Perhaps the most misunderstood firearm in this country is the shotgun. In my opinion the reason is; that the vast majority of users learned what they know from folks that copied, in their mind, decades of myth, legend, fabrication and assumptions without knowing where one begins and the other ends when it comes to anything approaching a fact. It is amazing to me to listen to the absolute absurd ideas folks have about shotguns.
Here is a nice little story about absurd. My father in-law gave me his "hard shooting" shotgun to repair the broken butt stock in. It was his favorite shotgun that he lent to a nephew years ago who smashed a squirrel's head with it, breaking the fancy French walnut stock. It was a 16ga F on F, SxS he had "liberated" while in Germany on a walking tour, during WWII. A very nice gun, save the copper wire, wood screws and electrical tape. Know why it shot so "hard?" Well, it might have had something to do with the 2 1/2 inch chambers and the 2 3/4 inch hunting loads.....
Boy that gun shoots hard..... as it goes, down in the country, in MS.
Ed
PS: I re-cut the chambers to 2 3/4 so he would not blow himself up, now that the gun is fixed. It actually patterns now, but, alas he has passed on.
Ed