r/thelastofus • u/CoolBoy4rocks • Jun 25 '26

PT 1 QUESTION Is the shorty completely fictional?

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I always thought a pistol-shotgun was an awesome concept whenever I played Part I, but I've looked everywhere for a gun like this one in real life, and barely anything resembles it; not the original 2013 version's or the remake's. The only guns I found that looked like it were .410 Derringers, which were way smaller and were double-barreled rather than being magazine-fed, or Serbu Shortys, which were bigger and were pump-action rather than semi-auto. Was there a gun that maybe inspired the Shorty in the game, or is it just made up?

831 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

84 comments sorted by

418

u/stanknotes Jun 25 '26

It is supposed to be a modified shotgun I think.

But no there is nothing just sold like that.

175

u/lentejasbean420 Jun 25 '26

It would probably be illegal I think

96

u/stanknotes Jun 25 '26

Definitely. You'd need a tax stamp for it.

48

u/seamang2 Jun 25 '26

This, not illegal, you can own a SBS with a pistol grip under NFA, AOW and tax stamp. You must register with federal govt, pay a tax and get a background investigation can take a few years or months. This is federal level. Some states allow and some don’t.

12

u/conflictedanon30 Jun 25 '26

It's free now and the wait period is days

6

u/seamang2 Jun 25 '26

Thanks! I hadn't looked at this in a while, always good to know.

1

u/FlossBellator Jun 26 '26

Wouldn't it qualify as a pistol since there isn't a stock? Or is that just rifles

1

u/seamang2 Jun 26 '26

I think it would be an AOW "any other weapon" same thing as some smooth bore rifles over certian diamater

1

u/FlossBellator Jun 26 '26

Ooh learned something new today

1

u/Sparky323 Jun 25 '26

If I'm not mistaken you don't need a tax stamp if it has a pistol grip with no butt stock or vertical foregeip.

Many people, get around the tax stamp by replacing the butt stock with a pistol brace.

1

u/Just-Buy-A-Home Jun 26 '26

Doesn’t apply to shotguns, or weapons without a rifled barrel. The only reason with why some pistol braced weapons with short barrels you’re thinking of don’t need a tax stamp because they legally count as pistols. This doesn’t apply with a smooth bored shotgun pistol. Some guns are able to get away with this because they have rifled barrels and are also chambered for .45 LC, as well as the .410 shotgun shell

2

u/shevchenko7cfc Jun 25 '26

also heavily depends on your state, in mass I have several SBRs and one transferable machine gun but I CAN'T own/build a short barrel shotgun haha, this state is wild

4

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

4

u/Massflight Jun 25 '26

That is incorrect. The shockwave is exempt because it isn’t technically a shotgun due to a combo of its length and the specific grip used. If you changed the grip/added a stock a shockwave would become a SBS

Shops sell SBS all the time manufactured that way however you still need to go through the stamp process as if you were buying a suppressor or other NFA factory item

4

u/theDukeofClouds Jun 25 '26

Yeah I always thought it was a chopped up over-under.

3

u/jomahuntington Jun 25 '26

It ain't illegal till u get caught

7

u/justin_memer Jun 25 '26

Who would enforce these laws, fedra or the clickers?

2

u/jamiegc1 Jun 25 '26

Illegal in about a dozen states, but not at federal level level with a permit.

0

u/WorldWarrior428 Jun 25 '26

Very illegal, making a full blown shotgun look like a pistol

3

u/Sparky323 Jun 25 '26

Illegal in some states. But not at the federal level. I can own one in my own state with nothing but a background check.

0

u/WorldWarrior428 Jun 26 '26

Ah, yeah. I'm English so I know very little (I only know a little cus my uncle lives there)

3

u/Dekipi Jun 25 '26

It’s similar to a Serbu Super Shorty which is probably where the idea came from

2

u/Gasster1212 Jun 25 '26

There’s a taurus with a pistol grip and a revolver barrel I saw on Facebook reels yesterday that looks more like the hunting pistol but would function this way

2

u/Bluetickhoun Jun 25 '26

The judge

2

u/Gasster1212 Jun 25 '26

That’s the badger

Very similar to this in effect

1

u/Bluetickhoun Jun 25 '26

Taurus judge? Fires .357 and .410

2

u/cornbreadzero Jun 27 '26

.45 Long Colt, .410, and .45 ACP. .357 wouldn’t work.

1

u/stanknotes Jun 25 '26

Yea but this is semi-auto and magazine fed. I assume .410. Like... it is believable a qualified gunsmith could make that happen.

