The Rifled Slug Barrel
The next step was the fully rifled shotgun barrel by Hastings, a manufacturer of aftermarket shotgun barrels. Hasting's Paradox shotgun barrels were offered as aftermarket replacements for the most common brands of pump and semi-automatic shotguns and they quickly became popular with slug shooters. Hastings rifled shotgun barrels are designed for firing slugs and are not to be confused with barrels of the Holland & Holland Paradox gun. "Paradox" has been used by Holland & Holland of London since the late 19th century to describe large bore guns with the last few inches of the barrel rifled with a special "ratchet" style of rifling. Holland & Holland purchased the rights to the Paradox gun from the inventor, Col George Vincent Fosbery VC. They chose the name "Paradox" because shotguns are defined by their smoothbore barrels, and a "rifled shotgun" was something of a contradiction in terms. Holland & Holland's Paradox and Nitro-Paradox guns are not slug guns as they fire standard shotgun shells and cartridges with special Paradox bullets fully interchangeably. Under normal circumstances, any firearm with a rifled barrel over 12.7 millimeters (.50 inches) is legally considered a destructive device in the United States. A BATFE ruling was obtained stating that a firearm designed to fire shotgun shells that was converted to fire shotgun slugs with the addition of a rifled barrel was still a shotgun, and thus not a destructive device. Now many manufacturers offer shotguns for sale with rifled barrels already installed. Bolt action and single shot break-open designs are particularly accurate, and with modern saboted slugs designed for use only with rifled barrels, the modern slug gun offers nearly the accuracy of a typical rifle.
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Famous quotes containing the words rifled, slug and/or barrel:
“We got our new rifled muskets this morning. They are mostly old muskets, many of them used, altered from flint-lock to percussion ... but the power of the gun was fully as great as represented. The ball at one-fourth mile passed through the largest rails; at one-half mile almost the same.... I think it an excellent arm.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Adrift dissolving, bound for death;
Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one—
A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,
Impingers rue thee and go down,
Sounding thy precipice below,
Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls
Along thy dead indifference of walls.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“I was born a mechanic, and made a barrel before I was ten years old. The cooper told my father, “Fanny made that barrel, and has done it quicker and better than any boy I have had after six months’ training.” My father looked at it and said, “What a pity that you were not born a boy so that you could be good for something. Run into the house, child, and go to knitting.””
—Frances D. Gage (1808–1884)