A Tale of Two Shotguns, Part 2

The obvious difference between the 12-gauge and 20-gauge Benelli Nova pump shotguns — the length of the barrel – is pretty apparent from this pic (12-gaugers on top):

 On the other hand, what I find makes much more of a difference is what I guess you’d call the thickness of each gun. Obviously, the 12-gauge model needs bigger tubes both coming and going. This results in a significantly wider diameter on the 12 — it’s chunkier:

Even though the 12-gauge weighs about the same as (or maybe even a little less than) the 20-gauge version, it definitely doesn’t feel nearly as maneuverable as the 20-gauge, which feels for all the world like a superlight carbine (that unfortunately has a two-foot barrel on the end of it).

I like ’em both, but the 12-gaugers are obviously much more suitable for a home-defense scenario, even though it may not feel that way. They have rifle-type sights rather than a bead; their barrels are not unwieldy, and they have the nifty capacity to take a factory recoil-reduction device in the stock with no gunsmithing.

On the other hand, the 20-gaugers have the built-in ability for the owner to shorten the stock, again with no gunsmithing. There’s a very light line inscribed on the outside of the stock that corresponds with a molded lip on the hollow interior. The lip is apparently designed to accept the buttpad once you’ve taken a hacksaw to the inscribed line and shortened the length of pull by an inch or so — which I intend to do, as the LOP is just too long for both me and my wife.

Unfortunately, the 12-gauge versions have no such capacity for shortening the stock. You definitely can’t do so if you want to install the recoil-reduction system. If they’d had the recoil-reduction system as an option on the 20-gaugers, I’d probably have foregone the 12-gauge versions and just chopped the 20-gauge barrels down to 18.5″ or so. To me, Massad Ayoob’s argument in his Stressfire 2 book that 20-gauge is plenty good for home defense makes a lot of sense. He has the autopsy photos to prove it, too. And the benefits of a more easily-wielded gun, not to mention less recoil, can’t be denied, especially for smaller-framed folks like my wife and I. (Although the reduced-recoil 12-gauge loads you see now were probably not available when Ayoob wrote his book in the early 80s.)

Oh well. At least when we’re shooting clays with the 20s, we’ll be using guns that are about as close as you can get to our 12-gauge home-defense guns — same controls, same forearm, same trigger. That dividend alone makes it worth keeping both types around.