★ My New Shotgun with Survival Kit

How awesome that 4 days after purchasing my new gun, the item is featured on Uncrate. I rarely buy things that then get featured on the coolest “stuff blog” on the Internet. However, my new Mossberg was featured and that’s pretty exciting.

The Mossberg 500 Shotgun is nothing new in the world of firearms. Their tactical shotgun with pistol grip is common place in police cars around the United States. You may have even seen a few of these stuck under beds or in closets in homes as a self defense measure. Tactical shotguns are defined in a few different ways but, for the most part, tactical is just a shorter barrel which allows the spray of a shotgun to become a wider path in a shorter range. Where a longer barrel is ideal for hunting pheasant a 50 yards away, the shorter barrel is for shooting the intruder 20 feet away as he busts through your front door. However, the shorter barrel has other uses since a lot of home defenders don’t use shot that comes in the form of dozens of little pellets but instead slugs which are 2-3 larger balls that take up the entire shotgun shell. Personally, my home defense ammunition for my shotguns is a shell that contains one large slug and 3 small pieces of shot backed by a large amount of powder. The result is pretty deadly. So, since the shorter barrel isn’t everything when it comes to defending your home, what else makes this tactical? Well, the shorter barrel means that moving through your home, clearing rooms and generally using the gun for defense is far easier with a shorter barrel. More control, less emphasis on aiming and easier to utilize in a small close quarters situation.

This kit came with my shotgun and the box is a water proof sealabe case and there are a few other goodies. The concept is that you can bury this thing in the ground or submerge it in the river behind my house and I can retrieve it any time so, let’s imagine the zombie apocalypse happened, I still have a gun in my yard that I can grab. The case that comes with the gun is novelty but came with the gun for free. The only difference in the actual shotgun from this pictured above is that my Mossberg 500 has a heat difuser that runs along the barrel. It’s a nice feature but not really a big deal in practice. You don’t “aim” a pistol grip shotgun either in the traditional sense. There is a little iron sight at the end of the barrel but the grip makes aiming a bit difficult. Shooters have to keep this at their hip for the grip and recoil to be comfortable and usable and thus you have to practice hipfiring which is how I almost always shoot my handguns.

Anyway, I got a great deal on this brand new. The entire kit was $300 and another $50 was spent adding more ammo to my home arsenal.

(via Uncrate)