Smith & Wesson's M&P12 Bullpup Shotgun: Review

Smith & Wesson jumping into the shotgun arena was big news, and a surprise to many. An even bigger surprise was the shotgun itself — a bullpup design with double magazine tubes. For a company as old and conservative as Smith & Wesson (founded 1852), the M&P 12 at first glance seems like the S&W engineers embraced the famous American custom of, “Hold my beer and watch this!.” The M&P 12 is so unlike other products in Smith & Wesson’s catalog that its very appearance has gotten it a huge amount of publicity. Which I suppose, to some degree, was the point. Let’s look at the specs of the M&P 12 first — and yes, I can hear you guys in the back shouting about the KelTec KSG, we’ll get to a comparison with that in due time, relax. But first, the Smith & Wesson:

This is far from the first shotgun Smith & Wesson has offered. In the 1970s through the 1990s, the company first sold the S&W 916 and later the S&W 3000, a traditional pump gun made by Howa. But the S&W M&P 12 is a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun which uses a bullpup design, and that bullpup design is why it looks “weird.” A bullpup firearm has the trigger forward of the receiver/action/fire control group, instead of behind it (which is far more common). Bullpup firearms end up having a shorter overall length, making them very handy in urban environments and getting in and out of vehicles, but bullpup designs do traditionally have a few drawbacks — first, because the distance between the trigger and the fire control group is longer, trigger pulls usually suffer. Second, the controls are often either less ergonomic or more difficult to operate due to location (in close to your body and often away from your hands).

The M&P 12 has a full 19-inch barrel, but due to the bullpup design the shotgun is only 27.8-inches long. Unloaded it is a hefty 8.3 pounds, but it feels a bit lighter as that weight is balanced over the pistol grip. The barrel is 4140 CMV steel and threaded for chokes, and comes with a cylinder bore choke tube installed, and a Modified choke tube in the case, along with a simple choke wrench. The gun uses Rem Choke-pattern chokes, which are available everywhere. The barrel is mostly concealed under a ventilated shroud. FYI: Smith & Wesson didn’t provide a parts list for the shotgun, so I’ll have to make up appropriately technical names for some of the parts — let’s call that big triangular piece in front the barrel block. It is a sizable hunk of aluminum, and both the magazine tube and barrel shroud are attached to it — the shroud via two small Allen-head screws, the magazine tubes by two large Allen-head bolts. The barrel shroud is aluminum, and the slots at 10 and 2 o’clock are M-LOK, for mounting accessories such as lights. As the barrel is fully enclosed by a shroud there is no way for you to get any part of this gun too hot to touch. Instead of a steampunk aesthetic, the M&P 12 to me has more of a space age art deco look. Atop the shroud is an 11.25-inch section of aluminum MIL STD 1913 “Picatinny” rail for mounting optics or sights. The M&P 12 does not come with any sights, and you’ll need them. Unlike a traditional shotgun with a long barrel and a stock that puts your face down on the gun so your eye looks down that barrel, this is a short gat and your face sticks the same height off the rail as it would an AR-15. Trying to aim it while looking over the top of an empty rail doesn’t work so well.

The magazine tubes are steel, as is the receiver, which contribute to the weight of this gun. The M&P 12 has a three-inch chamber, which means it takes three-inch and 2¾-inch shells (six or seven rounds per tube, respectively). However, and I think most interestingly and maybe most importantly about this shotgun, the M&P 12 has been designed to feed and fire mini-shells, or short shotshells (1¾"), whatever you want to call them. Smith & Wesson doesn’t state tube capacity for them, but I heard capacity for mini-shells was 10 each. At the range, I was able to comfortably fit 11 mini-shells into each magazine tube, giving this shotgun an incredible 22+1 capacity. And I think that’s important, given how awkward and slow this gun is to reload. But more on that and on mini-shells in a bit. The lower receiver is one big solid piece of polymer, and it reaches to the chamber end of the barrel. The pistol grip is an actual grip frame from Smith & Wesson’s M&P pistols, complete with interchangeable backstraps. I first saw this on S&W’s new M&P 15T II rifle. It gives the gun a distinctly Smith & Wesson look, and the M&P M2.0 texturing on the grip is nicely aggressive. However, just like on the 15T II there is an empty space inside the grip (where a pistol magazine would go) and S&W has missed an opportunity to put a trapdoor on the grip and make that internal space usable.

