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A sawed-off shotgun (U.S.) or sawn-off shotgun (UK) is a type of shotgun with a shorter gun barrel and often a shorter or deleted stock, compared to a standard shotgun. The sawed-off shotgun has a larger spread and a more limited range, but it has about the same destructive power. Its reduced size makes it easier to conceal. Such a powerful and compact weapon is especially suitable for nefarious purposes, such as armed robbery. To make shotguns less concealable, many jurisdictions have a minimum legal length for shotgun barrels and most gun makers do not offer undersized shotguns to the public. As its name implies, the sawed-off shotgun is usually produced by illegal home-made modification of a standard shotgun.
The sawed-off shotgun is also known as sawed-off or sawn off.
Legal issues
The term most genuinely applies to illegal weapons that were created by literally sawing off a regular shotgun's barrel. Sawing off has the most dramatic effect when applied to double-barreled shotguns or single-shot shotguns. Pump or semiautomatic shotguns have a tube magazine attached to the underside of the barrel which limits the minimum barrel length to the length of the magazine tube (although this too can be shortened, with a corresponding loss in magazine capacity). Shotguns using a box magazine do not lose capacity when sawed off, but they are far less common than those with tubular magazines. Shotguns manufactured with barrels under the legal minimum length, while not literally "sawed-off" shotguns, are usually regarded the same as shotguns that were made illegal through modification.
In the United States, it is illegal for a private citizen to possess a sawed-off shotgun (a barrel length less than 18 in. or 46 cm and an overall length less than 28 inches) without a tax-stamped permit from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which requires an extensive background check and a $200 fee for every transfer. A new tax stamp must be purchased with every transfer of the short-barrelled shotgun, and transfers must be made through a Class III Federal Firearms Licensed (FFL) dealer. (See National Firearms Act.)
Additional restrictions may apply in many other jurisdictions. State and local laws may entirely prohibit civilian possession of short-barrelled shotguns. (These restrictions do not apply to military and police departments.) In most states, a shotgun less than a certain length is legally classed as a pistol, and requires a pistol licence (which is much more difficult to obtain than a basic shotgun license), plus a registration. The act of sawing off the gun would constitute unlawful manufacture of a pistol.
British law allows a certificate to be held for Section 2 firearms (Shotguns with two or less shells held in a magazine) and only for use in vermin control, re-enactment, and clay pigeon and target shooting. Under the Section 5 Firearms Act, a shotgun with a barrel length less than 24 inches, or a shotgun with a total length of less than 40 inches is not covered by a Shotgun license, instead becoming a Section 5 firearm (prohibited). Possession is heavily punishable by law if the bearer is found not to hold a firearms license.
Police and military use
Minimum length and barrel length restrictions only apply to civilian use; military and police departments may issue short-barrelled shotguns, and major manufacturers offer special models with barrels in the range of 10 to 14 inches (25-36 cm) as riot shotguns or combat shotguns for use in areas with restricted space. These are generally referred to as "entry shotguns", as they are generally used for entering buildings, where the short, easy handling is more important than the increased ammunition capacity of a longer shotgun. Another use for very short shotguns is for use with breaching rounds, which are usually made of sintered powdered metal, although a normal buckshot or birdshot round will also work. A shotgun is used for breaching by placing the gun next to a door lock (0 to 2 inches away, 0 to 5 cm), and firing at a 45 degree downward angle through the door between the lock or latch and the doorframe. The impact of the projectile(s) open a hole through the door, removing the latch or locking bolt. Once through the door, the shot or sintered metal disperses quickly, and since it was aimed downwards, the risk of harming occupants on the other side of the breached door is minimized. Breaching guns used by police and the military may have barrels as short as 10 inches (25 cm), and they often have only a pistol grip rather than a full buttstock. Since only a couple of rounds are fired, any sporting shotgun with a 3 round capacity could be shortened and used as a capable breaching shotgun.
Barrel length and shot spread
The length of a shotgun barrel does not significantly affect the pattern or spread of the pellets. The pattern is primarily impacted by the type of cartridge fired and the choke, or constriction normally found at the muzzle of a shotgun barrel. Cutting off the end of the barrel will remove the choke, which generally only extends about two inches (about 5 cm) inward from the muzzle. This results in a cylinder bore, which causes the widest spread generally found in shotgun barrels. For an even wider pattern, special "spreader chokes" or "spreader loads" can be used, that are designed to spread the shot further. (See choke for more information on the impact of chokes. See shotgun shell for information on spreader loads.)
Popular culture
Sawed-off shotguns tend to have a highly romanticized reputation in the United States, much like the IMI Desert Eagle, and are often termed "wrist-breakers" by professional shooters due to many naive new shooters' misconceptions that they are easy to discharge one-handed.
In the Sherlock Holmes story The Valley of Fear, a key element of the plot is that the murdered man (an American) has been shot at close range by a sawed-off shotgun (thus identifying the criminal as probably American, too), and his face is so destroyed as to be unrecognisable; only his clothing and a branded symbol on his arm identify him.
The most famous movie character to wield a sawed-off shotgun is arguably Mel Gibson's Mad Max character. Antonio Banderas also plays a character in the movies Desperado and Once Upon A Time In Mexico who is notorious for using a sawn-off double-barreled shotgun, further adding to the romanticized popular image of these weapons.
In the 1991 film Judgment Day, a sawed-off shotgun (specifically a cut-down Winchester Model 1887/1901 lever action shotgun) is the weapon of choice for the Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the original Terminator film, Kyle Reese constructed his own sawn-off shotgun from a weapon captured from a police officer.
Several video games have a sawed-off shotgun as a usable weapon, including Doom, Action Quake 2, The City of Lost Heaven, Deus Ex, Codename 47, Max Payne, the TimeSplitters series, Blood 1 and 2, The Specialists and Action Half Life, both Half-Life mods, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, The Suffering and its sequel, _Ties_That_Bind, Driver 2, San Andreas, in which you can use two at a time, Fallout 2, and Criminal Origins. Also, the main antogonist, Jericho, from Driver 3 uses the Sawn Off as his primary weapon.
The sawed-off shotgun also has an infamous Mafioso reputation in Italy, where, reputedly, the "Lupara" (sawed-off) is used to kill offenders who have broken the Omertà . It has an "up-close-and-personal" profile, and, coupled with its huge, short-range spread of shot, is seen as an executioner's tool by many mobsters and clued-up outsiders.
Rapper Krayzie Bone is known to go by the alias Sawed-Off Leatha Face. He released the undeground album The Legends Underground (Part I) under that alias.
See also
External links
"Sawed-off shotgun"