I recently attended a SymTac shotgun class. A fellow student who also happened to be a Lipsey’s executive brought one of the new 20-Gauge A300s to the class and allowed me to test fire it. I normally use a Beretta 1301 tricked-out with a Magpul stock and multiple Aridus Industries accessories and the weight difference between the two guns was eye-opening. The 20-gauge A300 weights only 6.0 pounds unloaded and the gun’s handiness is immediately apparent.
I am not recoil sensitive and if you correctly use SymTac’s push/pull technique, recoil is not an issue. However, I fired the A300-20 without using push/pull to see what the full recoil would be. Subjectively, the A300-20’s recoil was much less that what I typically feel with a Mossberg 590 20-gauge; a difference similar to what you could expect comparing the Beretta 1301 versus a Remington 870 pump in 12-gauge.
Now that Federal (as of this writing) is producing two 20-gauge buckshot loads with their FLITECONTROL® wad, a high performing self-defense load is available for the 20-gauge. In January 2025, I tested the Federal 20-gauge # 2 buck FLITECONTROL load that had just been released and found it patterned acceptably for most home defense distances with both a standard barrel and a VangComp-modified barrel.(1)
You often hear people opining that a 20-gauge is a better choice for smaller people because it recoils less. As I pointed out in a November 2019 article, this is often not the case.(2)
It is a matter of physics. A 20-gauge, twenty pellet standard load of #3 buckshot weighs 468 grains. At 1200 feet per second (FPS) it will have a muzzle energy of 1497 foot pounds. A 12-gauge, 8-pellet 00 buckshot load weighs 430.4 grains. At 1145 FPS it will have a muzzle energy of 1253 foot pounds. All things being equal, the 12-gauge load would have less felt recoil than the 20-gauge load.
All things typically are not equal however. The 20-gauge shotgun will probably be lighter than a comparable 12-gauge shotgun so if recoil is a concern, the 12-gauge will likely produce noticeably less felt recoil. Take SymTac’s shotgun class and you will no longer need to worry about recoil anyway.
For more information on using a shotgun for home defense, please see the 2025 update to my Home Defense Shotgun Manual.
Every time I think I have all of the firearms that I will ever need, some manufacturer comes out with a new must have. I think Beretta's new A300-20 falls into this category
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(1) https://www.sensibleselfdefenseblog.com/2025/01/testing-federal-premium-20-gauge-2.html
(2) https://www.sensibleselfdefenseblog.com/2019/11/rangemaster-shotgun-instructor-course_13.html
I really appreciate this article, as I am earnest to add an A300 Ultima Patrol in 20-gauge to the same 12-gauge I have. That said, there is a small correction I would like to make: "Felt Recoil" is based on momentum (which is simplified as Power Factor in most firearms discussions), rather than energy. "Damage" is a function of Energy ("muzzle energy", but of course in actuality the energy of the bullet when it impacts, not when it leaves the muzzle, and of course "damage" also has a LOT to do with where the round impacts, but we are going with "all other things being equal" here). So, to compare the felt recoil of the two rounds you mention, one would have to compare the Power Factor (momentum), rather than energy; one can simplify by just multiplying the weight in grains by the speed (velocity) in fps, which is 561.6K for the 20-gauge and 492.8K for the 12-gauge. In this case, the felt recoil WOULD be higher for the 20-gauge (it's more complicated, as one has to divide by the mass of the shotgun, and you DO point out the impact of the mass of the shotgun, but you get the idea), but there are MANY cases where a higher energy ALSO leads to lower recoil (lighter bullets at much higher velocities), so it WOULD make a difference in many cases.
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