The steel section between the barrel and the buttstock is called the “reciprocating cover” in the owner’s manual, and it is stamped steel. That’s where your cheek will be resting while you’re shooting, and if you happen to be shooting outside in the winter, you’ll notice that cold steel against your flesh immediately. That cover encloses the chamber/feeding area, and it is “reciprocating” only in that to disassemble this gun (or use the cable lock) you’ll be hitting a release lever and pulling the cover/stock to the rear, away from the barrel. The controls on the M&P 12 are a mish-mash of the familiar and strange. The bilateral safety selector is pure AR-15. Before you start wondering, the trigger group in no way resembles that of an AR-15. For a bullpup, the trigger was better than average, six pounds with just a bit of take-up and grit. It was a little heavier than a standard shotgun, but I don’t feel there’s really anything to complain about. If you want to work the pump but the hammer is cocked, you’ll need to push down on the “action lock lever button” located at the front of the trigger guard. It is located and shaped so you can easily do this with your trigger finger while keeping a firing grip on the gun. It moves down about a quarter of an inch. When you pull the trigger, it moves to this position as well, and the pump is then unlocked. Ergonomically, this switch works great. Aesthetically, I don’t like the looks of it at all when it is sticking out/down, but then again you don’t really see it when you’re the shooter. The pump slide itself is polymer, and comes from the factory with a vertical pistol grip installed. The vertical foregrip is shaped and styled like an M&P grip, but slenderer (and yes, that’s a real world, even though it doesn’t seem like it should be). If you don’t like this vertical grip you can remove it. It is mounted in M-LOK slots on the underside of the pump slide. The pump action of this shotgun isn’t especially smooth — it reminded me more of a Mossberg 500/590 than a Remington 870. Like all pump-action shotguns, I expect it will smooth out over time as the pieces wear together

Normally, I am not a fan of vertical grips on pump shotguns, but this isn’t your average shotgun. The pump slide is far closer to your body than with a traditional shotgun, especially when all the way back, and I found gripping the vertical foregrip felt more natural than rotating my close support hand horizontal to grip the slide itself. Your experience may vary. The slide has angled wavy serrations for gripping that are a deliberate copy of the slide serrations on M&P pistols. I will point out something that I and my volunteer testers noticed. When running the pump with the vertical foregrip, shooters had a tendency to pull the muzzle of the gun down as they ran the pump back. This didn’t really happen when just running a slick forend. To switch feeding between the magazine tubes, there is a large crossbolt at the rear of the slide. It sticks out about half an inch on one side when it’s flush on the other, and whichever side of the crossbolt is protruding, the magazine tube on that side will be the one feeding shells into the chamber. When one tube runs dry you will have to manually switch over to the other one. There is no middle position for this selector. The pump slide is wide, and the crossbolt adds additional width, for a total width of 3.7-inches.

I worried that the crossbolt would be in a bad position when you were carrying the shotgun crossbody, bumping against your torso, but I found it usually sat in the gap between my arm and my body. However, I discovered that if you set the shotgun down, whether on a hard surface or soft (carpet), at least some of the time the crossbolt will get pushed up, switching your selected magazine tube. This happened to me a lot during testing. I wish there was a way to lock the crossbolt in place to prevent this. A recessed button would solve the problem, but not be as quick to work. One disadvantage to this bullpup design is there is no quick or easy way to check if the chamber is empty. To address that Smith & Wesson has added a loaded chamber indicator on the top of the receiver. It’s small, but it’s there. Another disadvantage — it is a complicated design, with a lot of parts. A lot of unfamiliar parts. The instructions for disassembly/field stripping, which involves separating the upper receiver/barrel/magazine assembly from the stock/lower receiver, take most of four pages in the owner’s manual, and include sixteen reference photos. Sixteen. Considering you can clean the barrel from either end without disassembly (if you’ve got a flexible or pull-through rod) I doubt many customers are going to fully disassemble the gun.

