Have all y'all missed these new Mossbergs?

[Mescalero]

Eventually, I am going to be shooting somewhere and someone will show up with one of those.
I am not looking forward to it.
I will not say anything to him/her, but the people I shoot with are not quite as liberal as I am.
The prediction is the situation will turn unpleasent.

[JohndeFresno]

I have been giving this a lot of thought. It seems to me that one might consider purchasing a dozen of these and sitting on them until their value rises, since it seems to be an instant dud with the crowd most likely to buy one.

You know - like that car with the atrocious front end, the Edsel; or the Dardick handgun with its triangular bullets - "trounds!"

[AJMD429]

I'm not too offended by this. More power to them if they can sell them.
It's a PRO-GUN thing.

I agree...!

Mossy tried to appeal to the AR/Black rifle group and the old legacy guys and missed the target on both.

If I were a gun company, I'd not bother trying to appeal to the 'old legacy guys', because anything newly-manufactured would basically have to use old, off-patent designs, to have any appeal, and to be priced as to appear 'reasonable' vs. what guns cost when we were 30 years younger. Then, they'd have to involve such intense hand-fitting, polishing, and so on, that the company would go bankrupt unless it hired illegal aliens for $2/hr, or outsourced their operation overseas away from unions and lawyers and regulators and punitive corporate tax rates - and if they did all that, we'd still complain, and say they were un-American...! They can't win.

The AR/Black rifle crowd is far easier to please - they care about firepower and accuracy and aesthetics in pretty much that order, and don't complain about prices. Many of them would even put accuracy before firepower, which is more along the lines of what hunters and target shooters traditionally valued.

The whole 'aesthetics' thing is relative anyway, and there are some guns which just ARE inherently beautiful - Smith & Wesson 29's, Winchester 94's, Garands, etc... Others pretty much look utilitarian, like Glocks, AR-15's, and my 'Night Scout' iteration of the levergun. I don't sweat the differences, or value one kind above the other - they all have their place and purpose.

I say put a regular style synthetic stock on it, put a peep sight on the top and only put ONE, SMALL rail towards the front to attach a light. Add in a lever butt cuff from levergun leverworks and call it good.

That was my approach, more or less, and although the gun(s) are 'tactical', slip off the light, and they look pretty 'traditional'. I don't think there's any advantage the Mossberg one would have vs. what I made, and what I made would be easy and inexpensive for the manufacturer to do (basically interchange the magazine tube with one with an integral rail section, and sell it with a B-Square Quick-detach mount holding the Fastfire-II and LaserMax). I'll be "my" design would have sold better than the Mossberg one...
Just pop the light off and it looks almost 'normal'...

...then if I get scared I'm being too non-19th-century, I just turn the thumbscrew, and off comes the little sight assembly, and I'm back to iron sights like a good-little-traditionalist...


Judging from the number of pages this ugly-gun thread generated, the gun is at least getting talked about, which puts it ahead of most other new offerings.

[LeverBob]

I don't even want to look at it...I might get the cooties.

LB

[smithrws]

Now that is a TRUCKGUN.

[J Miller]

This new Mossberg is a perfect visual example to refer to when I tell people why I don't buy new guns.

I don't buy new guns because the manufacturers do not make anything I want.

Joe

[2571]

I think this is all a Mossberg hoax.

I want one but nobody has them to sell.

[Griff]

It needs an "extended magazine".

[Alan Wood]

It needs an "extended magazine".

[1894c]

who resurrected this thread--yikes... :(

[TomD]

From a Canadian, or Brooklyn Special perspective, I think this thing has legs. When it suits them, gun guys are always talking about how a gun is a tool...

Jeff Cooper suggested the perfect defense gun for a jurisdiction where the laws preclude handguns, is what he called the Brooklyn Special. It is a trapper type 30-30. Cooper also said he would prefer to have a 94, than an AK, at least from the perspective of the trigger, for what that is worth.

Add to that what has been learned, as far as it applies, from cowboy action shooting about how to run a lever, and you have a gun that can really rock. Which is what I do with my 92, have it as a below the radar gun that does a lot of things.

Problem with rifles is they are often not there when you need them, and for what we are talking about, handguns will not get you to your rifle. A big help would be some way to use a modern sling system that allows the rifle to become part of you. This has become standard for the AR, and other similar weapons, but is tough to do with a lever because of the low sights, the lever itself, and so on. rails as oversold as they can seem to be, are a good way to get those sling options.

Taken as a tool, and keeping in mind that there really isn't any cool in it from either the tactical or lever community side, I can see a role for the thing, and in the right hands it might be a canny choice. Thank god one can order online...