Shooting Semi-Automatic Shotguns

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Of course a semiautomatic shotgun can be more complicated than a pump. One thing you want to be sure of is that the rounds you're choosing to use, for example, well definitely cycle your semiautomatic shotgun. Which requires more force than the manual action of a pump. So if you're using lighter loads, let's say number nine birdshot in your home, because you don't want to go through the drywall, out of one room into another, you want to make sure that that's gonna cycle in your semiautomatic gun.

In this situation we've decided to keep our ammunition separate from the shotgun, so I've gone ahead and put my slug rounds already down in my pocket. And now I'm going to start the loading procedure. One thing that's very important to remember with a loading procedure, with a shotgun, is you want the round in the chamber and the gun ready to fire as often as we can, and all the time, really. So we're going to immediately take a round, drop it in there. We're going to hit that button make sure that that goes forward chambers.

Now the shotgun's ready to use. I can complete my loading cycle, or if I needed to shoot in the middle of it, simply forget these rounds and take that shot. Alright, if I drop a round or two, it really doesn't matter. What was important was that I was taking the shot I needed to take. And then of course I can complete that loading cycle.

This time we're going to take a look at another option for loading a specialty round into the firearm. What we're going to do is find that slug. Of course, what's nice about this situation is my strong hand is ready to fire. So if I needed to shoot, even though I wanted to use a slug, I wanted to use this specialty round, I could take that shot if I needed to. On the other hand, I could load the specialty round into the magazine tube, hit this lever right here which allows me to now open that action, manually pull it back, let go, that chambers that next round there.

And that's that slug around that I want to use. And it puts me back into a situation that I wanted to be in, controlling the round. So remember when you're using a semiautomatic or pump shotgun you have two ways to get that specialty round into the chamber. One is to open the shotgun first, which exposes you to a period of time when you can't shoot and put a round in the chamber. The other is to load the magazine tube.

What's very important to remember, is if you have a full magazine tube in your shotgun, you cannot use the second method. One option you'll have in that case is to eject a round out of the magazine tube by pressing this button, pulling back, allowing that to lock back. At this point, I can go back down to my pocket and retrieve that specialty round I wanted to use, insert into the magazine well, and of course if I need that to be the chambered round, I go through the process again. And now I'm ready to go with that specialty round. Check out more videos, just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.