However…the disassembly process isn’t as complicated as the owner’s manual makes it seem, just different. And pay attention: during reassembly, the photos show the gun upside down. There’s a reason for this — the stainless elevator bars need to be alongside the bolt during reassembly of the upper and lower receivers, and the easiest way to make that happen is to reassemble it upside down. The loading/ejection port is at the bottom of the shotgun, halfway between the pistol grip and buttpad. With the pump slide back, you can see inside to the chamber, as well as the mouths of the two magazine tubes. It is possible to load the chamber separately, you just have to push the stainless steel elevator bars up out of the way. There are high-visibility orange polymer followers in the magazines. On either side of the shotgun, alongside the barrel shroud and just forward of the chamber, you’ll see the polymer “load/unload assist buttons.” Pushing down on these wide, U-shaped buttons moves a tab in the magazine tube out of the way, so you can much more easily get shells in and out of the magazine. Frankly, without using them, loading the magazines takes quite a bit of force. However, it will take a bit of practice to load using these buttons, as if you press down on one while not having a shell ready to push into the tube, whatever shells are in the magazine tube will come shooting out into the loading area. Loading the shotgun works best muzzle down, leaning it to one side or the other so the shells automatically line up with the respective magazine. Does that sound complicated? It is, a little, but it’s not difficult. It just takes a bit of practice to do smoothly. This shotgun just isn’t quick or easy to load, and it will require two hands and (ideally) a hard surface on which to plant the front of the gun. Topping it off while it’s up on your shoulder is a non-starter. However, the whole point of having 14+ rounds onboard means you shouldn’t have to reload in the middle of any altercations. At the range, I had a good time. The first thing I did was load the M&P 12 with mini-shells to see if it would, in fact, feed them. The third round through the shotgun jammed up (a Challenger birdshot load) and when I pulled it out I saw the brass rim was a little chewed up. As I never had a single problem after that, I presume the rim was damaged when I loaded it into the shotgun. That’s the only problem I had in several range trips and several hundred rounds fired.

While it looks like a prop from Battlestar Galactica, at its heart the M&P 12 is just a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, and runs like one. Felt recoil was a little lighter than most pumps, as the gun is a bit heavier. I ran it as hard as I could, and when I say you won’t be able to burn yourself on a hot barrel as it’s completely enclosed, I’m talking from personal experience. I never managed to short-stroke the gun (something I’m known for), perhaps because the vertical pistol grip gave me more leverage. I used the shotgun to knock down steel at my club, and also did patterning with various shells. Interchangeable chokes are nice, but if you’re interested in shotguns as defensive tools rather than hunting ones, they are unnecessary. Modern buckshot loads feature high-tech buffers and wads which keep the pattern tight even out of unchoked shotguns. Hornady’s Versa-Tite or Federal’s Flight Control wads keep their buckshot patterns usually well under five inches at ten yards out of every shotgun no matter the barrel length, and things were no different with the M&P 12.

