# can you have to many?



## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

I might have an addiction to used , very reasonably priced utility guns 

I stopped in at a little shop that has a decent consignment rack looked over the rack didn't see much maybe a muzzle loader to go back for when i get more money

then what do i spy in the corner away from the racks several shotguns , I asked he said he hadn't had a chance to clean them up and get them on the rack so i went for a look

a 870 wingmaster with smooth bore slug barrel , that looked like someone took a file to the trigger guard asking 150

a 870 magnum with smooth bore slug barrel, speed feed stock and sling asking 150

and 2 of the extended mag 8 shot 20 inch cylinder barrel 870s with black plastic stocks , the wanted 225 for those 

I asked whats the story , he said the chief just dropped them off today they have been replaced by the M4 rifles in the squads 

I picked up the wing master and worked the action , the action looked good on the wing master the wood was beat up but definitely usable but that trigger gaurd was ugly , the guy said they road around in gun racks in thier trunks for a long time and the rack seemed to eat the trigger guard of the one the other is missing it's finish on teh side fo the gaurd but nothing like the wingmaster , then i realized the other one was a magnum , well magnum that opens up possibilities of putting a goose barrel on it and taking it as a backup bird gun , and it had a sling a decent one at that , then i worked the action , butter smooth my mind was made up 

so i asked the magic question would they take 100 for it , he checked the book 125 is as low as they would go 

how can you pass on a working 870 magnum with a sling for 125 so i filled out the form paid my $ and I was out the door 

now i have a cop gun even if it is a retired one , and no worries about scratching it , that is already been done


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## hawgsquatch (May 11, 2014)

I wonder the same thing. If they ever arrest me I will be the guy in the news with the "arsenal" spread out all over the table. Even if most of them are .22's that were handed down to me.

Good catch on the quail gun as well. I wonder why in the world they would replace a shotgun with a rifle they serve two completely different uses.


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

To government agency's it doesn't matter as the tax payers foot the bill when they decide latter they really did need shot guns.

My town ship decided they just had to have a walking path around the 5 acres the town hall and fire station is on. Spent $80,000.00 on it a year and a half ago. No one ever uses it and the lime stone was pretty much grass covered in August when they paid some bucks to get killed off.

 Al


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## Shrek (May 1, 2002)

Yes you can have too many firearms, especially if you brag about it to the wrong folks. 

A couple days ago the news reported of a gun owner with a good sized collection in Florence who bragged of his collection openly and told folks he was always interested in buying more. 

The report said armed masked robbers took him by surprise in a home invasion, disarmed and pistol whipped him and made off with about 25 weapons that the police there are concerned about ending up in the possession of some of the street gangs of the city.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

well hopefully posting here isn't bragging to much to the wrong people 

my collection if you call it that isn't very impressive , pretty much all working guns that have their dings and scratches from years of being carried around the woods used but not abused , I just have a real hard time passing on working utility guns at a very good price 

especially very well price 22s ,12 ga pumps , I am always looking for 20s for the kids but they are much scarcer than used 12s


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## simi-steading (Sep 27, 2012)

My hand guns are knock arounds, Not bad looking, but they got their dings when I bought them, so I don't worry about thm too much... most my rifles are in really nice shape, and I hate every time I get a little nick or scratch on them.. I need some more ugly long guns.. 

My only shotgun is a Winchester 1300 and it's almost perfect.. Except on the grip behind the trigger I got dents in it from my wedding band (I'm left handed) It bothers me to see those dents on an other wise perfect gun.. and yes, I've taken it out hunting and to meat shoots quite often..


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

the speed feed stock had some sharp edges where it mated with the receiver and just behind the trigger so last night i took the butt stock off and with a file and sand paper cleaned up these sharp edges , much more comfortable to hold now not sure why someone didn't take 10 minutes time years ago but oh well.

I checked the serial number today it is a 1987 so it has probably been riding around in a squad car for 25 years 

my guess as to why the M4 over the 870 , because they got a grant for them , they look sexy and if you have a stand off and have to hold onto your gun for hours , a M4 with single point sling is going to carry easier. also optics and greater range and big magazines 

the last time i actually heard of a Wisconsin cop using an M4 on a suspect was the seek temple shooting a few years back watching the dash cam footage of that the cop was about 60-70 yards down the drive way when he shot the badguy with is M4 com fired 3 rounds if I recall and hit bg with 1 the badguy then ate his own gun. 

so sad none of the Seek (i know thats not spelled right but that is how it sounds) had a gun and maybe bg could have eaten his gun sooner.


