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Barrel length for home defense?


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A shotgun is a firearm subject to the NFA if the shotgun has a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length or is less than 26 inches in overall length.

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Any happy medium in a length for decent outdoor work as well as interior?  Meaning if I needed to engage someone outdoors at say the far end of the house.   Agree it's better to be short as possible for indoor work but don't want it to be useless if an engagement happens outdoors

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14 hours ago, pedal2alloy said:

Short is better for interior work, go ahead and cut it down to exactly 18"  You won't need a 4th port, you can enlarge the 3 ports, and it only needs to be a very slight amount

If you plan to thread the barrel for a muzzle brake or anything, I'd probably cut it to 18 1/2" just in case you need to trim a little off the end for finishing. Also to "remove all doubt" about it being legal, should it come to that.

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so youre gonna pay someone to cut an inch off of it? that doesnt seem like a good use of "cash"

 

im getting some mixed signals from you here... google, ballistics by the inch.... 12 ga doesnt suffer much from short, and length doesnt add a lot bewteen 20-28".  real strange.....

 

but ya, you either do what you wnat and dont tell anyone about it, or follow the law and tell everyone....

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8 hours ago, Davehal9000 said:

Any happy medium in a length for decent outdoor work as well as interior?  Meaning if I needed to engage someone outdoors at say the far end of the house.   Agree it's better to be short as possible for indoor work but don't want it to be useless if an engagement happens outdoors

The effectiveness will depend more on the ammo than the barrel length.  So for maneuverability, I would cut it to 18" exactly, measured from the closed bolt face, and try some different ammo for patterning

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It is likely about 19-3/16". There really isn't much to gain there without going SBS. I'd leave it as-is. If you are just bored and pretty good with your hands maybe it is worth it, but it definitely wouldn't be worth it to pay someone else to do it.

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  • 1 month later...

This is an interesting topic, and something I’ve also considered doing. I was planning to shorten mine so that it was maybe 18 1/4” INCLUDING the muzzle brake, then pinning that like you have to do with an AR to keep the 16” overall barrel length. I agree with those saying it’s not worth the trouble and cost to chop the barrel an inch, but if using a muzzle device permanently attached, you could lose 3-4”, depending on the device used.

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