When loaded with mini-shells the gun was a downright pussycat to shoot. And let’s talk about those shells, as I think the M&P 12’s ability to feed/fire them is the main thing which makes it different/better than its competitors. Traditionally, the three major perceived disadvantages of a shotgun for defensive use are its low capacity, slow reload speed, and significant recoil. The double magazine tubes of the M&P 12 address capacity, but there is a simple solution which addresses all three points: The 12-gauge short shotshell. 12-gauge short shotshells or mini-shells are physically shorter than standard shells, which means more of them fit in the tubular magazines found in most shotguns. They have less recoil than standard shells as well. However, standard shotguns are designed to feed and fire standard-length shells, and traditionally neither pump-action nor semi-auto shotguns are reliable when fed with those short shells. But they work in the M&P 12. Let’s dive into these mini-shells, if their existence is new to you. Currently, there aren’t a huge number of manufacturers of short shells, or much of a variety in loads. Aguila (Mexico), Challenger (France), and Federal (U.S.A.) are the only three manufacturers that I’m aware of. Federal just joined the bandwagon last year with their Shorty Shotshells, and that is a very good thing. Why? Federal has not just entered the game with their Shorty Shotshells, but gotten them SAAMI (Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute) certification, which allows other companies to manufacture short shells to what are now standardized specs. In fact, I believe it is this SAAMI certification of short shotshells which convinced Mossberg to build the 590S (the only other shotgun from a major manufacturer meant to run mini-shells), and I wouldn’t be surprised to see other ammo makers introducing short shells in the near future, as soon as the current scamdemic ammo panic sorts itself out. But that may take a while.

Standard 12-gauge shells are advertised as 2¾-inch shells, and the mini-shells are officially 1¾-inch shells. However, 2¾-inch shells are not actually 2¾ inches long — at least, not when loaded. That is the length of the plastic hull before it is crimped and after it is fired. When it is loaded, a 12-gauge 2¾-inch shell is roughly 2¼ inches long. Shorty shotshells are listed as being 1¾ inches long, but loaded they are barely 1½ inches long, which means each one is just two-thirds the length of a standard shell. That difference in length means there is less room for both gunpowder and payload. Generally, standard 12-gauge 2¾-inch shells send an ounce-plus of projectile (whether that’s a slug or a cloud of pellets) downrange between 1,400–1,600 fps. Shorty shotshells, whether it’s slug or shot, carry between 5/8- and 15/16-ounce of payload travelling between 1,150 and 1,250 fps — figure roughly two-thirds the weight, at three-quarters the velocity. That’s a significant difference even for people who learned math in public school. Less recoil is good, but does it mean these short shotshells suffer when it comes to terminal performance? Well yes, but actually no.

Buckshot was originally meant for hunting game bigger and/or tougher than people. The same goes for slugs. When it comes to people, standard 12-gauge buckshot and slug loads are actually overkill. Which is why just about every ammunition manufacturer offers reduced recoil/velocity buckshot and slug loads meant for anti-personnel use. Well, slugs in mini-shells are still .72 caliber, they are just a bit lighter than the full one ounce of standard slugs, “just” 7/8ths of an ounce usually (382 grains), while still travelling in excess of 1,300 fps. Federal’s #4 buck Shorty Shotshell load throws 15 .24-caliber pellets out of the barrel at 1,200 fps. While that isn’t the payload of a standard shell, it still trounces any kind of pistol load you can think of in terminal performance. “Most likely instantly fatal” I think would be an apt descriptor of that load. The Federal #4 Buck load uses a modern wad. I did pattern testing of this load, and at ten yards they produced a 5¼-inch group. While having roughly half the recoil of a standard shotgun with standard ammo. And a 22+1 capacity onboard. For a home-defense scenario that’s a win-win-win+19…. However, as with all shotgun shells, not all loads are created equal. The Challenger birdshot shells spray out from the barrel like cockroaches in a cheap motel when you turn on the light, and at ten yards produce a pattern wider than the average person. It’s more of a cloud than a pattern. Okay, now let’s deal with all of you shouting that the M&P12 is just a Smith & Wesson copy of the KelTec KSG — no, it’s not. Yes, it does share design similarities. It is a bullpup design with a barrel situated over two magazine tubes. But the KelTec wasn’t as unique as you might think. The first shotgun to hit the market with some of those design features wasn’t the KelTec but rather the NeoStead 2000, a South African design that the ATF briefly approved for import in 2003 and then changed their mind due to reasons having nothing to do with federal law or the Constitution…sigh…but I digress.

