The Mossberg 940 series is Mossberg’s attempt to fix some of the flaws with the 930 series. It’s their latest line of semi-auto shotguns. The 940 series started with 3-Gun in mind but has moved to the hunting and now the tactical world. The 940 Pro Tactical shotgun has hit the market and is aiming at the premium market of defensive shotguns. The Pro Tactical takes aim at guns like the Beretta 1301 and the Benelli M4. with an MSRP of $1,154.
Like the original 930 series, the gun is a gas-operated gun. The main improvements over the 930 included better ergonomics and a gas system that’s a lot less finicky. It doesn’t need to be cleaned nearly as often as the 930 series. The maintenance-heavy 930s required cleaning quite often for them to run reliably.
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With tactical in the name, it’s easy to assume that the 940 Pro Tactical is aimed at the duty and home defense market. It’s a tactical shotgun with a lot of whizbangs and doo-dads. Unlike most of its competition, the 940 Pro Tactical is American-made and doesn’t have to deal with 922R and import restrictions which gives it an edge over the standard imported shotgun.
Features and Specs
Unlike the Italian selections of shotguns, the 940 Pro Tactical comes ready with a seven-round magazine tube. It’s ready to go and loaded for bear. The barrel tops out at 18.5 inches, and the gun weighs 7.5 pounds. The overall length is 37.5 inches. Mossberg wisely implemented a stock design that allows the user to adjust the length of pull.
Shooters can use inserts and spacers to take the shotgun’s length of pull from 12.5 to 14.25 inches. Included with the gun are two butt pads that give you either a recoil pad or a short flat plastic option. Shooters can swap chokes if they so choose, and the gun comes with a cylinder bore choke.
On top of the gun sits a high-visibility fiber optic sight. It sits low, but the barrel is much thicker at the end and provides a bit of a higher bead for ensuring the point of aim & point of impact. One of my favorite features is the optic cut. From the factory, it comes ready for you to attach a Shield footprint optic. The optics attaches directly to the receiver and sits low enough to co-witness with the bead.
The 940 Pro Tactical is a well-put-together gun that comes with a number of features worth mentioning.
Ergonomics
“Make it bigger” seemed to be the mantra behind the ergonomics of the 940. Outside of the safety, everything is bigger. The 940 uses the same tang-style safety we all know and love. It’s easy to access and ambidextrous to use. Our charging handles and bolt release are massive. They are much bigger than a standard bolt release and outperform the competition.
They are massive, easy to grab, and easy to engage. On top of that, the loading port is large and easy to shove a round into, and so is the ejection port. You can easily reload the weapon on the fly, and that’s a smart feature for a weapon that only holds seven rounds.
The length of pull adjustments is a godsend for shotguns. Most shotguns come with some crazy long length of pull set in excess of 14 inches. It’s absurd, and while it works for wing shooting, it doesn’t work well with most shooters in a squared-up shooting position. The spacers and adjustments make it easy to fit the gun to you. A lot of times, shooters have to purchase special stocks like the Magpul SGA to get this feature.
At the front of the gun sits a magazine clamp that has two M-LOK slots. This allows you to run a light fairly easily with a pressure switch to the handguard.
At the Range
I really liked the Mossberg 940 Pro Tactical at first glance, but taking it to the range is what made me fall in love with the gun. At the range, the gun performed extremely well with a wide variety of rounds. The majority of my ammo is the cheap Federal birdshot you can get anywhere and everywhere for a good price. It ate through 300 rounds of that stuff without a single malfunction.
Birdshot worked fine, and so did the cheapest buckshot in my armory. My cheapest buckshot is the Monarch brand from Academy. It has high brass but can be finicky when it comes to feeding. A 100 rounds of Monarch didn’t provide the 940 Pro Tactical or me with any issues. Neither did a little Rio, Federal, or Hornady. The gun cycles low recoil tactical loads, including my favorite Federal Flitecontrol loads.
All in all, I hit 200 rounds of problem-free buckshot. It’s a gas-operated semi-auto, so it doesn’t cycle mini shells because I know someone will ask in the comments section. It will cycle the 2.5-inch shells, at least the Nobel Sport buckshot cycles. The 1.75 and 2-inch stuff is a no-go.
Rocking and Rolling
Gas operation bites some of the recoil down and makes the gun increasingly controllable. The 940 Pro Tactical handles well, especially when you get the right LOP and can really engage the push/pull into your shooting. The gun barely bucks when proper recoil mitigation is in effect. Seeing that red dot barely move between shots from a shotgun is quite nice.
Speaking of red dots, the front sight works great, but tossing a red dot on the gun makes it even better. The red dot sits nice and tight on the gun and low enough to co-witness with the fiber optic. A red dot makes it easier and faster to shoot and aids in accuracy when it comes to slug use.
With the soft controls and fast use red dot, my split times decreased consistently when compared to other semi-auto shotguns. The time to hit a target with multiple shots or multiple targets with multiple shots took a nose dive with the 940 Pro Tactical.
A nice crisp trigger greets your hands, and for slug use at longer ranges, it’s great. It won’t win an award, but it’s adequate and consistent. With slugs, I could ping a metal IPSC target at 100 yards easily with just the red dot and a decent shooting position.
The gun patterns are like any other standard shotgun. If you have a 590A1, it likely patterns well, but this is more akin to a standard 500. A cheap load patterns loosely, but a good load stays tight. A standard round of military Olin company buckshot will pattern at 8.5 inches at 12 yards. Flitecontrol looks like a slug out until you get beyond 15 yards.
The New Standard
The 940 Pro Tactical doesn’t have the reputation or user count like other competing shotguns, so I can’t say it’s the holy grail. In a few years and with a few thousand users, then we might be able to make that call. However, I can say it’s a dang fine gun. It’s ergonomic and features some real modern flair. Typically when I purchase a shotgun, I begin to look at what needs to be changed.
When I got my hands on the 940 Pro Tactical, the only thing I wanted to add was a red dot. That says a lot to me. Mossberg has knocked one out of the park with the 940 series.
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Banned in Illinois along with other “high powered” weaponry like the Ruger 10/22.
It will make the corpulent Gov. Jay Bob’s agenda easier when he shuts off the electrical grid in the state dominated by one corrupt Demshevik county. That must be the federalism you sometimes hear about.