The pivoting pin at the bottom and the spring-loaded latch that Burgess added to the design allowed the gun to be carried in a folded state and snapped into a locked firing condition with a flip of the wrist. In fact, Burgess sold a belt holster for the shotgun to allow one to carry it under a coat in just that manner.
Burgess salesman Charlie Dammon – an impressive exhibition shooter – made an appointment with then New York City Police Board President Theodore Roosevelt in 1885, and arrived concealing a loaded Burgess in a holster under his coat. After exchanging a few greetings, Dammon thoroughly startled Roosevelt by whipping out the gun, snapping it shut, and blasting six blanks into the ceiling of the office. Roosevelt, always one to be enthusiastic about weapons technology, promptly order one hundred of the guns for use in the New York State Penal System
Ian’s Video: [7:20] https://youtu.be/HXvmGtLYwKA?si=
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a17376/folding-shotgun/
MYOG is a time honored tradition, and the conflict in Myanmar is doing a bang up job of showing how it can cause real problems for a despotic government.
From a builder’s perspective, if you think about a shotgun all the parts that contain the bang can be bought at Home Depot or Lowes, which just leaves the printed parts and CF Nylon looked to be the leader for frames and lower receivers last I checked. You can order that from Amazon. Firing pin could be for an AR, they’re $7 if you catch a good sale online, and the trigger could be an easy drop in AR trigger or something printed itself with a few off the shelf metal pieces for reinforcement.
I should probably state the obligatory “I’m not in America” but hey, if it’s traditional…
America is not the only country with a tradition of homemade weapons, but some of the others use them ceremonially, like the Afghan long gun on this community a couple days ago.