I love the look of the SxS stagecoach guns, but I've never fired one. The couple pump action guns I've fired (Remington 870, Mossberg 500, Ithaca 37) are reliable, but I don't know about durability.

What I'd REALLY like is bolt-action shotgun like my dad has. I'll have to email him and ask what the model is, because I can't remember for the life of me...

Get a pump. If it is to save your butt, the last thing you want to be doing is breaking open the action every 2 rounds to reload while bullets are whizzing all around you. I have a Rem 870 and a SS Mos 500. Both work hard and take a serious beating. You can put food on the table, protect your butt and even signal (flares). I've never (knock on wood) had a pump shotgun fail.

I have used both. Hunting wise I always go with the double barrel shot gun, more time and pateince is needed on each shot. Tactical (used to be a bail enforcement agent) I used a Rem 870 and a moss 500 marine edition, they are easier on shooting time and no need to reload after each shot. Maintenance wise the Moss 500 marine edition is hard to break it is built for salt water conditions.

I'm glad that some companies have started to make more youth/women's shotguns. I'd really love to have one or two or three. The last time I fired a standard shotgun, I thought I'd broken my collarbone from the recoil, but I'm eager to try out the smaller models to see if they're more comfortable for me.

Howdy. Ultimately, I think that the double barrel is the most reliable shotgun, because of fewer moving parts. And, they and can be cut down into "whipits" or pistols should the need arise. Stoegers look like a good brand. But practically speaking, I don't think a pump Mossberg 590 or a Remington 870 is going to crap out on you. They are both proven police/military/hunting weapons. They are going to outlast your ammo stores in a full SHTF scenario, and they have larger magazines. For personal defense, I am a believer in the 12 gauge Mossberg 590A1 Mariner. Add a folding, recoil-absorbing KNOXX stock w/pistol grip, and you have a weatherproof, concealable riot gun that can't be beat. You can fire it one-handed, like a pistol, and hit your target without damaging your hand, wrist or arm. Not that you'd need to, but that is how effective the recoil-absorbing grip is.

Here is one of my wish list guns
www.benelliusa.com/firearms/m4.tpl
No doubt at all that a shotgun is one of the most versatile firearms a person can own. A 12 gauge rifled slug can kill almost anything on the planet. You have to shoot a lot of different rounds to find out what works best with your particular shotgun but once you have the choices dialed in you golden.

Slightly off-topic, but I must attend to this. Clyde Barrow was an expert gunman, thus his success fighting the law. He researched weapons in the history books and found that the Mormon settlers in Utah used a cut-down shotgun known as a "whipit" to great effect at close range against Indians and assassins. So Clyde configured a number of whipits for Bonnie and himself. He used semi-automatic Remington shotguns. He'd saw the stock down to the bolt, then saw the barrel down to the magazine tube. Then he'd attach a short loop of rope to the end of the stock. He'd loop the shotgun over his shoulder and hide it under his coat. When he walked into a bank he'd flip the coat open and "whip" the gun up to firing position. He used a 10 or 12 gauge. Bonnie's was a 20 gauge. Clyde also turned BARs into whipits. He didn't like Tommy guns because they wouldn't stop a car and because the drum mags were unreliable (they'd jam if dented, and the springs wore out over time). But the BAR had no such problems.

for killer photos: texashideout.tripod.com/guns.html

One gun that fits this category That I have always wanted a gunsmith to make me is a Howdah Pistol. A howdah is the sedan chair on the back of an elephant. When hunting tigers on elephant back sometimes the tiger would run up the elephant's trunk or flankl and attack the human hunters perched there. The solution was to make a handgun that was basically a sawed off shotgun side by side in 12 bore or 16 bore and load one barrel with buck shot and one with round ball or however you felt to load it. Barrels were about 10" long max. it's a quick pointing close quarters combat weapon par excellance. Some howdah pistols were rifle and large bore handgun calibres in fact the first were sawed off rifles and shotguns.
Here's a picture of a Purdy Howdah Pistol in 16 bore(gauge)
www.ctmuzzleloaders.com/antiqu...ah.html
the older ones unfortunately are damascus steel barrels and therefore can't handle modern powders. Dixie Gunworks has a .50 calibre blackpowder one for sale. But I'd like mike as a saddle holstered shotgun in at least 16 gauge.
I also heard that someone is making a .61 calibre blackpowder howdah I think that makes it just about a 20 gauge. That's respectable, I think at the sub 10 yards distances these weapons were designed for they would be real fight stoppers.

More useless shotgun factoids that will only interest the ghosts of Clyde Barrow and (perhaps) Bonnie Parker:

Remember Mad Max's double barrel pistol shotgun? I do. :-) Well, another Aussie movie came out a few years ago, called "The Chopper", and lo-and-behold, Chopper Reed had a double barrel pistol shotgun (.410 in his case) in THAT movie. So I wondered, why the Aussie pistol-shotgun thing? And then recently I read that pistol shotguns have been used by outlaws Down Under for the simple reason that there aren't any actual pistols down there. Makes sense. Hell, if I was a bad guy I'd probably do the same.

Now for duckbills. During the Vietnam "police action" (as they say), some branch of the US military developed a choke-like muzzle for combat shotguns called a duckbill. Duckbills were really cool. They were essentially two long cuts in the sides of the shotgun muzzle. What they did was, they spread the shot sideways so that the shot pattern would be rectangular rather than round. There were ratios involved, depending on the size of the muzzle cuts. Like, one duckbill might spread shot 2x horizontally for every 1x vertically. I don't have all the details because I'm too lazy to google them again and spend an hour doing the research. But that's the gist of duckbills.