The Remington 870 shotgun is simple, efficient, affordable and reliable. No wonder Big Green’s sold almost 12 million of them. With their new 870 DM (for detachable magazine) Remmy has rolled the dice. Have they produced the New Coke of shotguns or a V8-like forehead slapper that will have other shotgun makers wondering why they haven’t thought of this, too?
Remington has announced five new 870 DM Models and added DM capability to their Tac-14 non-shotgun shotgun (see them all here).
The DM’s feature everything that made the 870 shotgun so popular for the last 57 years, with the simple addition of a detachable magazine system in place of the traditional tube magazine. The polymer mag (each gun ships with one) holds six 12 gauge shotshells (2 3/4 or 3 inches), giving a shooter seven rounds of tactical shotgun firepower and all the ease of operation of an 870 pump.
The big advantage: faster reloads. No more thumb-feeding a tube mag one by one. You swap out an 870 DM’s spent mag via a large paddle-type release located just forward of the magazine well. Tilt the release back, slide the mag out and you’re ready to rock.
You reload the 870 DM AR-style. Just slam a new six-round mag straight up and into the mag well (no need to rock it in like an AK). With a full mag in place and one in the chamber, you can easily pack another magazine in a pocket or carrying pouch. That gives you 13 rounds of good-to-go, git-er-done big-boy ballistics.
The review model — the Model 870 DM Magpul – sports a Magpul SGA stock; shooters can choose their length of pull by adding or removing spacers. The Magpul festooned shottie end with a thick rubber Remington Supercell recoil pad.
The rest of the Remington 870 DM Magpul — the trigger component system, cross-bolt safety, and 18.5-inch barrel — are the same as your grandfather’s 870. Which means the DM models will take 870 replacement barrels.
Pay no attention to that not-a-magazine tube under the barrel. It’s empty; there to guide the fore end as you cycle the gun.
That Magpul MOE forend offers a solid, positive grip while shucking shotshells. It has the standard Magpul feel to it, though I’m not sure it’s any more efficient than the ”corncob” forend on my Remington 870 Express Tactical. What it does have: M-LOK capability. You can add a length of rail for lights, lasers, coffee makers, etc.
The 870 DM uses an XS Sight system. The metal ghost ring rear sight’s milled into a length of 1913 Picatinny rail, suitable for owners who prefer to mount an optic. The front sight’s ramped metal XS white dot aligns easily with the ghost ring.
The 870 DM Magpul’s muzzle features a jagged-edged ported breacher-style choke that can be switched out for any other Remington Rem Choke tube for hunting or sporting purposes.
The six-round box magazine’s molded textured polymer walls help enable quick, confident and reliable removal and reloading. The mag, built with a strong spring and a bright orange follower, mates well with the aluminum magwell directly below the receiver for smooth feeding.
Given the new feeding system, I was curious to see how the 870 DM pump action shotgun would cycle heavy loads. So I headed to the range, packing some light #6 game loads, 00 buck and one-ounce slugs. After the first couple of shots of #6 loads, I determined that the DM’s racking action is just as smooth as my Remington 870 Express Tactical.
When I think about shooting a 12 gauge shotgun, I’m thinking 00 buckshot. The 870 DM fed, fired and ejected double-ought buck without hesitation or deviation.
Firing one-ounce slugs at AR500 steel targets from 30 yards, the 870 DM took care of business. My shoulder didn’t feel too bad either, thanks to the Supercell pad. And as the DM uses most of the tried and true 870 components, a lot of the 870 aftermarket parts will work on a DM.
In short, the new, box-fed 870 series will likely be a hit: simple, efficient, reasonably affordable (MSRP $799) and reliable. It should sell especially well in the home defense shotgun market, where buyers will appreciate the extra capacity and reload-ability with power that handguns just can’t match and more perceived reliability than semi-autos. In fact, this may be the ultimate choice in a home defense shotgun. Whether hunters will pay the freight for the extra ammo in what is an ungainly looking beast remains to be seen.
Specifications: 870 DM Magpul (81352)
Capacity: 6+1 rounds of 2 3/4 or 3-inch shells
Barrel Length: 18.5 inches (comes with ported tactical choke, Rem Choke compatible)
Overall Length: 38 inches
Weight: 7.5 lbs.
