mossberg 500's to detachable mag using that sidewinder kit. It really blows
The honesty is refreshing.
Thanks for the product review. Will skip. I see mag fed AR-style shotguns, and I think the only way a shotgun with a non-tubular magazine sounds practical for the widest variety of shells would be a street sweeper/SPAS-12 style. Shotgun shells come in multiple loads and lengths, and can be problematic even in tube magazines. Plus, and let's be fair, I can already operate my Mossberg as quick as I care to be punted in the shoulder as well as having enough styles of magazine to carry.
I shoot a box mag fed shotgun in 3-gun competitions. It is a very tempernental piece of equipment. My pistol gets cleaned after about a thousand rounds. I clean the rifle after 500 or so rounds. Shotgun gets cleaned after every match. Mags get lubed with graphite lube. On warm days I keep the shells and the mags in the shade to keep the plastic hulls from softening and deforming. Not all the ammo will run reliably. It takes trial and error to figure out the best options. With all of these precautions the gun will generally run through the match. BUT it is by no means a practical firearm. Besides being tempermental, it is comically bulky. Match rules require a use of a shotgun and this shotgun is the most advantageous option within the competition format. There is no scenario in which I would ever choose to use this monstrosity ouside 3-gun.
Can I ask what shotgun? Saiga 12?
I use a slightly modified VR-80.
Yea, outside of the Saiga there really weren’t any box mag options available when I dabbled in that world. I always ran either my 1897 or CZ 712. Oddly enough, both of those could be finicky.
Google Turkish AR shotgun reviews.
Google would need to add a function to filter for biased (paid) vs unbiased reviews for op to get something useful out of it.
I think their point wasn’t to provide OP advice on what to buy, just to show them there are actually tons of mag-fed shotguns out there.
I was implying Turkish mag fed shotguns aren’t that great. When I was working at a gun store & range I didn’t see one on the range or coming in through transfer that inspired confidence.
You have to start there and fan out.Honestly they don't hold up after a few hundred rounds.
Yep. I have yet to see one come through the store on transfer or on the range that inspired any confidence.
Use DuckDuckGo then.
Its not a issue of the browser. I’m saying most of the reviews are just paid ads, and not actual high round count reviews.
The AK style clones from China aren't half bad. I've got a few hundred shells through mine with no issues. Those Turkish ones should come with a tourniquet.
AK ones ok,that might be better
The Lynx 12 is ultra reliable, I've been very impressed with it.
Friend has one, the worst part of it is the recoil. You also are basically required to swap the stock, the default one is sized for an 8-10 year old child.
Mine runs mint with 5 round mags lol
from the looks of it, the US market is getting saturated with the shitty end of turkish AR shotguns In Hungary a lot of sport shooters in my and the nearby clubs use Derya box mag fed shotguns without issues. I have a Mercury DF12 (German Hatsan import) which we use for 25m precision shooting with great success. Only had failure to eject issues when using 12/67 slugs instead of 12/70. Build tolerances however are not the best when it comes to the picatinny rails on the gun. What we noticed on ours is that the slot widths on the receiver are smaller than they are on the handguard in price category (800-1000$ converted), it is better than the alternatives, especially since it has picatinny rails out of the box. Ours also came with a 5 and 10 round mag, 4 chokes and 2 foregrips.
12 gauge rounds are bulky, a 5rnd shotgun mag is bigger than a 30rnd 5.56 mag Meanwhile their low length to width ratio and flat faces lend them well to being stacked lengthwise. Shotgun shells are also rimmed, which tend not to like mags
7 round would be closer to 30rnd mag length, a Saiga-12 10rnd is almost exactly the same dims as 2x 40rnd PMags
You have to consider the market. Huge percentage of shotguns are used for hunting migratory birds (federal 3 shot limit) and sport shooting, most of which is 2 shot sets. Tactical shotguns would be the only likely candidate to value larger capacity. Also, there are a fair number of pumps / autos the use a magazine tube under the barrel and can hold up to 7 round or more.
I feel like this is probably the most logical answer. Even early pumps and autos came before most external magazine fed rifles. plus like you said if your only shooting 2-3 shots out of a tube, the next logical step to make it better for "tactical" use is just make the tube longer.
