RIA VR80

[JCN]

I am a shotgun noob. Was thinking of getting a cheap box fed gun to dip my toe in the water of 3 gun…

I don’t want to learn a new loading skill so box mags it is!

Came across this which has $30 mags of 19 round capacity.

Seems like a decent entry level tool for what I’m looking for.

Anyone with any first hand experience? Seems like I might have to lighten the recoil spring to run gamer ammo.

[fatdog]

Had one for a year, sent mine down the road, a close friend kept his as his open division shotgun for 3-gun, for which I think it excels. For me:

Pro
1. After a 200 round break in it ran reliably and did not demand much in the way of special ammo, meaning hot loads or high brass
2. Magazines fed reliably including the 19 rounder
3. Ready to take conventional AR furniture, use a commercial AR stock as the milspec are too tight, but otherwise that goes right on
4. Easy to mount an optic, I had an old aimpoint on it during its life with me and it survived at least 500 or so rounds
5. It will yield good splits

Cons
1. Handguard gets incredibly too hot too fast, I ended up with a silicon wrap just to be able to hold it through 20 or so rounds
2 Sharp edges everywhere, carry a box of band aids if you take one to a 3gun match
3. Most incredibly difficult magazines to load I have ever experienced, on any platform of any type. I finally ended up with a piece of dowel rod to help me, and I hated loading those mags, 9 was awful, and 19 was worse
4. For me, terrible balance. I was used to Benelli M1S90's and found it difficult and slow getting target to target with bad tendency to overshoot, but that may be entirely a function of 20+ years with the Benelli's and nothing else.
5. Put the recip bolt handle on the side away from you or else you are going to get clobbered, it is quite forceful and you have to stay out of its way, jammed me up badly until I moved it back to the other side...

I don't shoot open so the thing was completely wasted with me, a strong disadvantage over running one of my Benelli's in limited or tactical