FN P-12 Shotgun
Rob PincusDescription
The 12-gauge pump-action shotgun is ubiquitous in the defensive market and in police cruisers. FN’s version, the FN P-12, is a weapon you can rely on for home defense or patrol use. We do some shotgun training with the P-12 to see how it performs.
No Ordinary 12 Gauge
The FN name is associated with military-grade firearms. You may think of FN as a rifle and pistol manufacturer. The P-12 shotgun is a recent addition to FN’s lineup and completes the defensive firearm collection that you might want if you stay with the FN brand.
Many people think of a 12-gauge pump shotgun as a boring, entry-level firearm. Not so the FN P-12, which comes with a fiber-optic front sight and flip-up rear sight, which is part of the base of the cantilevered rear sight that is designed as a rail so you can mount the optic of your choice. It comes with a modified choke tube, so you can put whatever choke tube you want on it. The variable choke makes the gun more useful in various roles.
Capacity is five 2¾-inch or four three-inch shells.
Like many FN firearms, the FN P-12 is aggressively textured, which is good for both defensive use and hunting.
Range Testing
We do some up-close firearms training with the FN P-12 using birdshot. It has very light recoil with birdshot and cycles smoothly. Moving back to 45 yards, we put some slugs in it, use the fiber-optic front sight, and see how well it shoots the slugs without changing the barrel or the choke. This is one of the things you should be interested in when looking at the FN P-12 shotgun.
At 45 yards, we first shoot some 00 buckshot and the pattern opens up quite a bit. As a responsible firearms owner, you may prefer using slugs at distance.
Wait so at first you said with the proper choke in the beginning but then you mentioned during the end that you don't need to.change the choke when shooting slugs. I got thrown off a bit. My question is with this gun can I shoot buckshot and slugs without changing choke or barrel?
What is the trigger like? It seems to me that a lot of pump shotguns have really poor triggers. Lots of creep,heavy long and gritty. Is the action smooth or like dragging a log down a gravel road?