Mark Keefe of American Rifleman suggest that the 28 Gauge Raging Judge is not the target of the upcoming ATF announcement. I’m betting you can’t find a Saiga for sale anywhere currently.
UPDATE: I should mention I still don’t get how this isn’t a Title II firearm, given that it looks to have an overall length less than 26 inches, and the 28 gauge has a bore diameter of 0.550 inches. If it has a rifled barrel that large, it’s a destructive device. If it has a smooth barrel, even one that tapers down to under 0.5 inches, then it would still be an AOW. It would need a rifled bore that’s less than 0.5 inches. Can you get 28 gauge down that small?
Is there a minimum specification for twist or ridges/lands in a bore?
For instance, could you have three ridges with a 1 in 240 twist and still have it be called ‘rifling’?
There could be. The .50BMG is actually of a larger diameter than .50 caliber, I believe .51 caliber for the bullet. But ATF measures from the lands to determine bore diameter. Going from .55 to .50 would take some awfully thick rifling.
An extra full choke on a 28 gauge is still .526 inches inside diameter…
ATF can decide it has a “sporting use” and allow it anyhow iirc.
That would be fairly unprecedented, but certainly possible.
It doesn’t matter much. Nobody will buy that overpriced boat anchor anyway.
I’d buy one (if I could find one that worked). Then I’d smoothbore it.
I’d do several times, actually, so I could sell them. Five shot Auto-Burglar? Hells yeah.
I’d rather have a REAL Ithaca Auto & Burglar, thank you very much. I’d think two rounds of 20-gauge would beat all five rounds from the 28-gauge Taurus Judge, stopping-power wise.
And if the 28-gauge Judge is a legal, non-NFA handgun, then I don’t see any reason why they can’t bring back the Auto & Burglar and sell that as a handgun. I mean, if all you have to do is rifle the bore to make it legal…
Then all you need are those ball bearing supported anti-spin sabots, like they used for HEAT rounds from 105mm tank guns. Hmm, that might get a bit pricey per shot.
I’ve made a 20ga AutoBurglar clone. It’s … okay. Not really something I’d be all that comfortable using for defense. Awkward is one word I’d use to describe it. I suspect that a lot of the modern fans of the gun don’t have experience with it or anything like it. We can do better now.
How many Raging Judges can dance on the head of a pin?
ATF Firearms Theology Branch is working on a determination.
I still haven’t been able to figure out how they can sell the .410 Judges or others, since shotguns with rotating cylinders are considered destructive devices by ATF, which is how they outlawed the Streetsweeper. They skipped the whole SBS/AOW thing entirely and effectively outlawed them by retroactively declaring them to be something you’re not allowed to possess, but putting in an exemption to have them registered before a certain date. They’ll probably do the same for the whole Judge series if they ever get enough political will.
The bore diameter is below .50 caliber, which makes it not a DD by statutory definition. If it had a smooth bore, it could be an AOW. The Street Sweeper could be reclassified because it was 12 gauge, which is above .50 caliber. You could still legally make a .410 version of the Street Sweeper.