The NeoStead 2000 (NS2000) looks more futuristic than either the S&W or the KelTec. And while it shares a slight visual similarity, it operates completely differently. For example, the pump action is reversed — instead of working the pump back, then forward, you work the pump forward, then back. And the pump action actually moves the barrel forward and back, not the bolt. And that’s not the only thing reversed about the NeoStead — its two magazine tubes are located above the barrel, not below. It sports a 22.5-inch barrel and two six-shot magazine tubes and overall is 27 inches long. It was originally intended for security work or “civil disturbances,” as back then no one had heard the term “fiery but mostly peaceful protest.” The NeoStead is a very complex design that makes it expensive to produce, but it has one feature that I wish was on the KSG or the M&P12. If you set the magazine tube selector of the NeoStead in the center, it will feed from both tubes (alternating) until you are out of ammo. When one tube runs out of shells it automatically switches to the other, no matter how many rounds are in either tube, until both tubes are empty. With both the KSG and the M&P12, you have to pick a tube, and when that tube is empty you have to manually flick the selector over to the other.

M&P 12 Specs

• Type: Pump-action shotgun
• Caliber: 12 gauge, 3-inch chamber
• Barrel: 19 in. 
• Stock: Black Synthetic
• Receiver: Polymer chassis below steel receiver
• Muzzle: Rem-Choke (cyl. installed)
• Overall Length: 27.8 in. 
• Weight: 8.3 in. 
• Safety: Manual, bilateral, loaded chamber indicator
• Sights: None, MIL STD 1913 rail for optics
• Trigger: 6 lbs. (tested)
• Accessories: 4 backstraps, cable lock, choke wrench, modified choke tube
• MSRP: $1,239
• Manufacturer: Smith & Wesson

However, you can’t buy an NS2000, so the comparisons to the KelTec KSG aren’t just inevitable but seem logical as the M&P 12 seems specifically designed to out-KSG the KSG. So, let’s compare the two. Luckily my FFL had not one but two KSGs in stock when I picked up the M&P 12, so I was able to directly compare the two designs (in addition to previously having a lot of trigger time behind the KSG). The Smith & Wesson was announced the day before I picked up my sample and several of the early YouTube reviews I saw said that the Smith & Wesson felt more sturdily constructed than the KSG. My impression of the gun was honestly the exact opposite of those early reviewers. The Smith & Wesson M&P 12 looked, felt, and sounded like a Nerf gun in person (albeit heavier), far more so than I was expecting from the photos. In fact, two of the veteran employees at my FFL (Double Action Indoor Shooting Center in Madison Heights, MI) said exactly that, independently of each other.

The KSG felt significantly more solid in build. In comparison to the KSG, the M&P 12 is both bigger and heavier and not by an insignificant amount. The controls of the Smith & Wesson are superior to the KelTec in most ways. One significant advantage the Smith & Wesson has over the KSG and almost every other competing pump-action shotguns is the ability to flawlessly cycle mini-shells. That 22+1 capacity means that the slow reloading time is a non-issue. There is a difference in price — current MSRP on the standard KelTec KSG is $900, MSRP on the M&P 12 is $1,165. Is the ability to feed/fire mini-shells, and the resulting 50% capacity increase worth the extra cash to you? If I was in the market for one of these shotguns, it would to me. I don’t own a KSG and never will, specifically because the brass rim from shells ejecting out the bottom of the gun hit me on my wrist bone. Every. Single. Time. While filming for the Handguns & Defensive Weapons TV show (at Dave Fortier’s range) a few years ago I fired so many rounds through a KSG that I wound up with a blood blister on my wrist from the impacting brass hulls. It’s better than having a real job, but still. This isn’t a common complaint with the KSG, but I know I’m not the only person who’s had it. And I didn’t have that problem with the S&W. The S&W places my hand further forward, and ejecting shells occasionally brushed the inside of my forearm about two inches from my wrist, but that’s all. In conclusion, the gun is weird in many ways, but it works. I do feel the crossbolt magazine selector is poorly designed, however. It should be recessed, so it can’t be activated unintentionally. I think its capacity, even with standard shells, much less mini-shells, overwhelms the negative of how slow it is to load. And its ability to fire mini-shells completely sets it apart from the competition. 

---