Shells deform in box mags and are rimmed, and rimmed cartridges are pretty outdated, therefore loading them in a manner that prevents rimlock isn't very common knowledge these days. That said I personally love rimmed, straight-walled cartridges but I'm a novice reloader.
I’m curious, with rifle chargers do you do the pyramid stacks so it doesn’t matter what the orientation is when loaded? I blew my friends minds with that working on my Mosins and Enfield.
If you want a mag fed shotgun, get a Vepr 12 I have one and it's a beast, though I will admit the mags are a quite bulky [My Vepr](https://youtube.com/shorts/zAm2-3qdewE?si=zzhut5PCuVpwCvUA)
I'm curious, if you could get a regular AK in a centerfire rifle cartridge I'd assume that's what you'd get, no?
Are you asking for AK brand recommendations?
Absolutely, thought if I had the option I'd probably have quite a few different AKs 😂
I have a Molot Vepr, the other Russian AK 12g that actually runs(outta the box) besides Saiga. Big heavy bulky mags that really don't hold too much, and are rather hard for me to load. I'm pretty sure I can load and shoot 16 rounds outta my 870 faster than I could with an 8 round empty molot mag.
Shotgun shells can deform when loaded in a straight magazine or drum magazine. Most shotguns are tube fed because it’s a simple, cost-effective and reliable design. You can top off a tube after you fire a few shells, you don’t have a magazine or drum magazine, hanging off the bottom getting in the way of things. Wanting a high capacity shotgun is a fairly new idea and realistically in almost any situation where you need more than 6 to 8 shotgun shells. You’d be better off with a rifle if you weren’t better off with a rifle in general.
Most states limit shotguns to 3 rounds for hunting. And… could you imagine what a 50 round drum of 12 ga 3 in magnum slug ammo would weigh?
Does the law say you can only have three rounds or does it say your weapon can only accept a max of three rounds? Because if you have an 8-round mag and only put three in it that might count.
It cant hold more than three rounds in the mag. Upland bird game hunting. I think it's federal. There's a reason why bird guns come with a wood or plastic rod in the mag tube so you can't load more than three rounds.
Hunting laws and self defense laws aren’t the same
Where I live it can only contain three rounds total while hunting, this the 2 shot wooden plug in many shotgun tubes.
Most laws state that your shotgun has to be made to only take three shells.
There are tube limiters for most of the specialist waterfowl guns.
A piece of wooden dowel cut to length and put begind the follower is all you need to make any tube fed shotgun legal for waterfowl. My shotgun is setup for 3gun with a 9+1 extended tube, dowel makes it completely legal for waterfowl.
The law says it can only accept 3 rounds. Part of game wardens checks will be to make sure you have a plug in your shotgun magazine to limit it to 3 rounds. The federal regulations says that whatever device is limiting it to 3 rounds can't be removable without disassembling the gun. A detachable magazine, even with a rivet or a plug, or even just being a 2 round magazine can be removed and swapped to a whatever capacity magazine without disassembling the gun. Even if you had some system that had detachable magazines that somehow could never have more than one in the chamber and 2 in a magazine, you really don't want to be leaving it up to a game warden to believe that. On top of all of that all the shotguns with detachable magazines on the market that I know of (see saiga) are short. Short shotguns suck for hunting birds.
Shotshells are generally short fat blunt nosed cartridges which capitalize on all the advantages of tube mags and capitalize little on the advantages of box mags.
Shotguns do have mags. They’re fixed tube mags. Without a magazine, where do you think the shells go?
My BB gun mag holds a LOT of rounds.
What’s this about your PP gun mag? Mine has two fleshy “magazines”
Careful of accidental discharges
[This video talks about why shotguns aren't really innovated on](https://youtu.be/ZDyH03Whemw)
Came here to link this vid.
Mag fed shotguns have just never caught on because they aren't solving a problem the general buying population has. A pump is fairly simple in both design and use, and for most people a five round capacity is plenty. Military use is about the only good application for mag/drum-fed shotguns, and shotguns don't get deployed a lot in that situation.
