In the early 1900s, Thorneycroft Carbine developed the first bullpup rifle design, which placed the action to the rear of the trigger and shortened the overall length of British military rifles. It was an inventive piece of engineering, but the guns were difficult to carry and not ideal for combat situations. However, as technology advanced, so did the bullpup. In fact, some modern British, Australian, and Israeli special forces units issue their soldiers bullpup rifles (the L85, the Enhanced F88 Austeyr, and the IWI Tavor X95, respectively).
The concept has also been applied to shotguns, which makes sense. Bullpup shotguns have to deal with lower pressures and larger internal dimensions than a rifle. Not to mention a pump action simplifies things even more.
In recent years, the bullpup shotgun has become widely popular, especially for home defense among civilians who are attracted to their compact size and large magazine capacity. They are often odd-looking firearms, no hunter or clay shooter would ever consider using one in pursuit of wild game or at the skeet range, even if one came with a barrel long enough for skeet.
That’s also because most bullpup shotguns, if not all, are designed to be definitively tactical. If someone came out with a shotty similar to the Kel-Tec KS7, but in camo with a longer barrel that accepts choke tubes and flush-mounting red dots, you would think turkey hunters and some waterfowlers would be all over it or anyone who hunts from a blind with a shotgun — but the market research must say otherwise.
Bullpup shotguns are absolutely capable of dealing with an intruder, but a lot of people have reservations, usually associated with worries about reliability. The Remington 870 and the Mossberg 500 are long-trusted, time-tested pump action platforms with plenty of tactical options. Therefore, it’s hard for a lot of people to justify instead choosing, say, a Kel-Tec KS7, which has an overall solid reputation but plenty of stories online about lemons, just to have a shorter shotgun.
People who love bullpups are kind of fanatical about them, however, and there’s got to be something to that. If you’ve ever moved a Mossberg 590 with a 20-inch barrel (which allows for an 8-round mag tube) through a room-clearing drill and then did the same drill with a KS7, there’s no comparison.
The balance, length, and weight of the KS7 make it dramatically better and easier to use in this type of scenario, and the barrel length and ammo capacity are about the same — but among gun people, there’s still an issue of trust. Until Mossberg puts out a bullpup Model 500 (there are conversion kits out there that will accomplish this) that performs just like a regular M500 — the same goes for the 870 — that perception won’t completely change any time soon.
That’s not to say Kel-Tec doesn’t sell a hell of a lot of KS7s and KSGs every year. And a lot of people shell out a considerable amount of cash for IWI’s TS12 too. Again, there’s got to be something to it.
If you’re thinking about purchasing one of these space-age repeating scatterguns, there are a few things you need to know before you buy.
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Are Bullpup Shotguns Any Good?
Like any firearm, you typically get what you pay for, and if you cheap out on a bullpup shotgun, there’s a chance it might have cycling issues — in general, or with certain ammo. Several early bullpup semi-automatics and even pumps had trouble feeding rounds reliably, but that’s hardly the case anymore.
The IWI Tavor TS12 has led the advancement in semi-automatic bullpup functionality, using a rotary magazine that holds up to 15 rounds of 12 gauge in three tubes. Once the first tubular magazine is empty, the shooter manually rotates to the next mag, and a shotshell automatically loads into the action. That shotgun looks plain nuts — like an actual prop from a sci-fi movie — but few gunmakers have more experience with bullpups than IWI does.
Pump action bullpup shotguns are far more common. The S&W M&P 12 and the Kel-Tec KSG are high-capacity shotguns that won’t fail so long as you don’t short-stroke the fore-end when ejecting spent hulls and loading new ones. The bottom-eject Kel-Tec KSG did have some initial cycling problems in its earliest runs, but those have long since been ironed out, and the shotgun will function flawlessly as long as you operate it properly.
The Kel-Tec KS7 is basically half of a KSG with half the capacity — instead of two magazine tubes under the barrel holding seven rounds each, there’s only one seven-round tube, making the shotgun much more lightweight and nimble.
The often mocked carrying handle/iron sight setup sets it apart visually from the KSG, but most people swap that out for a simple top rail. But you get 7+1 rounds on board, an unloaded weight of just 5.9 pounds, and an 18.5-inch barrel all packed into a 26.1-inch package.
There are also SBS versions of the KSG with shorter mag tubes to make a short barrel, and they also have a variant that goes the other way — the KSG 25, which has 30.5-inch barrels, an overall length of 38 inches, and an amazing capacity of 12+12+1 (yeah that’s 25 shells, hence the name).
The DP-12 bullpup shotgun from Standard Manufacturing took a different approach and kind of anted up the SKG design by including not only two mag tubes but also two side-by-side barrels. It’s the only pump action SxS out there. When you work the action, the DP-12 chambers two rounds, one in each barrel. Each barrel then fires sequentially with each trigger pull for two rapid shots before the shooter has to work the pump again..
