relighting the flame

Darn near a year ago, I happened to win a Mossberg 500 by being the best of the worst shooters at a quasi-IDPA/USPSA match I shot. Finally, all this time later, that shotgun is in the hands of its intended owner – my father.
Back before I was born, my parents were what I would quantify as “gunnies” – they owned a Ruger Mini-14, a pump-action .22, a blackpowder rifle, and a few other odds-and-ends that they used for occasional competitions, recreation, and rodent control at his parents’ farm (groundhogs are both stupid, and plentiful). Additionally, my father, like me, was a Navy man, only he had the luck to serve back when the 1911 was still the primary sidearm of our armed forces, rather than the slack-jawed idiot we currently use, and he rather enjoyed the platform. However, life gets in the way, and over the years, the Mini-14 was sold off, and the rest were shelved and stored for the intervening years.
And then life started getting more complicated, and more dangerous, with home invasions, robberies, and Lord alone knows what else increasing on a seemingly daily basis. Knowing that my parents did not maintain a home defense gun, when I won the Mossy, my first thought was to offer it to them, and they accepted. Over Thanksgiving, I finally had the opportunity to deliver the shotgun (cross-country transfer of firearms is complicated, even for long guns, and even among family members, and requires far more effort than it should) and we put it through its paces.
So if the answer is this:

The question obviously must be, “What does it look like when two grown men have potentially too much fun in an afternoon?”
Unfortunately, it was not all “fun and games”, but we will get to the good stuff in short order. The first problem was finding somewhere that would actually let us try out the shotgun appropriately, which seemed amazingly difficult for them living in Washington State. The first range we went to was a sportsman’s club (with the emphasis obviously and pointedly applied), and was the kind of place where the only shotgun shooting was trap and/or skeet, no one else can shoot more than once every two seconds, and no one talked to you, or even bothered to post hours of operation. Sure, it was a private club, but being open to the public does imply a few certain details. Once we found out they required empty chamber indicators for “cold range” operations, we headed back to the local sporting goods store to secure some, only to find out they did not carry any… despite knowing that the sportsman’s club in question required them. Getting a bead on the animosity between others and that particular range, we looked elsewhere, and found a quite satisfactory facility.
A little farther up the road, a $10 “donation”, and a half-an-hour safety brief later (which saved me from having to cover the Four Rules and other such details), my father and I were set up on an even larger and more impressive range facility, which also happened to be a private club, but, unlike the other one, actually understood what it meant to be “open to the public”. Getting our act together, dad chambered up his first load of 3″ birdshot, and let fly – dead on target (a paper plate at about 30ish feet), with an accompanying “OW!” Note to self (and not being a shotgunner, I did not know, but should have) – 3″ shells are not a good “introductory” load, even in birdshot.
However, after recovering, he tried to cycle the Mossberg, and was met with a locked-solid action. Nothing moved. Not the slide, not the bolt, not a bloody thing. The little slide-release lever was fully retracted into the receiver, and nothing at all was cycling. Our safety-brief-giver had mentioned that the old guys Range Safety Officers manning the range would be more than willing to help if we had problems, so I toddled back up to their booth, and requested assistance. Unscrewing the barrel lug, they popped it out of the receiver, at which point the slide cycled beautifully, and it seemed as though we were back in business.
Until it happened again.
And again.
And again.
Each time, we unscrewed the barrel lug, removed it, and cycled out the spent shell, but the gun just did not seem willing to cycle when fully-assembled, and it obviously was not built to be a break-apart single-shot.
Finally, one of the RSOs (coincidentally an ex-active-duty Marine) came down, and decided it was time to break the Mossy apart and see what the problem was. I will give Mossberg credit – dissassembly of their shotguns is deceptively simple: just pop out a pin, take out the trigger assembly, and darned if everything else did not fall out after it. Now, as to where all those little bits and pieces go… well, you are on your own for that. And there were a hell of a lot more fiddly bits than my Remington (well, two more, at least, but still).
After oiling up the innards, and after a few tens of minutes, it became relatively apparent that the Marine did not quite remember where the bits and pieces went either, so I wandered off to get additional assistance, and returned with a slightly-brusque individual who certainly knew how to slap a Mossberg back together. A few minutes later, he banged off a few rounds without the slightest problem cycling, and we were off.
For at least a few rounds, until it started jamming up solid again.
We finally gave up and shifted over to the box of reduced-recoil 2.75″ buckshot I brought along (which was much kinder to our shoulders), which had absolutely no problems cycling at all.
Back to the birdshot, and we had an oversized paperweight. The Marine’s opinion was that we were not trying to cycle it hard enough, but in this engineer’s opinion, cycling a firearm after it has fired should not be a matter of excessive force. After 25 rounds of the birdshot and about 6 of the buck, the gun was still bricking about every other shot, but we were out of shells, and moved on, with my father promising to come back and put some more rounds through it (the brusque individual indicated that the “problem”, whatever it might be, should sort itself out after a few hundred rounds – not sure how that makes me feel, but it is not good).
Next up was my little Walther PPS (I wanted to bring the open-top, but being all old-skool and long-barreled, it was too long for my Pellican pistol case), which, as it turns out, was too small for my father. Being trained for a 1911, and, I guess, having larger hands than mine, he could not find a comfortable way to grasp the diminutive polymer-framed firearm, and traded between having the second knuckle of his thumb jackhammered, or having the same joint of his middle finger abraded (the PPS’ magazine release switch is a love-it-or-leave-it feature). He was dead on target on the paper plate, but the gun simply was not a good fit.
Which, in turn, is a lesson unto itself – never (or, at least, very rarely) purchase a new firearm unless you have had the chance to try it on, and preferrably shoot it. Different guns are built for different hands, and the PPS with its narrow backstrap (I forgot to bring the other ones) is definitely not for people with big hands. Sure, it is a wonderfully concealable handgun, but if it does not fit you, you are not going to practice with it, and if you do not practice, you will never get effective with it… and with a sight radius as small as the PPS’ (something else my father did not really like), you need to practice. The good news is that more and more new guns are customizable to your own particular physiological requirements… but a lot are not. Try them on, shoot them, put them through their paces – this is not exactly a “small” investment.
However, despite the set-backs, malfunctions, misfires (mostly on my part), cold, bruises, and whatever else, we both had whole lot of fun, and my father is already making plans on joining up with the second facility and returning (with my mother, who used to shoot better than he did) on a more-regular-than-every-20-years basis. To me, I consider that a success.
So, to all of the Mossberg fanatics out there, I have a few questions: Why would a brand-spanking new Mossberg 500 lock itself solid after every shot, to the point where you have to grasp the slide and slam the butt of the firearm down on a table in order to cycle it? Even better, why would the same firearm occasionally spit out an unfired round from its magazine when firing (yet another malfunction we had at the range, though that one was more intermittent)? Should those two items be considered warranty items and treated appropriately? And, finally, what stock replacement or addition would you recommend for increasing the stock stock’s (harhar) length of pull and adding a little padding/cushioning/recoil reduction, bearing in mind that the end user does not like pistol grips on shotguns?
I have to admit, it was pretty cool reintroducing my father to the shooting sports, and I definitely appreciate the opportunity. I wish things had gone a little better (and that I had tested the Mossy rather than get hung up on giving him a “new” gun), but I guess now we both know that practicing breaking down and reassembling firearms is important. And, happy unintended consequence: a whole host of options just presented themselves for Christmas shopping! Win.