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How To Run a Pump Shotgun

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Chris Baker of Lucky Gunner is an extremely well-trained shooter, and he puts together good videos. He put together this guide for running a pump shotgun hoping to provide good info for first-time gun owners due to the current panic, but it's good, all-round info for everyone.

How to Run a Pump Shotgun

He has another video on reload techniques:

How to Reload a Defensive Shotgun
 
I like Chris' statements about using a shorter than normal buttstock for a close quarters battle shotgun. I've been advocating that for 20 years.
(And that's NOT based on the idea that you may be wearing very thick clothing, or body armor, or a load bearing vest.)

I've cut down several buttstocks of my own shotguns, and I'm a full sized adult man. My current favorite general purpose shotgun has a youth model stock with a 12.6" length of C3BFA93A-2DAA-4A6A-934A-D11F62744C8F.jpeg

pull (Face of the trigger to the rear of the butt pad or butt plate).
Not the normal 14 or 14.5"
 
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Chris Baker of Lucky Gunner advocates a strange grip technique for placing your dominant hand.

The issue is where to position the thumb of your dominant hand--
does it go on the side of the receiver parallel to the bore,
as shown in Chris's video?

Does it go on top of the back of the receiver near the tang area?
Does your thumb cross over and somewhat wrap around the stock and go to the opposite side of the gun?

He says this is to keep your thumb from being driven back into your face under the gun's recoil. We are talking about pump action shotguns loaded with defensive ammo, not light birdshot payloads intended to break a clay target.

What do y'all think about this?
How do you position your dominant hand on your shotgun?
 
My hand position on two shotguns, all with conventional stocks
with a standard wrist.
I held the guns in a defensive aiming "ready to shoot stance,"
08A2DCB7-6B42-495B-B1F6-14D9F74BE1BA.jpeg
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and then removed my support hand to operate the camera,
--leaving my right hand exactly has as it had been positioned for firing.
 
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But I can see the utility of putting the thumb of your dominant hand up on the top of the gun's stock where it meets the receiver. Up at the 12 o'clock position, or maybe slightly crossing over to the 11 o'clock position.
But not wrapping around as much as my first two pics showed.

I often have to move my thumb to the right of center position on my stocks of high-powered rifles when I shoot bolt action high power rifle competitions. The 1903 Springfield, 91/30 Moisin Nagant, etc. can make my thumb bump my nose on occasion.

Pic is not of me-- that's a professional LEO firearms instructor whose video is being hosted by the Mossberg gun company website.
 
I posted this same video to another forum. The same individual posted the same counterpoints to it. After three, maybe four, requests for him to post a rundown of his training and experience. He finally posted that he was an armed security guard in the 80s and that he had some training when he was an ADA but the training "didn't show me much that I didn't already know".

Chris Baker is a graduate of the Rangemaster (Tom Givens) Defensive Shotgun Instructor course. He's also trained with Rob Haught, Daryl Bolke, and Tim Chandler/Ashton Ray. This is list is merely a partial list of his shotgun training and experience. Chris' full-time job consists of his taking training courses and producing video content for Lucky Gunner. Yes, his PAID gig is to train. He trains a lot.

I will not engage in a back and forth with the above individual on this forum as it would be counter-productive. I offer the additional information simply so readers will have a frame of reference for which to judge the sources of information.

The intent of Chris' video, and my intent for posting it here, was to hopefully provide a resource for a new shotgun owner just in case they either found their way here or readers of this forum who may be asked for help by friends, family, or colleagues. Use it or don't. It's up to you.
 
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Chris showing us how to grip it.
Note his thumb position.

AB
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_______________________________________
YOU SHOOTING A PUMP COMBAT SHOTGUN.
NOTE YOUR THUMB POSITION.



I'm being critical of one piece of Chris Baker's video.
I don't know why you feel so compelled to defend Chris Baker's credentials generally; I did not criticize his background or qualifications generally.

Why are you so insistent on challenging me to prove that my firearms credentials are inferior to yours or Chris Baker's ??? When I never said otherwise??
Somehow you think this end the discussion. We are supposed to silently defer to The opinion of the dude with the stronger resume-- but you're barking up the wrong tree!

Anybody with half a brain can see that is illogical.
Proving you, or Chris, has the stronger resume as a firearms expert doesn't mean you're infallible or that you never make mistakes, or never quickly posted a video without analyzing all of what the presenter has recommended in that video.


I don't need to be a meteorologist to know that you're peeing on my shoes and telling me that it's raining.

You don't need to be a taylor or a haberdasher to see that the Emperor has no clothes.

Bottom line: Your boy Chris demonstrated a ridiculous (as in worthy of ridicule) technique of gripping a shotgun in his video, and nobody not you, not ME, not Massad Ayoob, not Jerry Michulek, not Taran Butler, not the shotgun instructor from Gunsite who posted a demonstration on the official Gunsite YouTube channel ...
...not any other of a dozen top shooters & law-enforcement instructors, hold their conventionally-stocked shotguns that way.

You can thump your chest and wave your resume around all you want,
but the bottom line is that nobody does it the way that your buddy Chris has said that people should be doing it.
 
...After three, maybe four, requests for him to post a rundown of his training and experience. He finally posted that he was an armed security guard in the 80s and that he had some training when he was an ADA but the training "didn't show me much that I didn't already know".

Chris Baker is a graduate of the Rangemaster (Tom Givens) Defensive Shotgun Instructor course...

1- I said more about my qualifications, training, and experience, but you chose to leave that out. 35 years of shooting, competing in a number of firearms disciplines,
a shelf full of trophies and awards...but you edited all that out when you reposted part of it here at ODT. Nice move. Classy. <rolls eyes>
I hope you do better than that in court when you have to swear, as a witness, to tell the whole truth, not just part of the truth, but the whole truth.

2-- So Chris Baker took an instructor course from Tom Givens?
Well, apparently that wasn't where he was taught to lay his thumb on the right side of the receiver, because Tom himself doesn't use that technique.

I just watched a video where Tom Givens is personally demonstrating a combat shotgun --snap shooting -- (but aiming it) and his thumb appears to be where your thumb goes on a conventionally stock shotgun-- up around 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock position at or just left of the centerline of the gun.
 
Imo, that grip is silly. It reminds me of the Costa c clamp and so many other instagram cool guy shots.

Once I was at a range shooting a long range precision rifle that I was doing some load development for. The range safety officer came over and started up a conversation and he began telling me how he had trained the FBI HRT and navy seals in sniper shooting and had a tip he wanted to pass on to me.

If I would take my off hand and put it on the forearm and wrap my index finger over the top of the barrel, it would cut down on barrel vibration and tighten up my groups. I gave him the :wacko: and ignored his bs. I previously had interacted with this tool where he had asked to shoot my AK and proceeded to shoot a bunch of balloons a dad had put out at 25 yards for his 7 year old son to shoot.

Maybe that thimble position is needed if you've shortened your stock to keep from jabbing it in your eye, but seems that your trading one problem for another.

Another of those cool guy things is instead of just keeping your finger off the trigger of your handgun, you move it all the way up to the breech on the slide. All fuggin distorted and arthritic looking just to show your "safer" than the guy with his finger down the side of the frame or to the front of the trigger guard.
 
Baker is the same guy who advises using the sound of racking a pump gun to frighten off a confirmed intruder. WAFJ He's a YouTube personality looking for hits.
 
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