Browning Citori | |
---|---|
Type | Double-barreled shotgun |
Place of origin | Japan |
Production history | |
Manufacturer | Miroku Corporation |
Produced | 1973–present |
Specifications | |
Barrel length | 24, 26, 28, 30, or 32 inches |
Caliber | 12, 16, 20, or 28 gauge or .410 bore |
Action | Break-action |
The Browning Citori is a double-barreled shotgun of the "over-and-under" or "stacked-barrel" type, with one barrel above the other. It is marketed and distributed by the Browning Arms Company in Morgan, Utah, and manufactured for Browning by the Miroku Corporation in Nangoku, Japan.
The Citori is manufactured in a wide variety of models, styles, and gauges to accommodate enthusiasts of clay target games such as trap, skeet, and sporting clays, as well as upland bird and waterfowl hunters.
The Browning Citori was introduced in 1973 as a more affordable version of the highly successful Browning Superposed. The Superposed, which was first sold in 1931, was the last completed firearm design by the famous small arms designer John Moses Browning. [1]
In 1977, the Browning Arms Company was acquired as a subsidiary by the FN Herstal company of Herstal, Belgium, which continues to oversee operations today. [2]
The name "Citori" has no meaning and is an advertising construct. [3]
Browning Citoris come in all of the popular shotgun shell gauges, and are made in an over-under "stacked" barrel configuration, with forends and buttstocks made from high quality walnut wood. Barrel lengths can be purchased from 26 inches (66 cm) for skeet shooting to 32 inches (81 cm) for sporting clays and trap shooting. The top barrel has a vented rib attached by soldering for the entire length of the barrel tube. Newer Citori internal barrels are chrome-lined for added surface strength. All metal parts are bright blued for the standard model. "In-the-white" higher grade models with more elaborate machine-applied engraving can also be purchased. Rubber recoil butt pads (12 gauge) or plastic butt plates (sub-gauges) are standard. Citori actions are made with internal hammers and coil springs and all Citori models have shell ejectors, which expel spent shells when the breech is opened by pressing aside the top lever and bending the action fully open, which also re-cocks the internal hammers.
The Browning Citori has a single, gold-plated trigger. A barrel selector mechanism is used to choose whether the top or bottom barrel fires first. The barrel selector is combined with the manual safety and is located at the top rear of the receiver, behind the top lever. If the first shot misfires and the gun does not recoil, the trigger can be reset to fire the second shot. This is accomplished by moving the safety/barrel selector back to the "safe" position and then forward to the "fire" position, without changing the barrel selection. Opening the action does not automatically engage the safety mechanism.
Current Citoris feature screw-in Invector choke tubes to regulate shot patterns downrange and thus provide versatility for usage in hunting and target shooting. These can be used with either lead, bismuth, or steel shot. Older models had factory fixed chokes, and steel shot is not recommended for use with those.
Some newer 12 gauge and 20 gauge Citori models have back-bored barrels. These are barrels with slightly larger bore diameters. Their purpose is to improve shot patterns by reducing the friction of the shot charge on the barrel wall, while also reducing felt recoil. Models with back-bored barrels use Invector Plus choke tubes.
A double-barreled shotgun is a break-action shotgun with two parallel barrels, allowing two single shots to be fired in quick succession or simultaneously.
A shotgun is a long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small pellet-like spherical sub-projectiles called shot, or sometimes a single solid projectile called a slug. Shotguns are most commonly smoothbore firearms, meaning that their gun barrels have no rifling on the inner wall, but rifled barrels for shooting slugs are also available.
John Moses Browning was an American firearm designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms – many of which are still in use around the world. He made his first firearm at age 13 in his father's gun shop and was awarded the first of his 128 firearm patents on October 7, 1879, at the age of 24. He is regarded as one of the most successful firearms designers of the 19th and 20th centuries and pioneered the development of modern repeating, semi-automatic, and automatic firearms.
Skeet shooting is a recreational and competitive activity where participants use shotguns to attempt to break clay targets which two fixed stations mechanically fling into the air at high speed and at a variety of angles.
