A request from a K9 officer
 

At the request of a sherrif's k9 officer i was asked to modify a 870 special purpose 12 ga. shotgun, by cutting down the stock an barrel for easier handeling, thought some might like to see the outcome.

This is the handler and the depts k9 Hortz. An outstanding young officer and a fine police k9.

Please make sure that the gun's overall length and barrel length are within ATF specs. Law enforcement are not extempt from ATF regs.

this one is, actualy those that are issued to depts and stamped as their property can have shorter barrels overall, he want4ed this one with a longer barrel as the one that is a 12" barrel has alot of muzzel blast. and i fully agree.

this one has a 18" barrel and 34" overall , but the dept has some with 12" and 14" barrels that are entry shotguns . they each have their own identification plates on them plus the serial numbers , the same goes for the fully automatic weapons that the dept owns.

the next time i clean or do work on one of the short barreled entry shotguns i will takea picture of the id plates. It shows they are registered to that dept and for their use only, Hortz is 110lbs ,three years old ,loves to play, but can take care of bussiness when he needs to.

I am pretty sure that the Over All Length (OAL) is only required to be greater than 26.5"... so you should be good with the specs you quoted.

I don't know about working on the shorter barreled guns... They would be Class III items, and unless you are a Class III dealer or Class II SOT manufacturer, I don't think they can leave them with you... I think they would have to stay with you while the work is being done to be legal.... Be careful Padre...

This normaly would be true , but i still havea commission and i am post certified. Those rules do apply to a gunsmith or gunshop not a certified police armor or commissinoned police officer.

Agree with Alanint: Check ATF regs, and your state regs. CAREFULLY! Cutting a quarter inch too much off is what started 'Ruby Ridge'

FN

I only mentioned this because from your first post I assumed it was a personal request from the officer, not a department issued gun.

As you mentioned, departments may own registered NFA stuff, which is transfered and registered to the department. These department issue guns do not have to have any special property plates or markings. They simply have to have come into the department's possesion through the NFA registry and be duly logged into department property books.
My concern arises from previous cases I am aware of, where individual officers believed they could create and keep their own NFA weapons, simply because they were sworn officers and the weapons would be used "on the job". Sadly, more than one officer attempting this received a rude wake up from ATF.

Now, officers can create or purchase registered NFA stuff with department approval, but everything must still go through the registry.

This is true, but most dept 's here have an added plate to identyify it as dept owned weapon, allso each of the hanguns ,ar 15's, rifles or any other weapon this dept uses has the dept name and weapon number lazer etched into it. The current sherrif is a 22 year serving sherrif after he retired from the louisiana state police and believe me he is a stickler for regulation. As you stated any of the nfa weapons were bought that way and not modified and can only be used or handled by a commissioned police officer. I am commissoned by this dept and the state and post certified , that should clear this up. The k9 officer wanted a completly legal short barreled shotgun for his duty and home protection, which i complied with and of course without charge ,, Padre

Padre,

What kind of buttplate did you install? The cut down original?

as of now none, in the past on these models i have just made a steel thin butt plate, on this one i am thinking of making a wooden plug to cover the screw hole in the stock, it is way too short to be fired from the shoulder anyway , he will carry it in a single point sling . I like the use of the ribbed barrels on this type shotgun , i will be adding a hi viz front sight. Test firing this morning and using 2 3/4" 00 buck shot , it does have the usual kick but controlable.

A good rule of thumb is to always add a bit to the legal length, then there won't be any discussion about it and you will also have some marigin if you ever have to fix a damaged muzzle. I just shortened a Stevens 12 gauge to 18 1/2", that's about as short as I will ever go. By the way, I hate to throw things away so here's what I did with the section I cut off :D

outstanding, that i like , Did you make the base?

Nice Pen Holder!

Yes, I made the base from a piece of cherry. I used tung oil to finish the wood, about 25 coats or so. It took forever, and looks just as nice as three coats of polyurethane. :D

A novel use of a discarded part... NICE WORK!

Roger that. and i like the tung oil finish, looks great

these are the pictures of the actual dept owned shotguns , not to be confused with the ones that are cut down . Like we said these are restricted to law enforcement use only . believe it or not these really do not kick to bad with the colaspable stock.

You hear that all the time, "shortened shotguns kick a lot". I can see that the one I cut would just because it's lighter now (those Stevens barrels are heavy!), but is there any other reason why you would have more recoil?

with a cut down stock there is some felt recoil, but with the colaspable stock like in the picture it is barely felt, of course there is more muzzel blast. remington 870 police magnums are all steel componets which does add more weight. the shorter ones with just a pistol grip anda 10" barrel are a handfull.

Felt recoil is a combination of several things:

how the stock fits the shoulder - shortening them usually changes the resulting recoil direction into the shoulder and the placement on the surface of the shoulder

the reduced barrel changes the muzzle blast because of the final burn when the un-ignited powder is exposed to the air after leaving the barrel.. in hot charges this is much more noticeable then lower powder charges

but the most effecting reason is the overall weight vs the overall force.. there is a good reason older service weapons weighed a lot more then a comparable caliber hunting rifle. hunting rifles are not intended for repetative high volume shooting in short amounts of time

Roger that

not even sure how many on here even care about law enforcement weapons at all, but here is a comparison of the shotguns used now and in the past . To me the shotgun is the best all around weapon for close range defense or home protection there is.

this is a remington 12 ga. 870 pump with the top folding law enforcement stock from the 70's . these were pretty much the standard issue for alot of depts back then,

sweet, I like teh 70's version more

alot bulkier, but got the job done

Here is the finished shot gun after adding the mag exstenion and sling. It should serve it's purpose well.

thats the only way to load one