Sights: XS Steel Front Sight, XS Tactical Rail/Ghost Ring Rear Sight
MSRP: $799

Ratings (out of five stars):
Accuracy: * * * * *
Dead on. I easily hit my target with slugs from 30 yards.
Ergonomics: * * * *
I love the Magpul furniture but a pistol grip would be nice on this model.
Reliability: * * * * *
Perfect. It smoothly cycled everything I fed it.
Customization: * * * * *
While there are hundreds of ways to customize an 870, I think I’ll leave this one as is.
Overall: * * * * *
Remington took an excellent home defense pump shotgun and made it better.
First the tree huggers go after toy guns, what’s next toy archery sets? Kinda hard to understand the mind of the leftwing liberal democrats. These are also the same group of people that think hunting isn’t preserving animal species and their habitat. Guess my version of (P)eople (E)ating (T)asty (A)nimals isn’t very p.c. waahhhhhhh!!
I’m retired from the military. I grew up playing with plastic dart and cap guns. Learned the safe, ethical and propper way to hunt. Spent almost 24 years in the military. Brought up 3 kids. Taught them gun safety. Took them out to the shooting range and hunting. Still no felonies from any of us.
So a couple of months ago I’m with my 3 year old granddaughter at a major sporting goods retailer to get a quiver and broadheads. And she sees people utilizing the indoor range. She looks at me and says “I want to shoot too! But I want a purple one (bow)”. I couldn’t help but have an ear to ear grin. I told her she would have to ask her parents if it was okay for Santa Claus to bring her one. Sure enough not a problem. Guess this all makes me a horrible father and grandfather.
Oh yeah, I teach Hunter education classes where I live. Does this make me an ENABLER? If so I will proudly continue to do so!!
“You can add a length of rail for lights, lasers, coffee makers, etc.”
Thanks for the tongue-in-cheek joke. It irks me when every review mentions a rail and has to subsequently explain, every time, what the rail is there for, like we need re-education every time. I get new gun owners might not be aware of the purpose of a rail but it’s merely a Google search away. Or you can be pedantic for the majority of the readers of the site, whereupon it only really bothers this lone commentator and maybe a handful of others.
You lost me at (fake comedy) SNL . . .
You must have one of the last Ford trucks they ever put manual transmissions into.
I did this once with my Jeep. Thankfully it just coasted out the driveway, perpendicular to the road, into the middle of the road. Thankfully it was during normal work-hours, bright sunny day, and the street is a short dead-end, so no traffic at all within those two minutes of negligence.
I was quite embarrassed by the affair, even if there may have been nobody to witness my idiocy. I guarantee you I haven’t made that same mistake since then, nor do I intend to… although I do drive an automatic now but we still have a standard left in the driveway…
Slap a drum mag on it (and you know folks will, because, America!) and we have the next thing for the Leftists to ban as “The new Street Sweeper, slaughtering hundreds with every trigger pull”, because you know they will.
I’ll seriously consider the birdhead “Shockwave” version, as soon as an aftermarket vertical forward grip is available…
The “20%” figure comes from an unscientific anonymous online college poll of feministas. Don’t ever repeat that crap. Check the actual FBI stats.
What I’m not ok with is making everyone quit or resign the minute any accusation is put forward about alleged misconduct. We are all innocent until proven guilty according to the rule of law in the US. And this whole trend of shaming people through accusations, because we have to believe the victim is a sham. We should believe the victim as much as we should believe the accused. That is the standard we should follow. This is being used as a weapon by the left to smear people they don’t like to either silence their viewpoint or preclude them from positions of power. Roy Moore was in many positions of power before he ran for Senate, and only now after he won the contested run off, which no one thought he would. And only now that he will be in a position to help Trump do the spurious allegations come out.
Innocent until proven guilty. Allegations don’t make them true. Herman Cain went down on allegations that weren’t true.
I’m fine with electing him. If there is sufficient evidence to believe him, the Senate can kick him out and Alabama can appoint and then elect another Senator.
The GOP establishment should have been supporting him the whole time with the very explicit and loudly proclaimed caveat that there would be a full investigation by the Senate of the allegations and that if they were proven true, the Republicans would vote to kick him out of the Senate. If the Democrats wanted to support a, at that hypothetical point, proven molester just so they could say Republicans have a prominent molester too, then let them not vote to expel him from the Senate and loudly point out what they are doing.
