Chinese company Hawk Industries produces a line of semi-automatic shotguns for hunting and security / police purposes, which persumably are based on US-made Remington 1100 semi-automatic shotguns (although this information is not yet confirmed). Civilian semi-automatic models of Hawk line-up with tubular magazines are sold outside of mainland China under variety of names, often exported through the NORINCO corporation. It apears that versions of the same shotgun, but adapted for a proprietary detachable box magazines are intended mostly to government export sales, as those were demonstrated on several international Military and Police / Security exhibitions. A more compact bullpup version is also produced, and was displayed on several Military and police exhibitions. Read the rest of this entry »

The basic idea of the bullpup stock for the semi-automatic shotgun vas devised by the US police sergeant Alfred Crouch circa 1957. He developed a “device for firing the shotgun single handed” around a Remington 11-48 autoloading shotgun, and began to offer it to various shotgun manufacturers. His ‘device’ was built from the shotgun, stripped from its stock, and a hand-made aluminum bull-pup type stock with the pistol grip and a rotating buttplate, attached to the rear part of the shotgun receiver. The trigger was linked to the sear by the long sliding bar. He finally sold his design to the US company High Standard circa 1965, which redesigned the Crouch stock, replacing the single aluminum stock with the plastic shell, assembled from three parts, with integral carrying handle at the top. The carrying handle served as a sighting rib and as a mounting for the built-in flashlight. The heart of the system was the gas operated, self-loading High Standard Flite King shotgun, stripped from its conventional stock and enclosed in the patented plastic bullpup shell. The first production shotguns of this design, designated as HS model 10A, appeared circa 1967. In the 1970 the High Standard improved the basic design. The integral carrying handle was replaced with the folding one, the separate front and rear sights were added, the cocking handle was doubled on the left side of the gun, the flash-light mount was made detachable. This model was designated as the HS model 10B shotgun. Both models were originally sold only to the law enforcement agencies and other such users, but latter found its way to the civilian market as a police surplus and trade-ins. While being very promising in theory, the HS 10 shotguns were known for inadequate (if not marginal) reliability, especially with the non-magnum loads. The relatively low magazine capacity of only 4 rounds also was a minus. Initially HS 10 shotguns found some popularity among the US police departments, but latter were quickly retired from active duty. Read the rest of this entry »

Chinese company Hawk Industries produces a line of pump-action shotguns for hunting and security / police purposes, which are based on US-made Remington 870 shotguns. Civilian and certain security-type models of Hawk line-up with tubular magazines are sold outside of mainland China under variety of names, often exported through the NORINCO corporation. It apears that versions of the same shotgun, but adapted for a proprietary detachable box magazines are intended mostly to government export sales, as those were demonstrated on several international Military and Police / Security exhibitions. The version of the tube-fed pump action shotgun appears to be adopted by the Chinese police (PAP) as the ‘18.4mm Type 97-1 Anti-riot gun’ (the 18.4mm is the metric designation of 12 gauge).

Hawk pump-action shotguns are available in three basic configurations: standard configuration with fixed tubular magazine below the barrel, standard configuration with detachable box magazine, and bullpup configuration with detachable box magazine. The last modification is notorious for the fact that it has a massive horizontal forward grip, which is used to cycle the pump action but also contains an integral flash-light at the front. Box magazine fed versions employ proprietary single stack magazines made from steel. Police guns of standard layout (including Type 97-1 guns) feature rifle-type sights with blade front and tangent-type rear blades; bullpup shotgun features fixed sights built into the integral carrying handle. Read the rest of this entry »