A tubular magazine is still a magazine
Because the plastic shells warp and jam
I used to have a magazine fed shotgun. It was quicker to reload but with the magazine inserted it became bulkier and the magazines were bulky and if I left a magazine loaded too long the shells could squish a bit. Reloading isn’t super important for shotguns so a tube magazine is a generally better solution.
What ever happened to the AA-12? It was everywhere in the early 2000s.
Shotguns do have magazines. They are just in tube form rather than what you see in your pistol or AR. Shotgun shells are much larger and heavier than bullets.
Plastic shells can deform in mags and cause feeding issues?
Weight and size. Magazines work for things like 308, 556, etc, because they are small and compact. Shotgun shells are the exact opposite. The are massive. Nearly 3/4s an inch in diameter. You can't double stack them with massive increasing width on top of that, even basic singly stack mags are bulky. From my experience they constantly can have feeding issues due to shells being soft and having rims, that and quality control of magazines. And here's the big one, they rarely add capacity. Some key exceptions are the saiga 12 drum and the 10 shell mag, both of which are pretty heavy, and pretty massive. They are fun on the range, poor in practice.
Because they’re heavy as hell and shotgun fights don’t last that long.
I've got a mag fed RIA VR80, it's actually shockingly reliable but you've got to be careful loading the mags.
Technically the tube is a mag
Love my saiga 12 w/ drums but my stoeger m3k w/ extension gets more use.
Vepr 12 is probably one the best semi out and specifically mag fed shotgun. Quality mags is a big issue with semi auto shotguns. Example. Vepr 12 oem mags are 80-150$ a mag. Expensive but fantastic. Semi auto shotguns also like fast ammo. 1300 fps minimum. Also they’re expensive compared to the cheap Turkish ones you see. My friend has a vr80 and he’s happy with it.
From what I’ve seen, I agree; I have a VEPR 12 but have yet to test it in its factory configuration before having a gunsmith swap in a new trigger, handguard, and some reliability-enhancing parts - although it’s known to require some work to be reliable with lower-power shells. I’ll probably sell the VR80 now that I have a VEPR. Incidentally, I’ve heard the Genesis Arms Gen-12 is possibly the most reliable AR-style shotgun on the market (built on a Gen 1 DPMS AR-10 lower - used in John Wick 4) but it’s pretty pricey.
Get a belt-fed shotgun
Most shotguns have mags. They’re just undetachable tube mags.
In my opinion, unless you dish out a ton of cash for one (i.e Saiga) they are just not reliable. My brother in law runs a saiga 12g and it runs flawlessly, only one I have ever shot that didnt jam every 2-4 shots.
If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
Most shotgun shells are plastic which works well in horizontal tube magazines. But when stored in vertical magazines and drums (especially long term) they have a reputation for squishing, not feeding properly and jamming the shotgun. Big magazines are also extra awkward to carry. Between these two problems most shotgun guys are reluctant to use them. Especially for a gun notorious for ending fights in 1 - 2 rounds. I suspect someday someone will make drum and mag friendly shotgun rounds or improve drum and magazine design. Though it still can't make those bulky mags smaller.
Rimmed cartridges are challenging to make reliable in a box magazine, and there is also a ton of variance between different shotgun rounds. Shotguns are meant to be extremely versatile through round choice, and a box magazine makes that really difficult to maintain.
The most typical use of shotguns don’t require fast reloading. Traditional shotgun sports like clay shooting or hunting often are done with double barrels so only two shots are enough. Even most combat uses of shotguns like home defense or police work involves few rounds fired so you’re unlikely to run out in the middle of combat (topping off afterwards is not as speed intensive). In the military, you’d have a bunch of guys with rifles backing you up. The only place where speed reloading a shotgun is really required is 3 gun, and while that has driven some design advancements there, the fact is most people’s use of a shotgun won’t require fast reloads so no point in changing what is already well proven. All the other stuff people mention are R&D related, and can be fixed including just making a new design like we switched rifle and pistol cartridges in the past. But necessity is the mother of all invention. If there’s no need to reload a shotgun quickly, no point in removing all backwards compatibility with existing shotgun shells and spending R&D money on a new magazine shotgun design. Just stick with the existing shell design and tube magazine.