Is nobody in the GOP establishment any good at politics? I haven’t seen any evidence of them being at least a little bit competent.
And the big difference between Moore and the liberals accused of sexual misconduct, Al Franken for example, is the Democrats have admitted they engaged in misconduct while Moore has vehemently denied it.
The refusal to turn evidence over to experts bothers me, the timing bothers. I am of the opinion Moore should keep running, but that he should state he will resign if he wins to address his accusers. If he is innocent I hope he sues them into the ground for defamation, and if he is guilty I hope he gets his.
That said, I think the Democrats have given him license to continue this race to the bottom. The reason I say this is their responses to Bill and the latest batch of Congressional accusations on their side. They are blindly defending people on partisan basis just like a lot of Republicans have defended Moore. I think they see the Democrats playing the game and are going “me too.” If they quickly and aggressively purged the cancer from their ranks they would have a lot better standing. The people speaking out agianst Bill now are about 20 years too late, if not closer to 30-40.
The NRA should refrain from weighing in or if they do make the point crystal clear they are doing such from an exclusively gun rights oriented perspective. It is a great way to get the Democrats saying that the NRA is part of a war on women or some other ridiculous garbage.
I would want it with a 20 inch barrel!
I’m kind of on the fence about this.
If I could get the one my stepfather carried, sure, absolutely. But the chances of that are slim to none. So is having a piece of history, but not his piece, worth it? I’m leaning towards no.
Which if the point is to keep a list on demand, I suppose it’s working.
The key word is “reasonably” See, the bar for reasonably is quite a bit lower for police. If the general public did something like that and claimed it was reasonable, the police and prosecutors would spend endless money to prove it wasn’t.
Sure I’m supporting Roy Moore in his fight against the Reds, Pinkos, and fellow travelers. Why? None of these accusations came up during his EIGHT (8) prior runs for office including when he ran and won a seat on Alabama’s State Supreme Court.
All the broads are represented by the hook-nosed, ambulance-chasing shyster and DNC “Super Delegate”, the Democrat’s top “smear merchant” when it comes to leveling false charges against Conservative males, Gloria Allred-faced. She’s the same bitch that represented the four (4) sluts who lied and said Herman Cain molested them. Herman Cain sued the broads and Gloria Allred-faced, they settled and paid HIM, Cain, a YUUGE undisclosed sum after the trial went to the jury and as deliberations were taking place, they knew they were exposed as liars.
If Gloria Allred-faced knew her client’s claims were true she would produce the yearbook for independent examination, it’s been THREE (3) weeks and she still refuses to hand it over to experts.
Vote Roy Moore!
The REAL pedophiles are in the Democratic Party just look at Bwarney Fwank a convicted pedophile.
Good thing the only thing Johnson had was a Dustbuster.
So Ashanti is upset about yer gat?!? Mebbe she should work on her s##t neighborhood…Milwaukee sucks. Chiraq’s “sister” city in crime. Sadly no open(legal!) carry in She-ca-go…
“Behavior as dangerous and disrespectful as this is appalling and has no place in any neighborhood and by any city contractor, subcontractor or representative,” Stamper said.
Meanwhile, cops standing around the parking lot, all of them with holstered guns, one of them pulling a gun out for show and tell…is a normal day at the cop shop (until he shoots himself in the leg when attempting to reholster).
And it the person lies on the application and gets away with it (happens more than anyone thinks), they still get a carry permit! I would rather be armed and able to defend myself than to wait for the police to come put a chalk line around my body!!!!
we have 20 + k gun laws on the books and this kook { Democrat} wants to add a few more so his buddies {ISIS] can tear our meat house down, its not about the constitution its about how our sex starved and perverted politicians want to cripple America so they have power and Authority over you. first destroy all moral law then give the perverts the right to persecute you for not having their beliefs. the unelected bureaucrats have more control over our lives with their unchecked rule making than the gutless, spineless Congress and most of the rules are not reviewable by the courts as they are suck ass dependent on the Bureaucrats
It’s no wonder that all the Cuomos hate the Constitution. The Second Amendment was adopted to allow us to protect ourselves against jut-jawed Mussolini wannabees like Andrew Cuomo and his silver-tongued Fascist father.
Finally someone who carries their gun in a holster.