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## K-9 (Jul 27, 2007)

Sounds like you got a good one there, it is all but impossible to wear an 870 out and police don't shoot them that much anyway, it is probably not even broken in yet.

As far as going away from the shotgun, a lot of departments are not moving away from the shotgun because of the very real advantages a rifle offers in a lot of circumstances, but rather because a lot of officers have a hard time qualifying with them. Now don't lamblast me that anyone can be taught to shoot a shotgun, I fully realize that but most departments aren't willing to devote the time and money to do that when it is so much easier to teach the trainees to use a rifle like the M4 particularly since many have recent military experience and are already very familiar with the rifle.


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## -justin- (Sep 7, 2014)

you can never have too many, no.. but in light of my changing living environment where i intend to become more mobilized, i may store the less essential ones with family and focus on a few necessities for defense and game getting


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

-justin- said:


> you can never have too many, no.. but in light of my changing living environment where i intend to become more mobilized, i may store the less essential ones with family and focus on a few necessities for defense and game getting


I can definitely see that , in that case a 12 ga combo shotgun with slug and screw in choked barrel , a 22 rifle , a 30-06 and a briefcase worth of pistols and a fella would be all set that would actually be a bit on the heavy side but since it would all fit behind the seat of the truck and there wouldn't be anything in north America you couldn't hunt 

when we were selling our first house I sent all my guns , safe ,ammo, cases , accessories everything except one pistol that i took when we left for a showing 
we also got a storage unit and removed all my good tools and really cleaned the hole place up so the garage looked like all we did was park cars in it and the basement was empty , excess furniture stored clothing all went to storage , then when we had an accepted offer and knew we had to close on one house and then the new one later that day we moved the hole house to storage so that our last day in the old house was just us on a mattress in the living room wake up toss the mattress on the trailer wrapped in a tarp and go to closings.


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## Cornhusker (Mar 20, 2003)

You can have enough, but you can't have too many. :happy2:


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

I tell you i had about enough of cleaning when I had all the county hardware to clean, but as long as I don't get to many dirty at once I am fine 

I was glad to finally have them all cleaned and back to the county safes


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## Glade Runner (Aug 1, 2013)

According to my wife you can, but we have one our few disagreements on that point. It's not so much a matter of philosophy as of space.


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## whiterock (Mar 26, 2003)

been a good deal to get all four IMO, nothing wrong with a slightly used 870, and better than half price around here is a good buy.


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## GunMonkeyIntl (May 13, 2013)

Sorry in advance for the long post, but I'm putting a couple responses together in one post...

I'll argue that you _can_ have too many. Of course, you need to have guns for different purposes, backups to those weapons, and backups to the backups, but there comes a point when you should be buying ammo instead of more guns. When the ammo runs out, you're left with a nice collection of clubs with poor balance and ergonomics. 



GREENCOUNTYPETE said:


> the speed feed stock had some sharp edges where it mated with the receiver and just behind the trigger so last night i took the butt stock off and with a file and sand paper cleaned up these sharp edges , much more comfortable to hold now not sure why someone didn't take 10 minutes time years ago but oh well.


Those sharp edges may be caused by a missing recoil plate (called the "stock bearing plate" in the parts list). The 870 receiver has a recess in the rear where the stock should bear. This is the area where recoil will ideally transfer to the stock. The shroud, for lack of a better term, around this recess is just there to keep the stock from rotating, and should not transfer recoil or even contact the stock. The surface area of the shroud is so small that it would eventually chip the stock if it is wood, or peen it if it plastic. When it peens a plastic stock, it raises a sharp lip.

The wood stocks have a short tenon, and require the recoil plate to make up the length needed to contact the recoil face on the receiver. Most polymer stocks have a long tenon and don't need the plate. Some of the early polymer stocks (of which the SF was one of the first) were modeled off the wood stock, and have the short tenon, requiring a stock bearing plate. 

To see if your shotgun has one, you only have to remove the trigger group. The stock bearing plate will be a silver plate, a little more than 1/16" thick between the stock and the receiver. If you have a gap there, order a plate and install it. Otherwise, the sharp edges you just drew off will raise up again as the stock peens further.



