Quote:
Originally Posted by KPB
Respected by who?
The Marines, including Force, hates the Mossberg. (they don't use a lot of shotguns in the big Marines either, but they roundly hate the Mossberg.)
SEAL teams? They hated them. The trigger groups had to be replaced...twice. The last time with an all steel trigger group. Big woop. It was still an unreliable piece of shit, only now heavier. They are back with the venerable Remington 870's and couldn't be happier. (I hear the Benelli's are working out too.) If you really want a Mossberg, maybe you can call Crane and buy one of the ones they had to take back from the Teams.
Mossberg shotguns are inferior in every way. The safeties break, their feed mechanism is weak and poorly designed, malfunctions are common - as is parts breakage. Sure, everyone knows someone who's Mossberg 500 "works great every time." You decide if "that guy" knows better than the Marines, Marines Force, and the SEALs. (flash - he doesn't.)
Have you ever been to a shotgun class? One that includes a lot of actual shooting? The Mossbergs never make it past lunch on day one. Someone has to loan them an 870 to finish the class. I've seen more than one defecate its internals out of carrier opening. Did I say they suck.
This is not a Ford versus Chevy type of argument. The Mossberg is a piece of shit and cannot be recommended seriously as a defensive weapon. Any one in the know is aware of this. In the words of Pat Rogers, who knows more about shooting and firearms than any of us, "The 870's are used for a reason. The 500/590's are not used for a reason." It can't be said any simpler than that.
|
Well, I can tell you that I've never attended a shotgun class regardless of whether it had a component involving actual shooting or not. I have shot a couple Mossberg 500s, including one belonging to a friend of mine that has seen quite a bit of use and which has not, to my knowledge, ever had a single problem or given anyone a moment of trouble.
I will acknowledge that he likely doesn't know better than the Marines what is or is not a piece of shit shotgun; though having been a Marine myself, I think my judgment is roughly on par with that of any other Jarhead.
It seems you feel that the plurality/consensus of opinion about the Mossberg 500 within the fraternity of armed professionals is that it's a shoddily-manufactured piece of shit which practically disassembles itself in your hands as you fire it; well, I can't logically presume to believe or dismiss that because quite frankly your last post was the first time I ever heard any of the criticism or horror stories about the the 500 or anything else Mossberg makes which it seems I'm supposed to accept as conventional wisdom.
With regards to the assertion that "anyone in the know" is aware of the Mossbergs' rep for being the biggest turd in the world that accepts shotgun shells: I guess that means that there are quite a few gun writers who make their living evaluating firearms for a whole slew of periodicals that focus on all things gun-related who somehow in all their dealings managed to remain blissfully ignorant of things that "everybody knows" about certain firearms.
Come to think of it, I'm genuinely curious as to how the Mossberg 500 managed to negotiate its way through the military procurement process and get a sufficiently clean bill to be issued to the most elite of America's elite warriors without anyone noticing the weapons' tendency to experience catastrophic failure and be rendered unservicable if the user so much as verbally abuses it.
Pursuant to that: I hope you'll understand if I tend to balk on discarding everything I thought I knew about certain firearms in a hasty manner. Contrary to your comment about this not being s "Ford vs. Chevy" sort of thing, I beg to differ. Firearms are like trucks or cars or household appliances or anything at people hold opinions about with respect to those opinions varying.
One really good example has to do with the M-16 rifle and, by extension, the many variants, configurations, knock-offs, ugly cousins, and so forth of same. The M-16s long and storied history did not, as I think most folks know, have a an encouraging first chapter. I was in the middle of illustrating this point with an epic, floridly-detailed saga which I realized was largely unnecessary and did away with so as to get right to the point: the M16A2 and its various incarnations have been in constant service for about 40 years, has a pretty solid rep as a reliable, accurate, and effective implement of battle relied on by armed professionals, including special operators in elite units around the world which are granted considerable latitude as far as which weapons they opt to carry on a mission. A couple of years back, I read an article about Brit SAS operators who had taken to shit-canning their SA80 bullpup rifles (which, like the M16 have had their own troubled history involving flaws which have gradually been addressed) and replacing them with an M16A2 or M4.
And yet the M16 remains haunted by its poor initial showing and the equally poor first impressions. And as I know from having argued its relative merits and shortcomings with quite a few folks, including guys who've never toted or used one for a living, plenty of people still insist that it's an unreliable piece of shit which will jam if you so much and think about dirt while holding it and which is chambered for a pissant round which in terms of lethality is somewhere between a bee sting and a ten-pump BB gun.
More recently, I went a few rounds with a couple guys in this very forum who swore up and down that Brazilian gunmaker Taurus was an absolutely shitty company which was a purveyor of equally-shitty firearms which they would have had me believe was yet another thing "eveybody knew." Indictments levelled against Taurus included those involving allegations of uniformly low quality of manufacture which translated into a predictably uniform (which is to say "predictably/uniformly low") quality of performance when used, something which was also-- so far as they'd have me believel-- not even open to refutation.
Well, good luck proving it by me. I known a few folks, including my father, who've owned a variety of Taurus handguns (revolvers *AND* autos) in varying styles, calibers, and price tags. Of all of them, the lone complaint anyone ever lodged involved mt fathers' considerable dissatisfaction over the the middling, unimpressive accuracy of his .40 Taurus Millenium Compact which I immediately realized was perfectly acceptable for a snub-nose compact with a 3.5" barrel and mushy trigger (read: a hold-out/"oh, shit!" piece intended to be used at decidedly shorter ranges than what he was attempting.
The first piece I ever owned was a Taurus PT92 9mm with adjustable target sights I picked up in '91 with about $300 of the bonus swag I accumulated in the Persian Gulf tooling around the desert hundreds of miles from the nearest place worth spending it and thousands of miles from any place worth spending it on anything fun.
In the 16 years since, having lugged it around every place from indoor ranges to the rolling hills of West Virginia situated in the middle of what may very well be "Nowhere" and putting what I'd say is 15,000 rounds through it (that figure being the most wildly conservative I can come up with, and in reality is surely much higher) it has performed beyond any reasonable expectation. In that an entire time, it has chewed up and spit out every type and shape of 9mm ammo I've fed it, and done so flawlessly save for a few stoppages I encountered going through a couple hundreds rounds of the cheapest of the cheap-assed
el mucho cheapo-cheapo mas grande aluminum-cased and anemically-underpowered target ammo for sale at the range on that particular day I happened to be there for the purpose of busting caps downrange.
It still functions flawlessly and has impeccable accuracy, and the only work I've ever had to have done involved replacing the rear sight sometime back in '05 when the factory one busted in half for some reason which I can't explain beyond reckoning that almost certainly was *NOT* a manufacturer defect. This set me back $26 and change (most of which was for the part) and only because that part was one of the few, if not only, items not covered under Taurus' lifetime warranty.
