I am looking for easy to use, mechanically reliable, short barrel, mix of ammo. what you have? Always willing to learn.
Nothing beats the practical simplicity of a shorter coach gun, exposed hammers, 18 1/2 barrels, auto ejectors, dual triggers, very fast to load. Remington 870 pump shotgun.
As someone who spent time in LE and worked with a gun shop for several years, assisting with testing firearms that came in with function issues, my opinion on the Taurus Judge is mixed at best. There was a time when Taurus wasn't a bad company; but the guns they make today are overwhelmingly junk. You CAN get a good one, but you're rolling the dice to do it, and their "lifetime warranty" can take months to get you your gun back... often without any work having been performed on it. As for the comments about the performance.... well, no, not really. That short barrel you find on a Judge produces such low velocity out of most .410 shells as to make them essentially useless, and its accuracy with conventional .45 Colt loads was mediocre due to the freebore from the case mouth to the barrel due to the shotgun-length chamber. I still remember being on the range when a friend of mine tried a load through his 3" Judge that was birdshot in front of three lead disks. Fired at a cardboard target, you could actually hear the impact of the load on the target. Kind of a quick HISS like hail as the shot hit, then the impact of the disks; sort of a BOOMHISS-thupthupthup. Throw a piece of carpet over the target frame, and the velocity was so low none of the projectiles would penetrate. A .38 +P gives more energy. Yes, a shot to the face with birdshot will blind, but a hit to body armor by #6 shot would NOT "disable"; not with the shot traveling as slow as it would out of that short a barrel. In the end, I find the Taurus Judge to be a lot of hype but very little real-world utility. Load it with birdshot and you might have a snake gun when hiking, but .45 Colt out of a barrel that short would not suffice as a reliable bear load, and the Taurus isn't structurally strong enough to take the hot +P .45 Colt loadings that would change that reality. As a house gun, loaded with .45 Colt JHP's, it's a pretty imposing defense pistol at household distances against two-legged predators, but in the end I'll stick with my more conventional sidearm as a primary bump-in-the-night gun. YMMV.
A double shotgun, either side by side or over/under has the shortest overall length you can get. It's faster with two shots than a pump, but not as quick as a semi-auto. Stoeger and now Mossberg make them. The Stoeger doesn't have ejectors but I think the Mossberg does which makes reloading much quicker. The semi-auto Beretta tactical shotgun is the also short and reliable but capacity is limited and you'll have to add a magazine extension. You'll also pay for it, but recoil is reduced and will handle reduced recoil buckshot.