K-9 said:


> As far as going away from the shotgun, a lot of departments are not moving away from the shotgun because of the very real advantages a rifle offers in a lot of circumstances, but rather because a lot of officers have a hard time qualifying with them. Now don't lamblast me that anyone can be taught to shoot a shotgun, I fully realize that but most departments aren't willing to devote the time and money to do that when it is so much easier to teach the trainees to use a rifle like the M4 particularly since many have recent military experience and are already very familiar with the rifle.


You are 100% right on this. 
When I started in the industry, every officer in every agency had a shotgun - most of them 870s. Post 9/11, the Fed started making M4s (M16A1s, actually) cheap/free for state local agencies. Many of these agencies already viewed the shotgun as a training liability and didn't want to have to qual two long-guns, so they dropped their shotguns.

Then someone, somewhere, dropped a hostage-taker with a bean bag, and the shotgun came back into fashion as a less-lethal solution. Even then, the "kinder-gentler" paradigm had been bringing more women, small-frame, and even anti-gun officers into the formerly conservative, corn-fed, broad-shouldered trade of police work, feared the shotgun for its recoil and relatively low magazine capacity. 

Now, post-War-on-Terror, our state and local agencies are being populated by sandbox veterans - many who witnessed, first-hand, how critical shot placement is for a .223/5.56 to be effective. Many of those same veterans witnessed how effective the shotgun, even a breaching gun w/ hatten rounds, can be. So, the debate has been reignited. 

I had this same debate with the training Sgt. for one of the few large NM municipal agencies just last week. He wants to drop the shotgun because it is difficult to get officers to train and qual with. The tactics Sgt. wants to improve their shotgun training POI because it is the only weapon in their arsenal that can guarantee a 1-shot stop. 

I saw a series of photos from another state agency recently that were the result of a "kinda, sorta, accidental, but really on purpose" head shot with a 1 oz 12ga slug. Their CSIs had to go sift dirt for dental ID. In the conversation, they also showed me a single center-mass hit that drug the entire ofal package out the exit wound. 

Fortunately, the guys that protect your towns are waking back up to the value of the shotgun and are starting to add second long gun carriers to their cruisers. Considering that even most LE sniper shots happen inside 75m, a boot-officer with a shotgun can produce one-shot-stops with a shotgun well out to any ranges they're cleared to shoot for civil use.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

Gunmonkeyintl , Yes , I definitely have the recoil plate , the sharp edges were also behind the trigger guard and back far enough that many of them were definitely "flash" for a lack of a better term form the molding , boggles me why anyone would have put up with it so long but i bet many wore gloves during training or just put up with it 

do you have any experience with adding a chock tube to a slug barrel , I like the short quick handling barrel but would like a choke at times when bird hunting 
can it be done or is the barrel just not thick enough

the guy at the shop said they thought about taking these shotguns back out for been bag rounds but when they decided to not 

my guess is they would want new guns all the same and not the mix of 25-30 year old ones they were getting rid of


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## GunMonkeyIntl (May 13, 2013)

Put LOTS of choke tubes in barrels at my last job. Every six weeks the responsibility for brakes and chokes rotated around, and you'd probably do 30-40 choke tube sets when it was your turn. 

For any given choke tube system, a barrel will have to be under a max ID, and over a min OD. 

In the couple thousand or so that came across my bench, I didn't see more than a handful of barrels that couldn't take tubes. They may not have always ended up with the pattern they originally wanted (guys with Remingtons always wanted Rem-Chokes, guys with Winchesters or Brownings always wanted Invector, etc.), but at the very least, they could almost always get Briley thin-walls. 

Your slug barrel is probably pretty stout. I'm guessing that the nominal ID (behind the fixed-IC choke) is around 0.727", and your OD is probably around 0.850-0.875, which should be enough meat, and in the right places, for most choke systems. Will just have to take it to your gunsmith and have it measured - and hope that he has the tooling for the system you want to use.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

yes t is fairly stout measured at the muzzle .885 od .718 ID

so it is a improved cylinder , I should probably just pattern it first and try some clay pigeons 

I have a co-worker who runs a OU 20 for pheasant with his first barrel as a IC and if he misses the second is MOD and he does very well with it IC might be just fine to shoot some birds


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## GunMonkeyIntl (May 13, 2013)

IC is standard for a slug barrel for rifled slugs. Also good general-purpose choke for birds, assuming you get on them quick enough. If it's a Remington-brand barrel, it should have a small "IC" stamp back near the chamber on the left side. 