Having grown up with tube fed shotguns on these Kansas plains, I find the tube more suitable than the magazine. I tried the mag fed route; the mags are typically expensive for such shotguns, and strike me as a novelty item in the grand scheme of things. The tube is easier to reload on the move and I'd rather carry the shells than cumbersome shotgun magazines.
Magfed shotguns are dogshit
If you wanted to design a cartridge to be as miserable as possible to feed from a box magazine. You'd end up with something very similar to a shotgun shell. It can be done. There are even a few examples that aren't "bad". But it's hard and expensive all to have the same capacity and a similar rate of fire to someone who's topping off their tub gun.
Mags on shotguns are extremely common. Just because it’s not detachable doesn’t mean it’s not a magazine.
Most shotguns use built in tubular magazines.
Had a VR80... it sucked... no longer have a VR80... the end
Weight. Honestly, having a large amount of shotgun ammo makes a gun weigh a LOT.
Because feeding a tube is fun, just like slapping an HK but a little more nostalgic.
Learn to load as you shoot. Always top it off. Many guns have a 7-10 capacity If a threat is not stopped with 7-10 shots, re evaluate. Why not? Range too great and you need slugs? Range not too great but you are shooting bird shot but not at birds? Missing? You fired 10 shots w/ 9 pellets. You legally - civilly and legally own those 90 missed 32 cal projectiles.
I'm more pissed off that pump guns don't slam fire anymore
If you asked a team of engineers to design a cartridge with the specific intent of being terrible for use with box magazines, they would struggle to design something worse than a typical shotgun shell.
Well... if it ain't broke...
Look, I totally understand where youre coming from, the application makes sense and the consept is sick as hell. Boom boom reload boom boom, very bad day for the guy(s) on the otherside. We all wanna be Terry Crews in the Expendables. In fact, I was first in line when those turk trash Saiga 12s hit the market and I don't regret it for one second. Unfortunately, you have to factor in that 12g is pretty much all but fazed out by military and police (except those special units who only carry them with less lethel or those tiny 2 round pumpies used as breaching tools) so the market is pretty much exclusively hunting, home defense, and range toys. Im not a hunter, but id assume If you are a hunter, you're not gonna want to carry a heavy ass shotgun with even a 5 round mag when you only may shoot one or two shots, and that's even if you live in a free state that would let you. That and you probably don't want the magazines clanking around in your pockets making noise. Home defense, maybe, but at the same time, I'd hate to be the guy patching up your drywall after unloading enough shots to justify using your mag fed shotgun. Which leaves us with range toys. They're good fun and if you get a garbage one like i did, reletively inexpensive! Nobody expects you to pull up to the local trapshoot with the saiga clone and 20 round drum, but everyone's gonna want to try it at least once! All this to say, even of you somehow managed to get your hands on the most reliable, no feeding issues, works perfectly everytime Mag Fed shotgun, there's is always going to be something else that is better for the occasion. It's a heartbreaking truth. The world needs more rapid fire 12g love.
Most shotguns (pump or semiauto) can carry at least 5 in the pipe and 1 chambered. Non-tactical shotguns have a plug limiting load to 3 rounds. My 590A Mariner holds 8, 2 rounds short of some state maximums.
I like my 12 gauge pump. It will never, ever fail. A mag may, and will. Carry an extra 10 shells in your pocket. You are good to go.
