The Franchi SPAS12 Shotgun: For velociraptors, spared no expense
Today everything is tactical. I mean you have tactical bacon, tactical umbrellas, tactical pens and even tactical kilts. Well back in the 1970s, when shotguns were either pump or semi-auto and they all had wood stocks, one company introduced one of the most classic combat shotguns of all time.
In the late 1970s, the Brescia, Italy-based firearms legacy of Luigi Franchi S.p.A. was still owned by the same family that started it back in 1868. After flirting with a number of failed submachine gun and carbine designs for the military market in the 1950s, the firearms firm had settled into the commercial shotgun niche with their Black Magic series autoloaders (still imported to the US by Benelli as the 48AL) and the Aristocrat series of over and under shotguns. With a 30-year itch coming on to offer a military design once more, Franchi redirected its experience in making some of the best scatterguns around to designing a combat shotgun. This gun was the SPAS12.
And it had a HOOK.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
