Mossberg 590

Origins

O. F. Mossberg & Sons of Connecticut introduced the Model 500 in 1960 as an inexpensive, rugged pump gun for hunters. Police and military buyers soon took to it, and in the 1980s Mossberg developed a dedicated combat variant, the Model 590. It had a magazine tube that could be cleaned from the muzzle end and a stronger build. To win U.S. military contracts the company then produced the 590A1. It passed the testing standard set out in Military Specification MIL-S-3443, which included endurance firing and drop tests that most commercial shotguns could not survive.

Design & Construction

Like the 500, the 590 uses an aluminum receiver with a steel bolt that locks into an extension of the barrel, two action bars that run the slide smoothly, and a safety on top of the receiver where either hand can reach it. The 590A1 adds a thick-walled barrel that resists denting, an aluminum trigger guard and metal safety in place of plastic, and parkerized or coated metal. Versions with a bayonet lug accept the standard U.S. M9 bayonet. Retrograde models with walnut furniture and corn-cob slides deliberately look like Vietnam-era military shotguns, while modern versions carry rails, ghost-ring sights and adjustable stocks.

Combat Use

The shotgun has had a place in American infantry service since the trench guns of the First World War, beginning with the Winchester Model 1897. The Mossberg 590A1 became one of its main modern forms, used alongside the Remington 870. Soldiers and Marines have used it for door breaching with special shells, guarding prisoners and installations, shipboard security, nonlethal crowd control with beanbag rounds, and close-quarters work in Iraq and Afghanistan. The M500 and 590 series also served in the Gulf War and in peacekeeping deployments, and many foreign armies and police forces have bought them.

Legacy

The 590A1 is often described as the most combat-proven pump shotgun of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It remains in U.S. military inventories, alongside the semi-automatic M1014, and it is a standard home-defense and police shotgun. Mossberg continues to expand the line, from the short 590 Shockwave to the magazine-fed 590M, while the Retrograde series markets the classic military look to collectors and shooters interested in its history.