The Benelli M1 semi-automatic shotgun based on the proprietary Benelli system, which utilizes the gun recoil and inertia of the moving parts to operate the action. This system was developed by Benelli by the mid-1980s, and is simple and reliable in operation. System utilizes the rotating bolt head with two locking lugs that lock into the barrel extension. The bolt is mounted inside the massive bolt body (bolt carrier), and fixed to it by the locking pin, which allows the bolt head to move slightly forward and back and rotate simultaneously within the bolt body. The massive inertia spring is interposed between the bold body and head, and separate recoil spring is located in the buttstock, pressing the bolt body forward via the link at its rear. When bolt is in the battery, the locking lugs of the bolt head are engaged with the barrel and locked it. Inertia spring, pressing on the both bolt body and head, holds the head in the forward position relative to the body. When gun is fired, it recoils and moves back slightly against shoulder of the shooter. Due to the inertia of the bolt body, it resists the initial recoil movement, so the bolt head, locked rigidly with the barrel and the rest of the gun, moves back relative to the bolt body, compressing the inertia spring and rotating itself to unlock due to the head locking pin being encaged in the cam slot in the bolt body. Read the rest of this entry »

John Moses Browning, the legendary American gun designer, invented the first practical self-loading shotgun in 1898. In fact, Browning designed and patented three different systems, but finally choose the last one to go ahead. It must be noted, that at the time the autoloading shotgun was something of absolute novelty, and the task of designing such gun was severely complicated by the fact that the switch over from black powder to smokeless ammunition was well under way, and general quality of shotgun ammunition was rather uneven, to say the least. Nevertheless, Browning managed to make hist prototype model work, and work well. He first offered this shotgun to Winchester, which was the sole buyer for his designs from 1886 on. However, severe technical conservatism on the part of the Winchester’s boss, T.G.Bennett, and financial disagreements (Browning insisted on royalty-based payments, but Winchester at the time always bought new designs for fixed amount of money) resulted in break between the designer and the company. Browning then turned to Remington, but tragic death of the Remington’s president from hear attack just minutes before scheduled meeting with Browning put an end to this route as well. Browning then turned to the Belgian company Fabrique Nationale (FN), which at this time (1901) produced first Browning-designed selfloading pistol (M1900) as fast as it could be made. FN management greeted Browning and his new gun with great enthusiasm, and in a short while FN produced the first FN Browning autoloading shotgun, known as Browning Auto 5, or A-5 in short. Browning himself ordered 10,000 A-5 shotguns from the first batch for sales and distribution in USA, and sold all 10 thousands in about a year. Following the introduction of the new, increased custom tariffs by US government, Browning found that it was economically not reasonable to import more A-5 guns into USA, so he pursued FN to release rights to make and sell Browning autoloading shotgun on US market to Remington Arms Co (FN originally had worldwide rights for manufacture of Auto 5). Read the rest of this entry »

American gun designer Maxwell Atchisson developed his first selective fire shotgun by 1972. This weapon was intended for close combat in environments like city streets or jungles. It was to provide tremendous short range firepower for troops during ambushes, room clearance operations and other such combat situations. First prototypes were rather simple in design and used certain components of existing weapons. These were also highly unusual in that Atchisson used most unusual (for shotgun) method of operation – simple blowback with advanced primer ignition. This shotgun fired from open bolt, and had rather heavy (1,4kg) bolt. Firing pin was movably built into bolt along with the internal pivot lever that caused the firing pin to extend and ignite the cartridge just prior to full bolt closure. To reduce peak recoil and cyclic rate of fire, Atchisson used extra-long recoil system, in which bolt after each shot recoils much further back than it is usually required to reload the weapon. Read the rest of this entry »

The “Bekas” (Snipe) pump-action shotgun was brought to the Russian hunting / home defense weapons market in 1997, chambered for once popular 16 gauge (70mm / 2 3/4″) shells. The popularity of the 16 gauge, for various but mostly unknown reasons, dropped significantly since Soviet times, so the gun was eventually redesigned to handle 12 gauge (70 mm / 2 3/4″) shells, and this version was designated “Bekas M”. It must be noted, however, that modified “Bekas” shotguns are still manufactured in both gages – 12 and 16, all being made to similar configurations. These shotguns are somewhat popular among Russian hunters and people who buy guns for home defense (it is legal in Russia), because of good handling and inexpensive price. These guns certainly lack the lackluster of European or American-made shotguns, and do not carry modern ‘tactical’ features such as polymer stocks, Picatinny rails etc, but they still can get the job done, be that bringing the meat to the table or protecting the one’s home from criminals. Read the rest of this entry »