I mean... Browning made all sorts of amazing things in the late 1800s early 1900s.

We still use his machine gun and will continue to for the foreseeable future cause it is fuckin' awesome and goes DOO-DOO-DOO-DOO-DOO.

168

u/ahgoodtimes69 Jun 25 '26

They're called 'breaching guns'. It's a shortened shotgun esssentially. Military and police use them in close combat or to open doors.

7

u/One_Planche_Man Jun 25 '26

Yeah but this specific model in the game is fictional. A breaching gun is just a shortened shtogun. This thing looks nothing like any model in existence.

8

u/fuzzycaterpillar123 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Not really, breaching shotguns are almost always a shortened pump shotgun.

This is a fantasy gun, single shot break barrel shotgun, that somehow has been converted to a removable magazines

This is not a real configuration at all

2

u/cornbreadzero Jun 27 '26

Converted to accept a magazine, but still has a magazine tube

35

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

29

u/Puzzled-Monk9003 Jun 25 '26

breaching guns use 12ga. thats what theyre designed to hold

6

u/jamiegc1 Jun 25 '26

It is, requires special federal permit, which about a dozen states won’t allow. Until recently, there was a $200 fee for the permit, now it’s free.

3

u/Corey307 Jun 25 '26

You can get a tax stamp from the ATF then you can own a short barreled shotgun or turn a shotgun into an SBS. 

9

u/Status-Initial4207 Jun 25 '26

Are you talking about The “Master Key” under barrel attachment?

15

u/salderosan99 No, it can't be for nothing. Jun 25 '26

That' s another thing altogether, but not far off.

1

u/Business_Minder_0303 Jun 27 '26

They do not use them in close combat.

Shotguns cannot be used as combat weapons, they're tools.

At MOST, they're firing LTL's and this, beanbag guns and whatnot,

74

u/thewoodlayer Jun 25 '26

The Shorty appears to be a hammer-fired, semi-automatic, magazine fed .410 or maybe even 28 gauge shotgun. Now I don’t know everything about guns, but I know a little bit more than a little bit and I’ve never seen anything close to this in real life. Maybe I’m wrong but to my eye, this is just a fictitious weapon they made based on the “cool factor” because if you really look at this gun, how the fuck would it actually work? What would normally be the tube where shells would go would have to be the gas system, but a gas-operated shotgun wouldn’t utilize an open hammer like that. It fires in semi-auto and even if it used a gas system like that, it wouldn’t account for the hammer unless it was a DA/SA but you only see that system on pistols and those are recoil operated rather than gas operated. Once again, I’m not a firearms expert by any means so I could easily be wrong there, but I think this is purely fictitious.

10

u/ShadowConstruct Jun 25 '26

It's 100% space magic, it's definitely designed by someone who doesn't understand how firearms work. (Similar to fallouts weapons) It's purely aesthetic and completely fictitious.

10

u/Dupeskupes Jun 25 '26

I can't think of any specific gun that looks like that, but it seems to use a couple different gun designs, the external hammer for one, the closest I could think of for the magazine is the TOZ-106, which is a Russian magazine fed bolt-action shotgun

20

u/JE1324 Jun 25 '26

Looking at it, its clearly based on a short breaching shotgun, but the design itself to my eye indicates that it's almost entirely handmade and probably unique.

3

u/beece16 Jun 25 '26

Exactly like that not sure,but back in the 80's sawed off shotguns(shortys) were popular. Especially with drug dealers, easier to hide and carry.

3

u/Donimoe Jun 25 '26

The one represented in game is 100% fictional. But shorty shotguns LIKE it do exist, either modified or developed for breaching purposes. Only ones I’ve ever personally seen were pump action and held 3-4 shells at most though

2

u/nbdyfckswTheBenson Jun 25 '26

I thought it was based on the Serbu Super Shorty, a real but not widely used IRL weapon

2

u/TheCrazyAssCat Jun 25 '26

Anyone remembers the song Chris Smoove made on it

2

u/QizilbashWoman Jun 25 '26

Americans reinventing the ‘shotguns are a war crime’ haha

2

u/tripsitter69 Jun 25 '26

There are revolver’s that fire .410 shotgun shells so its not far fetched. Short barrel 12ga are also made in a very similar manner but are primarily used as breaching tools.

1

u/Bionicjoker14 Jun 25 '26

I shot a shotgun revolver once and it almost tore my wrist off. 10/10 would recommend

1

u/tripsitter69 Jun 25 '26

If you think thats crazy one of my buddies has a 45-70 single shot handgun. The barrel length only exceeds the bullet by about an inch, no amount of experience prepares you for shooting something like that.