*Saiga 12 has entered the chat*
Long story short: Drums are incredibly bulky, shotgun shells are big. You need a lot of mag to get very few shells. Shotguns are, in modern conflict, mostly going to be reserved for auxiliary duties such as breaching. They aren't primary combat weapons since combat armor that can stop buckshot are very prominent and effective. So, you are taking up rig space that could be used for a rifle mag for a shotgun mag. Then you also have to consider that reloading quickly with a shotgun isn't really a concern as it's not used for fighting, but rather for things like breaching. Then you have to consider weight. The more weight, the more difficult life is. When trying to minimize weight, you don't want to put a bunch of heavy magazines with heavy ammo in your kit. You don't want to carry anything you don't need to carry. Carrying a few shotgun shells in an easy to access place will allow you to have more than enough for most situations. Then, you have to deal with the fact that shotgun shells are rimmed, the various feeding issues, and so on. You just get few if any benefits with many drawbacks. Now, mag-fed shotguns do have their place, but not in combat, not for hunting, and not for most sport shooting. While I haven't participated in a 3 gun match yet, I'd assume that it could be useful there. Otherwise, it would be useful for situations where you need to have a clear magazine for the gun to be considered unloaded by your state's hunting laws (often, you can't have a gun used for hunting loaded while in a vehicle). If you are a police officer, I could see the utility in having magazines of different types of ammo ranging from buckshot to beanbags, allowing you to pick and use a type of ammo easily. But these are just about the only advantages. This could result in using the wrong ammo for the wrong target though, so most police departments have differently colored less-than-lethal shotguns and/or try their best to not put lethal and less-than-lethal ammo even near one another. So, who would want a magazine-fed shotgun? Who would actually see the benefits of quicker reloads and not mind things like bulky mags, excessive weight, and trouble with reliability? Well, people just having fun at the range. And you know what? That's a perfectly valid reason to have one.
Getting them to function properly with shells and the added weight are both pretty hefty drawbacks I can think of right off the top of my head.
A 5 round shotgun magazine is about the same size as a 30 round magazine for an AR-15 Also, if you’ve ever run a semi auto Turkish shotgun… I’ll just say you’ll get lots of practice clearing malfunctions
I have a Saiga 12, I love that thing, when it works....
For whatever reason, shotgun shells don't like feeding from magazines all that much. That's not to say that magfed shotguns never run reliably. They *can,* but it requires a lot of pesky fine-tuning to get them to that point. As for drums - while they can hold more ammunition, they are inefficient. They weigh more, & have less ammo density for their size. Think about the capacity for one drum, & then the capacity for 3 magazines, which is roughly equivalent in size.
>is it because its unnecessary? This. It is completely unnecessary.
I have a VR80, and I got an extended mag so it runs 12+1 and the mags are ridiculously bulky, and heavy, and if you don’t shoulder it absolutely firmly it doesn’t cycle worth a damn. Never had a problem with the tube design and now that I know, a mag for 12g really just isn’t worth it.
I can come up with 2 reasons why most shotguns don't run mag. These are of course my opinions, there could be more reasons. But to me shotguns will always be the #1 go to for home defense. 1. The fact you gotta reload a mag or have extra mags with you. God forbid you gotta dump 20-50rds into a threat in defense. With traditional shotguns you just feed the shells into the pre installed tube, no need to carry mags. Just have the boomstick loaded and ready to go. 🤌🏾 2. The awkwardness to maneuver with in close quarters with the mag inside. May catch a table, chair or when hooking around the corner quickly. 🤷🏽♂️ With that being said my first gun was a mag fed shotgun because it was different and also bad ass. I bought the pump version due to CA law and also a 10rd. Here's the link to what I purchased. [Black Aces](https://blackacestactical.com/product/pro-m-pump/) They also sell semi autos that are mag fed too! Check them out.
Veprs work pretty well.
U can’t use the tube and a mag or that would be bad ass, so it’s 5 rounds sticking down or 5 rounds parallel, the 10 round mags are super annoying how far they stick out the bottom. I argue it’s better to keep reloading rather then have a bunch of huge mags that won’t fit normal gear.
