The standard magazine tube on a pump shotgun is shoter than an 18" barrel. One could have a short barreled shotgun and still have the full capacity of a standard Remmie 870, Mossberg 500, etc.
I don’t think any of us really addressed the OP question though. Short barrel shotguns were tightly regulated by the national firearms act in 1934 along with machine guns, sound suppressors and some other categories of weapons. It was the height of the depression and various gangsters were in the public eye. A big reason the NFA came about was the populartity of the Thompson submachinegun. Sales were so poor in the twenties with no war contracts so Auto Ordinance marketed the infamous “Kansas City typewriter” directly to the general public. Before the NFA one could buy a Tommy gun in a hardware store in any state that didn’t have tight gun control.
As with many laws a simple concept such as regulating machine guns turns into an extremely complex law. Seeminly arbitrary decisions were made such as an 18" shotgun barrel being okay but a 17-3/4" barrel being “bad.” The merits of of those arbitrary lengths are another matter and I’m sure you could have a terrific GD discussion about amateur gunsmith Terry Weaver.
LOL, Padeye, yer killin’ me over here. But I thought Terry Weaver’s problems started when he wouldn’t sell an altered shotgun to someone that the feds wanted him to. Of course, I have run out of Gingko Biloba, so maybe I am disremembering the incident.
As for the OP - Yes, one may make a “sawed-off shotgun” by applying a hacksaw to any shotgun; no, this does not make the shorter shotgun “more dangerous”; short-barreled shotguns are not illegal as long as the proper paperwork is in place and local ordinances are not violated. You have revealed yourself to be a rational citizen with a reasonable curiosity about firearms. I think this is a refreshing change from the alarmist lamentations I frequently see on both sides of the RKBA issue. I applaude you in your effort to more clearly understand the niceties of firearm nomenclature.
Ok, the following is from the paper, Shotgun Barrel Shortening Effects on Pattern, Wad Deformation, Pellet velocity, and Penetration, by Lucien Haag and Eugene Wolberg. My copy is from a presentation at the International Wound Ballistics Association Conference of March 1994. I don’t know if they have since published.
The paper examined, among other things, the pattern effects from progressively shorter shotgun barrels. Some of the data, taken at a range of 15 feet, is as follows:
Barrel…Pattern Diameter (inches) for different Shot Sizes
Length (in)…00B…#4B…Remington #6
22.5…3.0…4.25-4.75…8.25-9.25
17.5…3.5…4.5…8.0-9.25
12.5…6.5…6.0-6.5…7.0-7.75
7.5…8.75-9.0…10-11…8.5-10.0
4.5*…11x17…14x23…14x19
*patterns produced were irregularly shaped.
The velocities also decreased significantly, from about 1250-fps for the 22.5 inch barrel, to around 800 fps for the 4.5-inch barrel. The #6 shot saw the greatest velocity decrease.
Ok, the following is from the paper, Shotgun Barrel Shortening Effects on Pattern, Wad Deformation, Pellet velocity, and Penetration, by Lucien Haag and Eugene Wolberg. My copy is from a presentation at the International Wound Ballistics Association Conference of March 1994. I don’t know if they published since then.
The paper examined, among other things, the pattern effects from progressively shorter shotgun barrels. Some of the data, taken at a range of 15 feet, is as follows:
Barrel…Pattern Diameter (inches) for different Shot Sizes
Length (in)…00B…#4B…Remington #6
22.5…3.0…4.25-4.75…8.25-9.25
17.5…3.5…4.5…8.0-9.25
12.5…6.5…6.0-6.5…7.0-7.75
7.5…8.75-9.0…10-11…8.5-10.0
4.5*…11x17…14x23…14x19
*patterns produced were irregularly shaped.
The velocities also decreased significantly, from about 1250-fps for the 22.5 inch barrel, to around 800 fps for the 4.5-inch barrel. The #6 shot saw the greatest velocity decrease.
Heck, if you want a trip down Surreality Road, I could describe what I was doing last Friday. My military reserve unit was going out on a field exercise and someone decided it would be “tactical” (i.e. webbing, helmets, cam-paint and rifles, which is unusual for us since we’re a communications unit and what we do mostly is set up radios and talk to each other).
Anyhoo, on Friday night we had to pull the rifles from our secure “vault” and haul them up to our truck. Naturally, someone had to stay with the truck at all times and at one point I was standing there alone with 40 or so C7 assault weapons (essentially identical to the American M16) and a civilian police car stopped at a nearby intersection. I didn’t have any magazines or rounds or even bolt carriers (the internal mechanism of the rifle) but it occured to me to wonder what would happen if I picked up a rifle and walked purposefully (in full combat uniform, naturally) toward the police cruiser, and how close I could get before they noticed…
But then the light changed and the moment was lost.