The Mossberg 500 (M500) is a series of pump action shotguns manufactured by O.F. Mossberg & Sons. The 500 series comprises widely varying models of hammerless repeaters, all of which share the same basic receiver and action, but differ in bore size, barrel length, choke options, magazine capacity, stock and forearm materials. Model numbers included in the 500 series are the 500, 505, 510, 535, and 590. The Revelation 310 and the New Haven 600 were also variations of the 500 series produced by Mossberg under different names. By 2021, 11,000,000 M500s had been produced, making it the most-produced shotgun of all time.
A shotgun shell, shotshell or simply shell is a type of rimmed, cylindrical (straight-walled) cartridges used specifically in shotguns, and is typically loaded with numerous small, pellet-like spherical sub-projectiles called shot, fired through a smoothbore barrel with a tapered constriction at the muzzle to regulate the extent of scattering. A shell can sometimes also contain only a single large solid projectile known as a slug, sometimes fired through a rifled slug barrel. The hull usually consists of a paper or plastic tube often covered at the base by a metallic head cover which retains a primer, and the shot charge is typically contained by a wadding/sabot inside the case. The caliber of the shotshell is known as its gauge.
The Winchester Model 1887 and Winchester Model 1901 are lever-action shotguns originally designed by famed American gun designer John Browning and produced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The shotgun has become iconic for its use in the 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Clay pigeon shooting, also known as clay target shooting, is a shooting sport involving shooting a firearm at special flying targets known as clay pigeons, or clay targets.
The Browning Automatic 5, most often Auto-5 or simply A-5, is a recoil-operated semi-automatic shotgun designed by John Browning and manufactured by Fabrique Nationale de Herstal. It was the first successful semi-automatic shotgun design, and remained in production until 1998. The name of the shotgun designates that it is an autoloader with a capacity of five rounds, four in the magazine and one in the chamber. Remington Arms and Savage Arms sold variants called the Remington Model 11 and Savage Model 720 that were nearly identical but lacked the magazine cutoff found on the Browning.
The Winchester Model 21 is a deluxe side by side shotgun. The shotgun's initial production run from 1931 through 1960 yielded approximately 30,000 guns. Winchester Repeating Arms Company ceased the main production line of this shotgun in 1960 and the Model 21 was sourced to the Winchester Custom Shop until the gun's retirement in 1991. New Winchester Model 21 production continues under license to Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Company.
A choke is a tapered constriction of a firearm barrel at its muzzle end. Chokes are most commonly seen on shotguns, but are also used on some rifles, pistols, or even airguns. Notably, some .22 LR match rifles have a constricted bore diameter near the muzzle.
The Remington Spartan 100 is a single-shot, break-action shotgun. It is a variant of a classical Russian IZh-18 shotgun manufactured by Izhevsk Mechanical Plant for export under trademark "Baikal", in Izhevsk, Russia. It is marketed and distributed by Remington.
The following are terms related to firearms and ammunition topics.
The Remington Spartan 310 is a double-barreled shotgun. It is an "over and under" gun, with one barrel above the other. There are several different models, each of them chambered in various gauges.
The Ruger Gold Label was a side-by-side double-barreled shotgun that was made by Sturm, Ruger & Company, Incorporated, at their manufacturing facility in Newport, New Hampshire. It was designed to be similar to traditional English shotguns used for upland bird hunting and for clay target games such as sporting clays.
The Stoeger Coach Gun is a double-barreled shotgun. It is marketed and distributed by Stoeger Industries in Accokeek, Maryland. It is manufactured by E.R. Amantino (Boito) in Veranópolis, Brazil.
The Fabarm FP6 is a pump-action combat shotgun that was manufactured by the Italian firearms company Fabbrica Bresciana Armi S.p.A. (FABARM) and sold by Heckler & Koch. It was intended for civilian and law enforcement use.
The Savage Model 24 is an American made over-and-under combination gun manufactured by Savage Arms. The basic .22LR over .410 gauge model weighs 7 pounds, has 24-inch barrels and an overall length of 41-inches. It may also be disassembled for ease of storage.
The Ruger Red Label was an over and under shotgun that was built by Sturm, Ruger & Co. at the direction of William B. Ruger.
The Vepr-12 is a multipurpose semi-automatic detachable-magazine shotgun, produced by Molot-Oruzhie Ltd. It is patterned after the original Kalashnikov rifle and built on the heavier RPK light machine gun receiver.