We all know the pistol grip only shotgun is a bit contentious as a defensive weapon. It’s small and powerful but tough to control. The Shockwave and TAC-14, with their respective KAK grips, make things a little comfier but still challenging to control. What if we took the pistol grips on a pistol grip only gun and doubled them? What happens, then? Replace the rear and front grips of a pump shotgun with pistol grips and just see what happens. That gave birth to the dual pistol grip only shotgun.
The Dual Pistol Grip Shotgun
I have this PDF collection of all these old Soldier of Fortune magazines, and one of my favorite parts is all these old gun ads. Finding products, I’ve never heard of or seen. Seeing crazy guns that never made it out of print. Plus, seeing the occasional Choate ad that brings us back to the world of tactical shotguns.
One of my favorites is this monstrosity of a shotgun with a front and rear grip and a flashlight mounted to the top as a quasi-aiming device. It’s glorious in that way that only guns from the 1870s and 1980s can be. With this in mind, I used Choate to put together my dual pistol grip shotgun.
Specifically, a Choate rear and front grip, and I attached them to a Winchester 1300 Defender for my experiment. Vertical grips might not be the rage these days, but they were quite popular on short, often heavier-than-normal firearms. They helped stabilize the weapon, and the idea was that they could help you resist muzzle rise. For me, I want to use the vertical and rear grip to create tension using the Push/Pull method of recoil reduction.
Maybe the Dual Pistol Grip shotgun can give the PGO a new, more reputable name.
At the Range
I practiced getting a nice, tight push/pull in play. With the technique, as I understand it, the front hand is doing most of the work. It’s a 60/40 split, if you will. I practiced getting a good tight grip and keeping the gun up and in play. I worked the action and practiced getting into and releasing the tension. It felt good, easy to hold, and nice and tight.
I went full bore off the bat and loaded up some full-powered buckshot in the gun. I pointed and aimed every shot and worked from ten yards on B8 targets. The first shot was surprisingly painful to that front wrist that was doing all the work. My rear wrist felt nothing, and the front absorbed it all.
Big oof, but my shot was on target, and I had the next round cycled in just a flick of the wrist. I launched another, even with the protest of my wrist, and landed the nine pellets in the B8 once more. I moved to some lighter-loaded, reduced recoil buckshot rounds, and my wrist appreciated it.
Flying through rounds using a tight push-pull technique was easy and I launched multiple rounds into multiple targets with decent accuracy. Surprisingly so. The gun doesn’t get away from you, and the vertical grip adds a real level of control over the gun. I could fire two rounds on two targets in a hair over two seconds and keep it in the black of a B8 at ten yards.
Is the Dual Pistol Grip Worth It?
If your choice is between a rear vertical pistol grip only gun and a dual vertical pistol grip, then go dual. I would still choose a Shockwave configuration over this setup. Maybe I should add a vertical grip to a Shockwave? Beyond that, I would choose a stocked shotgun over any of them. With a stocked shotgun, I could put two rounds into two targets in well under two seconds. It’s just much easier to control and much faster.
Still, the dual pistol grip works better than a single pistol grip gun.