This wildly unconventional bullpup shotgun has a suprisingly solid reputation for reliability, but it’s a bit on the expensive side at about $1,500, and with two mag tubes and two 12-gauge barrels, fully loaded it ain’t light, but the fact it’s a bullpup gives it good balance.
What Is the Point of a Bullpup Shotgun?
Most shooters buy a bullpup shotgun for home defense. Typically, they’re less than 30 inches in length, so that makes them easy to maneuver in tight spaces, like a home. Modern tactical shotguns are several inches longer than that unless they have a collapsible stock or no stock at all (i.e. the Mossberg Shockwave).
Many bullpups are also built to hold double the amount of ammunition (or more) than a traditional shotgun. For instance, the TS12 can be loaded with 16 2 3/4-inch shotshells — 15 rounds in the three magazines, plus one in the chamber. That should be plenty of firepower to subdue any threat.
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So What About the Drawbacks?
Bullpups have a high ammo capacity, but many of them are a pain to load, or at the very least, are time-consuming to load. There isn’t, at the moment, a bullpup shotgun in the world with a port big enough or accessible enough to perform quad loads or anything close — which is why Kel-Tec initially went after high capacity with the KSG. UTAS did the same thing with its UTS-15, which was a functional disaster when it was first released.
If the bullpup shotgun has a detachable magazine, this can simplify the process, but it also places much of the weight to the rear of the gun (see the Rock Island Armory VRBP-100 and the TriStar Arms Compact Tactical), where there’s already a lot of weight.
The added heft when fully loaded helps mitigate recoil, but it also means more muzzle rise because the front of the gun is so light. And detachable mags that feed rimmed shotshells are tough to design and tend to get bulky in 12 gauge.
A bullpup with magazine tubes that run the length of the gun on each side will make it more balanced, but only for so long. The more rounds you shoot, the lighter the gun becomes as shells eject from the chamber, but that can be said of any repeating shotgun.
Because the action is to the rear of the trigger, essentially in the buttstock, most bullpup triggers have a heavy pull weight (the linkages required to connect the trigger to the firing pin are responsible for this). The KSG’s trigger pull weight is about 7 pounds, for example.
That’s not a deal breaker for a defensive-style shotgun and shotguns overall aren’t known for having great triggers because they usually don’t need to.
Pump action bullpups can be dangerous if you’re not careful (this applies to any firearm, of course) when operating the fore-end back-and-forth to eject and reload. The muzzle of a bullpup shotgun is close to the fore-end when it is in the forward position. A slip of the hand and your fingers could be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the trigger is pulled.
The M&P12 does a good job of negating this potential catastrophe by using a pistol-grip fore-end, which acts as a stopper. This is an attachment that many people add to their KSG, or an angled foregrip with a handstop.
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What Is the Most Reliable Bullpup Shotgun?
There’s no more reliable shotgun platform than the pump action, and M&P12 is one of the most compact bullpups with an overall length just shy of 28 inches, an unloaded weight of only 8 pounds, and a 15-round 2 3/4-inch shotshell capacity (it can hold 20 of Federal Premium’s 1 3/4-inch shorty shotshells).
The pistol grip is interchangeable with other M&P offerings, plus the removable vertical front grip is a nice safety feature so that your hand doesn’t slide off the fore-end when working the action.
The M&P12 has an ambidextrous safety, and spent shells eject from the bottom of the shotgun, so it’s shootable for left- or right-handers. Some bullpups only have an ejection port on the right side of the shotgun, which means empty hulls are flying right in the face of lefties.
There is a magazine selector button just above the trigger group. This allows you to load two different types of shotshells and have access to each at your fingertips. A top accessory rail is ideal for mounting an optic.
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Conclusion
Bullpup shotguns may look like the blasters you’ve seen in Star Wars, but they are actually a practical choice if you need a real-life home-defense firearm.
Most folks think a handgun, AR, or traditional or tactical shotgun is the best option to neutralize a threat. But a bullpup shotgun is much easier to be accurate with than a pistol or AR and has more magazine capacity than regular shotguns (unless you mount an X-Rail to your repeater). Bullpups are also compact, so you can get around corners and swing them more freely than long guns. And since most bullpups have more than one magazine tube, you can load them with at least two (sometimes three) different types of shotshells.
Bullpups have uses beyond the home as well. They can serve as a truck or camp gun to dispatch pests or if you need to fire a warning shot to spook a disgruntled sow grizzly or other predator. Bullpup shotguns are fun to shoot, too, so long as you’re practicing proper gun safety.
Whether you’re looking for a personal defense firearm or a gun you want to take out to the back 40 and kill some empty coffee cans with, the bullpup is a great option.
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