Shotguns, shotguns, shotguns. I have nothing but love in my heart for the repeating claymore. Shotguns are my favorite genre of firearms, and as such, I scaled SHOT Show like Gollum searching for the various gauges and scatterguns to satisfy my addiction to recoil and expensive ammo.
Shotguns are making a comeback, a big one to be clear. Of all the new types of firearms, there seems to be more shotguns, and specifically more NFA-friendly shotguns. With the reduction of the tax stamp to $0, the rise of NFA items is apparent, and it has been defined by suppressors and short-barreled shotguns.
Here are my five favorite shotguns from SHOT Show 2026.
Rock Island Armory Pak Out
Alright, now, I want you to keep in mind that I have a penchant for novel firearms. Weird stuff entertains me. I’m a bit cautious of uber-cheap, uber-weird shotguns. I’m also cautious of Turkish Shotguns, but the Pak Out is supposedly made in America.
Upon examination, the barrels are stamped made in Turkey, but the receivers are stamped made in the USA. So is the Pak Out Turkish or American? The answer is yes. It does share some Turkish features, like the spring-assisted pump and the overall zany design.
The Pak Out offers you either a firearm variant with a 14-inch barrel or a proper shotgun variant with an 18.5-inch barrel. The main takeaway of the gun is that the receiver splits in half and folds to produce something Burgess would be proud of.
The shotgun variant had a folding receiver/barrel and a folding stock. This presents an extremely compact shotgun that’s easy to throw in a pack and head out.
With that in mind, approach with caution. At range day, there were a couple of times where the gun didn’t feed a round from the magazine tube to the carrier.
Also, keep in mind that these guns are run really hard at range day. I like the concept and the idea, but I’m going to approach with caution.
Mossberg 590RM Chisel
Oh boy, Mossberg saw tax stamps reduced to $0 and said, “Hold my box magazine.” The new Mossberg 590RM Chisel model takes the cool NFA shotgun to the next level. If I brainstormed about the perfect barrel length for home defense, I’d want a shorter gun, but shorter shotguns mean shorter magazine tubes.
The 590RM Chisel series takes the magazine tube and says to hell with you. Instead, we get the Mossberg magazine system, which is a double-stack shotgun magazine with capacities ranging from five to 20 rounds. With a magazine in place, you can get an uber short barrel without sacrificing capacity.
The 590RM Chisel is an NFA-regulated short-barreled shotgun with an 11.5-inch barrel. This makes it extremely compact and easy to maneuver. The magazine system gives you plenty of options for capacity, although box magazine-fed shotguns admittedly have their issues and require a bit of extra attention.
The Chisel stock is a pistol grip design that works perfectly with the R-type safety. It has an ambidextrous AR safety mounted to the receiver. This makes it easy to use with a pistol grip stock design.
The Chisel stock also folds to create an even more compact firearm. The Chisel stock offers an optic mount to directly attach an RMR optic, and there is a Picatinny rail for optics options. There are no iron sights, so you’re reliant on either an optic or luck.
IWI Mafteah
You might say the IWI Mafteah is technically a 12-gauge firearm. Legally, that’s true, but let’s be real, it’s a 12-gauge semi-auto that works like a shotgun. With that in mind, making the Mafteah into a shotgun, specifically an NFA short-barreled shotgun, has become a lot easier.
IWI is producing a Mossberg stock adapter so you can turn your Mafteah into a short-barreled shotgun. IWI unveiled the Mafteah with a stock adapter at SHOT.
The adapter makes it easy to attach a stock to your Mafteah. Since Mossberg and the 500/590 series are so popular, your options for stocks are nearly endless. You can get folding stocks, top folding stocks, the Magpul SGA, the Flash-5 that holds spare ammo, and so much more.
The Mafteah series is an inertia-driven, semi-automatic shotgun with a ton of modern features. The gun has a reversible charging handle, a Glock MOS optics system, and a handguard with M-LOK slots for accessories. The Mafteah does a lot of things other shotgun companies are scared to try, and brother, I’m here for it.
Sabre Key
The Sabre Key is an extension of the 570 series, which has yet to be released. On that note, the 570 is coming this year, and I’m excited to see it. After the 570 pump action comes out, and the 570 semi-auto comes out, the Sabre Key will enter full production.
The Sabre Key is PSA’s take on the Masterkey concept. The idea is simple: mount a shotgun on a rifle so you have a breaching option at hand at all times. KAC did this decades ago with their Masterkey, but a civilian-ready version has never been on the menu. Until now.
The Sabre Key will provide us with a pump-action shotgun mountable to a rifle with an M4A1 barrel configuration. This will give you a pump-action shotgun with a 3+1 capacity. The 570’s unique manual of arms lends itself well to the Key concept. The slide release is on the receiver, and this configuration has an 870-style safety.
The Sabre Key has a 10-inch barrel, so it’s fairly small. Does this make the gun a little front-heavy? Yes. Are the controls to use the Sabre Key a little awkward? Yes. Is it awesome? Yes.
Palmetto State Armory thought through this design with a handguard to avoid slippage, a short pump, and a robust mounting method to deal with 12-gauge recoil.
Beretta A300 Ultima 20 Gauge
If you scoured the market for tactical 20 gauges, you’d come up with a list that you could count on with one hand. There aren’t many, and if you want a semi-auto, there are even fewer. If you want a reliable semi-auto from a reputable manufacturer, then your list gets even shorter.
As of SHOT Show 2026, Beretta has expanded the category by at least one. The A300 series has been produced in 20-gauge sporting models for a long time, so adapting it to a shorter-barreled tactical design wasn’t all that hard. The new A300 Ultima Patrol comes in 20 gauge.
The new model comes with every feature the standard 12-gauge offers: the 19.1-inch barrel, length-of-pull adjustments, the M-LOK handguard, and the optics-ready design. The gun holds seven 20-gauge shells and weighs 6 pounds. It’s super light, but the gas-operated design cuts recoil, so don’t worry too much about recoil with the lighter gun.
From a low-recoil perspective, the A300 in 20 gauge is going to be the one to beat.
Scatterguns Forever
My love of shotguns will never be tamed. The shotgun offers you the best one-stop potential for a shoulder-fired firearm. The utility, the versatility, and the power give the shotgun the eternal edge over other firearms. These are my favorites, and I hope to get some serious range time with each in the near future.
