SPAS 12: The Iconic Tactical Shotgun

hi guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian I am here today at the Rock Island auction house I'm taking a look at some of the guns in their upcoming December of 2015 premier auction and there was one that was in the rifle racks that I figured you know what we ought to take a look at this it's far from forgotten in fact I think this has been in just about every action movie ever made plus most of the video games ever made but you know what it's it's an interesting shotgun it does some things that aren't typical so what the heck let's take a look at it this is a Franchi spas-12 now that is SP a s and that actually stands for sporting purpose automatic shotgun in a somewhat vain attempt to try and pass this off as a sporting shotgun in the eyes of political institutions is it really not so much that it certainly can be used for that but this was really designed with law enforcement in mind and the two things that make it stand out first off it looks mean and very distinctive especially this hook on the bots stock that's why it shows up in so many games in movies is because it looks mean and distinctive and then the other thing what's kind of interesting about it from a technical point of view is that it is a combination automatic and pump action shotgun so you can pick how you want to operate it now that may seem a bit extravagant but it actually makes good sense when you consider that in a law enforcement role a shotgun will be called upon to use both heavy duty proper ammunition buckshot and slugs and also may be called upon to use less lethal ammunition things like beanbags or tear gas rounds shells that don't provide nearly enough energy to cycle a semi-automatic shotgun action so the idea here is you can pick and use either type of action so if you're shooting beanbags you can run the gun manually and if you're shooting buckshot or slugs you can switch it over to semi-auto it's actually a very easy conversion back and forth between the two something you can absolutely do on the fly and that makes for a pretty neat design now they coupled that with a folding stock to make it more compact for putting in a patrol cruiser and in extended magazine - things like that that would make it appeal to a law enforcement customer so these were actually purchased by the law enforcement arms of a couple different governments Austria and Indonesia among others and certainly a lot of say a lot of individual police departments in the United States have some of these or did at one time they were first introduced in 1979 they were produced by Frankie in Italy until 1999 or 2000 although importation into the u.s. for the civilian market ended in 1994 with the assault weapons ban because they are a folding stock shotgun that is semi-automatic this one is set up with an 8 inch or an 8 shot - magazine which is a reasonably high capacity and it's got a big ol set of ghost drone sights we'll take a look at those a little closer in just a moment now all right so one thing I do want to touch on before we look up close at this gun is what this hook is supposed to be used for because it's certainly distinctive and different but it's not really necessarily obvious what you're supposed to do with this thing well first off it doesn't do anything when the stock's folded with the possible exception of acting as a carry handle what you are supposed to do is actually use it with the stock unfolded now there's a big spring in here and I can push down on this hook and rotate it to the side like so and then when I unfold the stock I have this hook sticking out on the side of the gun what that allows me to do is brace the back end of the gun on my forearm and makes it a lot easier to support and if you wanted to shoot this thing with one hand so I can actually just barely hold it out at arm's length this is a heavy gun this is like a 10 pound shotgun and this hook is actually sort of acting is like the original sig brace you might consider it it doesn't actually strap to your arm but it does counterbalance some of the weight of the gun so that's what that is actually there for and I will also point out you can if we push it down and rotate it rearward like this it actually comes out so you can take it off the gun entirely which really wouldn't be about idea doesn't look quite so cool but it's a little more practical to use the gun without it so alright the first thing I want to mention here is actually a potential safety issue and also a cool collectability note this is the original configuration of the spaz 12 has this big lever type safety so that safe Ness fire these guns were actually recalled by Franchi because there was a potential defect and some of the guns could actually fire when the safety was moved from safe to fire so definite safety issue it's something that they they fixed by replacing this lever with a push button like a cross bolt style of safety so this has not been upgraded if you're a collector that's kind of cool to get the one that hasn't been changed this is the way it came out of the factory this particular gun in my little bit of experimentation here does not appear to have that safety flaw however if you are going to shoot this either get the parts and make that change which I believe you can still do today or I would say or make a very conscious effort to not depend on the safety and only point the gun in a safe direction when you are disengaging the safety so obligatory safety comment out of the way let's take a closer look at some of the other elements here our stock is held in place by this spring-loaded detent so to deploy the stock you push that ball bearing in you can then rotate the stock down you'll notice there's this curved portion right here to push that detent in for you and it locks in place like that this is for a sling swivel then we have a similar detent folding mechanism right here so if you don't have the hook on you typically want to have the stock in this straight configuration when it's folded which makes it lie nice and flat on the gun will point out you cannot I can't get a good camera angle on it but you cannot see the sights through the stock when the stock is folded like this now speaking of the sights what we have is a big huge ghost ring sight right here to go along with a really nice big blade sight on the front we've got a big old heat shield fold over the barrel and this forearm is plastic and it's kind of interesting because of the dual nature of the the action the handguard is not actually attached to the action of the shotgun instead it pushes on the action inside and it actually rides in these two recesses in the heat shield so it's not necessarily as smooth of an action as you would get on other guns now there is a big old button on the bottom of the handguard this is what allows you to change between automatic and manual mode so I push the button in pull the slide back just about a quarter-inch that locks it in the manual mode and then when i unlock the slide I can now pump open and closed protect due to a little bit of a quirk in the design when it's in manual mode you can lock the the thing open and then in order to close it you actually have to hit the shell release here on the left now when you're using it in manual mode you are actually compressing the action spring just like in automatic mode so you have a little bit more resistance when you're opening the gun but you also have the spring assisting when you close the slide so I'm not sure if that's really a net positive or negative it's just kind of a feature now to change the gun into automatic mode we push the button down and slide the handguard forward it snaps into position and now it doesn't move now if I unlock the gun now you can see that everything is still running here inside it shell release there this all moves without the hand gun doing it handguard moving anywhere itself so in automatic mode this will run it's designed to run on full power ammo so high brass birdshot or buckshot or slugs you may find it doesn't actually run reliably on the light loaded like the the el cheapo birdshot you may need to use manual mode for that and of course you would use manual for things like bean bags or or less lethal ammunition the one other thing I would note I have not taken this gun apart and I don't plan to for this video but there is actually a recoil buffer it was a fiber or rubber pad in the back of the receiver and that's an important element in there both to protect the receiver and to reduce felt recoil often on guns that haven't been shot much that have just been sitting those will have gotten very hard and brittle and aren't going to function properly you can still get replacement buffer pads today and just judging from the fact that this still has the original safety I suspect this gun probably ought to have a new buffer pad if you plan to shoot it a lot well thanks for watching guys I hope you enjoyed the video got to take a little bit of a closer look at a gun that you typically only see in Hollywood and computer games and hopefully you learned something today if you'd like to own this one of course they haven't been imported into the US for about 20 years now so they're a little bit scarce and they they have a cool cachet from all of their Hollywood use if you take a look at the link in the description text below you will find rock island auction houses catalog page on this gun where you can see their pictures and their description and place a bid or write online and make this thing yours thanks for watching clever girl

Channel: undefined

Views: 3,070,148

Rating: 4.9171042 out of 5

Keywords: Franchi SPAS-12, Shooter Game (Media Genre), Franchi, SPAS, 12ga, guage, shotgun, pump, auto, automatic, semiauto, clever girl, Jurassic Park, buckshot, birdshot, slug, less lethal, beanbag, tear gas, dual, mode, selector, movie, video game, SPAS12, Frinesi, fsps-12, sp12, sp-12, sps12, sps-12, gray mk5

Id: YcuOUBG0Fz0

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/leica_boss]

Watch it for the ending.

[u/SergeiMosin]

Shoutout to /r/ForgottenWeapons