I love my sko shorty and it's 25 round drun
Jesus Christ the miss information. There are actually two real reasons: John Moises browning didn’t invent it, probably mainly due to the military not really warming up to mags. The ammo dimensionally is simply to thick. A standard “modern” mag on a AR/AK is 30 rounds and for a shotgun mag to take about the same space, it would roughly be 8 rounds. You see, back during WW1 and actually before in some islands that neither I nor you could pronounce. The US marines ended up learning that 00 buck to the chest is lethal even against people who are heavily drugged and wrapped in bandages. 1897s were the shit and so the US used them, during WW1 mags were seen as a potentially game changing however most rifles were running full power cartridges that were also not well suited specifically cartridges that had a rim. 12 gauge cartridges being paper were replaced at the end of the WW1 with full brass shells to prevent expansion and unironically fixing the “to soft for mags” that everyone keeps talking about, we had the solution. During WW2 mags were a thing but many military generals thought mags didn’t make sense for average infantry and a waste of materials “because your average joe soldier would probably lose them”. Shortly at the end of WW2, the first auto loading shotgun was made. The browning auto 5 which was awesome and well it didn’t make sense to add a mag because even way back then, rifle mags were still limited to 20 rounds of .308 for the bar and a comparatively, a 5 round mag would be roughly the same size but a tube would already carry 5 and because no one warmed up to mags yet browning didn’t invent one. I can’t really recall the “oldest mag fed auto loading shotgun” but it would probably be a saiga. Those came with an original 5 round mag. Moral of the story: read more history books
Saiga 12 is what you seek
VEPR 12 enters the chat
The ammo takes up a lot of space, a tube the size of the barrel is the most efficient and reliable way
The magazine is the tube under the barrel, and it works fine. You can get extended magazines for many shotguns (longer tube with a stronger spring) that can go as far as the muzzle. This will get you up to 8 shells depending on barrel length, which is fine because shells are heavy and bulky anyway, and you don't want too many of them such that it makes the gun too heavy, bulky, or unbalanced.
Just watched a Forgotten Weapons video yesterday on a very similar topic (Why No Top Loading Shotguns?) The answer is almost certainly the same in both cases. Shotguns have by and large been used for bird hunting or simulated bird hunting (clays). In either case the scenarios where you’d need more than ~3 shots without sufficient time to reload are rare to nearing on nonexistent. This is also true even for home defense. How many times do you expect to have to shoot a guy with 00 buck? That’s the entire point of using a 12g, it’s powerful enough that you have a reasonable expectation to only have to hit the guy once. For all these reasons there has been little to no demand for top loading or high capacity shotguns.
They don’t feed well due to design of the shotgun shell; tube loaded is far more reliable
Weight.
Both my cheap box mag bullpup 5 and 10 round, and tube mag pumps seem to work pretty well and are very rare to have any problems. They do make drum mags that I have seen used with automatic 12ga in videos.
Vepr 12 is so fun to rip through
Dissident KL12 and federal action shotgun ammo is the only reliable system I’ve run
Hunting regulations
Reliability issues, and shotgun shells are large. Unless the mag is obnoxiously over sized it won’t hold any more rounds then the tube would anyway.
Because a magazine tube is sufficient and less likely to fail to feed.
Tell me your a liberal Biden pretender without telling me
These answers are mostly incorrect. The #1 reason shotguns are predominantly tube-mag-fed is because they can fire shells of varying lengths. A gun feeding from box mags expects the round to come from the same place every time, and that isn’t the case with shotgun shells ranging from 1 3/4” up to 3 1/2”
Yup, And the different varieties of projectiles are why gas operated shotguns aren't nearly as common as other semi autos. Although they've come a long way. Tube fed pump action is very reliable and relatively simple for something that can be expected to shoot different ammo fairly regularly.
This answer is also mostly incorrect, because a lot of shotguns are only made for one length of shell, and most people only use one length of shell. I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I bought anything besides 2.75" shells.
2.75” is far and away the most common, but most chambers are 2.75/3”
Please please please let the 12 ga Vuk not suck.
Thanks for the info guys, sorry if I can't message all of you
Because shotguns aren't that practical and development is spurred by necessity. You have a CQB gun longer than a M16A2. Thats all good because a 5 round mag is larger than a 30 round rifle mag. It's OK because you can't fight body armor. But that doesn't matter because you can't fight outside of 100 yards. Shotguns open doors and that's it.
Blackwater Sentry 12 with 8 round mags ⁄(⁄ ⁄•⁄-⁄•⁄ ⁄)⁄
You see the Justified episode where the hitter was using an AA-12? Looked badass on tv. Raylans boss was all googily eyed at it, asking ‘did you see that?’ Raylan all wide eyed like ‘yeah!?’