A Non-NFA Shorty Ithaca 37 Shotgun?

Mossberg and Remington are not the only ones in the non-NFA shorty shotgun game anymore.

Over at the Ithaca booth at this year’s SHOT Show, the Ohio-based company had a couple stumpy scatterguns on display, both based on the company’s classic Model 37 pump gun.

The two guns on display were prototypes of trench-style 12-gauge shotguns with hardwood corn-cob forends and “sawed-off” pistol grips that a quite a bit different from the Shockwave Raptor grips on the TAC-14 and 590 Shockwave.

One model features a widely flared hardwood pistol grip that genuinely looks like it would if you chopped off most of a full stock.

Another prototype, with a receiver emblazoned with a black and white American flag, had a fancier thumbhole pistol grip, I supposed we’ll call it.

As this story from guns.com says, these were both prototypes so there was no news about price, release date, or anything else on these guns, but the company did confirm that they are an answer to the TAC-14 and the 590 Shockwave.

Will they release a box-magazine fed Ithaca Model 37 next?

The right-on-each-others-ass release of the Shockwave and the TAC-14 proved that the companies had indeed found a small loophole in the NFA language that described what constitutes a “shotgun” in the strictest legal sense.

The long and short of it: as it turns out, if a shotgun is made in the factory with a pistol grip, and never has a buttstock attached, it is not actually a shotgun and is instead classified as merely a firearm. That means it can be transferred like any long gun, without the need for a $200 tax stamp, paperwork, and lots of waiting and still sport a barrel shorter than 16 inches.

If you were to attach a buttstock to a TAC-14 or Shockwave, it would become an illegal short-barreled shotgun or SBS.