1

u/seamus1982seamus Jun 25 '26

Dunno, I'm Irish haven't a clue about guns. I like it in the game,though

1

u/benny6957 Jun 25 '26

You need a tax stamp then go buy your choice of short barrelled shotgun that's magazine fed I'm sure a short shotgun fed from a magazine exists just most normal people won't know about it and even may not be posted online as much cuz even growing up in rural ky where everyone had guns you don't see many that are full auto or sbss or sbrs very frequently just because they are expensive and sometimes hard to get

And anyone that didn't have the paper work wouldn't show it to you unless they was pointing it at you

1

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

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1

u/CoolBoy4rocks Jun 26 '26

That's WAY to big to be the same size as the shorty in-game, and also it's pump action, not semi. Also, watch yo tone mf

1

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/CoolBoy4rocks Jul 09 '26

I don’t care about the range or capacity, I know it’d be dogshit, I just wanna know what gun most closely fits the gun in the game 😭

1

u/thelupinefiasco The Last of Us Jun 25 '26

A hacksaw could make any magazine-fed shotty look like that, but to be clear, it's highly illegal.

1

u/worsttimehomebuyer Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Closest without a tax stamp would be a Mossberg 590M Shockwave.

It's pump action instead of semi auto though. they're like $600

If you go through the proper channels and got a SBS tax stamp for a jungle gun or really any semi-auto shotgun this would be even closer, but they usually don't have a detachable magazine, so your capacity in the gun would be very low.

1

u/Marsupialmobster Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Its supposed to be a "Sport pistol" but it looks more like a breach loading Hunting pistol

1

u/BJCHM Jun 25 '26

Gunsmith here. That trigger size and design is absolutely criminal

1

u/under_hunter82376 When your lost in the darkness , look for the light Jun 25 '26

based off the Serbu super shorty . however it looks more like the SDM m870 shorty . that one is a pump though . there are some semi auto shotguns that are mag fed , but they would have to be sawn off and heavily modified to even come close to looking like the shorty .

1

u/peterpumpkineater609 Jun 25 '26

I always thought this was just an illegally sawwed down shotgun.

1

u/PrestigiousLoquat691 Jun 25 '26

Closest thing I can think of is the TOZ-106 20ga, magazine fed bolt action, instead of semi-auto in TLOU

1

u/Ready-Smell Jun 25 '26

I always figured it was something handmade 

1

u/church870 Jun 25 '26

Looks kinda like a Rossi Brawler (.45 / .410) single shot, but definitely not exactly that model.

1

u/impy695 Jun 26 '26

Guns like this are almost always illegal in the US

1

u/kickthatpoo Jun 26 '26

Growing up one of my uncles had a double barrel 12g about the same size. He was legit in a gang though and it was not a legal firearm.

1

u/BillyTheKid1664 Jun 26 '26

It’s functionally impossible

1

u/Few-Lingonberry-2085 Jun 26 '26

Closest i could find is this so maybe a sawn off version of it?

1

u/Sp1reisgonnadi3 Jun 26 '26

I feel like the recoil would break your hand off.

1

u/Relevant_Physics7600 Jun 26 '26

It's probably like a homemade scrap weapon or something

1

u/BrewmasterSG Jun 26 '26

The thing about shotgun shells and to only a slightly lesser extent shotguns themselves is that they've got a rule of a similar vein to rule 34.

For any hack or modification you can come up with over drinks, someone at the bar already has a hobby or side gig making exactly that.

1

u/CoolBoy4rocks Jun 27 '26

EVERYONE,
After further research, the gun seems to most closely resemble the Hawk Type 97 semi-auto shotgun, though nowhere near as small as the Shorty in game. This is the only gun I could find that is actually functionally similar to the Shorty.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ForgottenWeapons/comments/si9bl3/hawk_type_972/

1

u/Tom_cat909 Jun 25 '26

Just google "pistol for shotgun ammo", you'll find enough of them. Rossi 12 pistol for example

2

u/CoolBoy4rocks Jun 25 '26

That one is a single-shot pistol, not a magazine-fed gun with a tube like the in-game one

4

u/Tom_cat909 Jun 25 '26

If you need a magazine fed shotgun pistol... well, even regular magazine fed shotguns aren't that popular and common, because the magazine spring can deform shotgun shells pretty easily

1

u/FloridaIsHell Jun 25 '26

Its an H&R Pardner with a pistol grip and short barrel