If you go to have tubes installed, it is going to be the measurement back behind the choke that matters. The measurement before the choke is actually what determines the choke. Knowing the ID at the muzzle is only half the equation. You also have to know the ID behind the choke in order to know how much it is actually constricting the shot. If it is a back-bored barrel, a 0.718" measurement at the muzzle would actually indicate a Full or even tighter.

If it's an unmodified Remington factory slug barrel, though, you're not backbored and you have somewhere around 0.727" behind the choke.


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## cappy (Sep 22, 2014)

Check Brownells.com. They have tons of parts. You probably get the trigger guard to replace the damaged one. 

Ken


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## littlejoe (Jan 17, 2007)

*can you have to many?* 

IF you decide you have to many, just let me know. I'd be glad to help what I can.

I figure most of what I've bought in the last three or four years is an investment. And I've probably bought a dozen. Some for less than half price, some far less. They're all upper name brand. I had chances at cheap guns, but passed. wished I had purchased them as well! All were pistols or rifles, my interests don't exclude shotguns, but it's limited.

And like GunMonkey says they're no good without ammo. I've got or bought dies and components for every one I own excepting a pre-64 32 Winchester, which I plan to trade. Heck...I guess all of them are for sale for a price or a trade!

The last buy of five included a sweet little early Belgium browning 22. It would more than cover the cost of the others with room to spare. 

Colorado has recently changed the laws regarding firearms transactions...but I think the powers that be, are in for a rude awakening


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

when you get them at really good prices for solid good quality arms that will have parts around for a long time , it is a good investment 

been doing better than the interest rate on a bank account for a long time

can't say I have ever sold one of mine , I might some day , I sold 2 for my dad this last year 

I have chosen calibers and gauges and stick to them , and load for most of them to make ammo commonality better

the boy and I are getting into shot gun games here as he gets older , It has been a long time since I shot skeet I think I need to give it another try


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## V-NH (Jan 1, 2014)

Interesting dialogue on shotguns. I'm currently shopping around for one that is affordable for hunting and home defense purposes. I found a lightly used Mossberg 500 for $350 but it has a full camo skin which I am not really keen on. I don't like firearms with patterns because I think they look like toys. I didn't realize that so many law enforcement agencies had stopped using shotguns though. They seem like a more logical choice than a 5.56 for most law enforcement applications.

I don't think you can have too many guns, but I only have 5 so I haven't reached a point where I am done rounding out my collection yet so I will have to consider my response again in the future when I get to the point where I have everything I feel I need.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

V-NH said:


> Interesting dialogue on shotguns. I'm currently shopping around for one that is affordable for hunting and home defense purposes. I found a lightly used Mossberg 500 for $350 but it has a full camo skin which I am not really keen on. I don't like firearms with patterns because I think they look like toys. I didn't realize that so many law enforcement agencies had stopped using shotguns though. They seem like a more logical choice than a 5.56 for most law enforcement applications.
> 
> I don't think you can have too many guns, but I only have 5 so I haven't reached a point where I am done rounding out my collection yet so I will have to consider my response again in the future when I get to the point where I have everything I feel I need.



the 500 is a fine shotgun holding 5 rounds in the magazine , with a simple but effective safety , a simple sturdy design and a good cost to value ratio
unless your getting a combo with both a slug barrel or short 18 inch barrel and a 26 or 28 inch hunting barrel 350 is to much http://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/.../46905/Mossberg+54264+500+COMBO+12+28AC24RSRB

you can have a new combo for 340 + transfer fee 

I gave 267 for a older used 500 combo this year in good shape 


as to why departments are using 5.56 , I think they accessorize more easily add an aim point patrol and a light easily not that both can't be added to a shotgun but , shotguns have lost some cool factor to a black rifle I suppose , add in they can get AR's with DHS money and they do allow for longer shots but what i keep hearing over and over is it in many cases comes down to a training issue , it is apparently easier to train an officer to hit a B-27 target with a AR and red dot than a bead on a shot gun that recoils much harder


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## cappy (Sep 22, 2014)

I have a Mossberg 500 atp and really love it. The thing I like most is the interchangeable barrels available. The cost beats Remington, hands down and are readily available. You can buy the base shotgun and for a good price you can buy a rifled slug barrel, with or without a scope mount, 32", 28", 26", 18" smooth bore. You can have as many different shotguns as you want (can afford). I also have a Remington 870 and Model 31, but prefer my Mossberg. I know that can open a real can of worms but it's just my preference. 

Ken


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