The Gun Documented Here, and the Rules It Hunts Under

The first five volumes describe the VR80 as a type. This one describes a particular gun: a white Stormtrooper-edition VR80 with a 20-inch barrel, set up as a slug gun with a magnified optic. Its configuration is volatile — parts get added, moved to other guns and changed — so everything below is dated, and parts that are on hand but not fitted are kept separate from parts that are fitted. The second half of the volume takes up the rules the configuration has to satisfy in Michigan, where it is used, and under the federal law that applies everywhere.

6.1 The Configuration, as Documented in September 2026

The source is the owner’s equipment record, last modified 17 September 2026 and read on 19 September 2026. Statuses are the record’s own: “Installed” means fitted; any other status means not fitted.

6.1.1 Fitted

Table 1 — Fitted

Item	As recorded	Notes, and what was checked
Base gun	Rock Island Armory VR80 “Stormtrooper”, 12 gauge, 20 in barrel	Armscor’s Stormtrooper White, SKU VR80-STW, a Lipsey’s exclusive (Vol 1 §1.5)
Magazine	RIA, 5-round	factory magazine (§6.5)
Pistol grip	”White Stock”	⚠ ambiguous: recorded in the grip field. Armscor lists the edition as shipping with a thumbhole stock and an “Extra Honeycomb Stormtrooper Grip”; the grip fitted is presumably the white factory grip, but the record does not say so
Stock	Luth-AR MBA-3 stock assembly with cheek riser	Luth-AR: the MBA-3 “requires a Carbine buffer tube, either Mil-Spec or Commercial” (Vol 2 §2.5). Which tube is fitted is not recorded
Recoil pad	Luth-AR 3-axis recoil pad, soft 35 durometer	Luth-AR describes the MBA-3’s “3-Axis Buttplate” with length-of-pull, height and lateral adjustment; the pad’s durometer is as recorded
Optic	Primary Arms SLX 1-6×24 SFP illuminated ACSS Gen III	the ACSS variant (5.56/.308 or .300 BLK/7.62×39) is not recorded (Vol 5 §5.5)
Optic mount	”Offset Scope Mount — Primary Arms”	⚠ not identified: which Primary Arms mount, its height, and whether “offset” means a forward cantilever or a 45° offset are not recorded
Choke	Carlson’s rifled choke tube, Beretta/Benelli Mobil, 12 gauge	Carlson’s item 40050, 1:35 twist, .730 in groove (Vol 4 §4.4); the record’s “120050” and “0.72 in” do not appear on Carlson’s page
Bipod	Harris M-LOK bipod	model not recorded. Harris bipods are recorded as shared between other rifles in the collection; whether this one moves between guns is not recorded

6.1.2 Not fitted — the planned upgrade

Table 2 — Not fitted — the planned upgrade

Item	As recorded	Notes
Trigger	Mimtac Drastic ST 12-gauge AR drop-in trigger, flat black, DRST-BLK-01	part number confirmed on Mimtac’s own page; a 4.0 lb single-stage cassette made for the VR80 (Vol 2 §2.6). Recorded against a retailer, not as installed: on hand or on order, not fitted as of September 2026

6.1.3 Recorded loads

Table 3 — Recorded loads

	Load	Maker’s figures
Primary	Federal Power-Shok Rifled Slug, 12 gauge, 2¾ in	1 oz (438 gr), 1,610 ft/s (F127 RS)
Alternate	Remington Slugger High Velocity Rifled Slug, 12 gauge, 2¾ in	⅞ oz (383 gr), 1,800 ft/s (28600)

Both weights on the owner’s record are the makers’ own: Federal publishes its 1 oz slug as “438 Grain” in the product name. Volume 5 shows that the primary is the better load past 25 yards on every figure the makers publish.

6.1.4 What the record does not say

These are gaps, not guesses, and they are listed as questions in the dive’s working notes:

• which gas piston is fitted — Light (2¾ in) or Heavy (3 in) (Vol 3 §3.4);
• how many rounds the gun has fired, and whether RIA’s break-in has been completed (Vol 3 §3.5);
• which receiver extension carries the MBA-3, and whether the factory return spring and buffer are in it (Vol 2 §2.5);
• the optic’s height above the bore, the mount, and the ACSS variant (Vol 5);
• the zero — load, distance and date (Vol 5 §5.8);
• the weight of the gun as configured (Vol 1 §1.6);
• whether the factory thumbhole stock, grip and chokes are kept (Vol 3 §3.10);
• the country-of-origin and importer markings on the gun (Vol 1 §1.4).

6.2 Why This Configuration Makes Sense — and Where It Does Not

Read against the rest of the dive, the configuration is coherent. A Foster slug is built for a smooth bore (Vol 4 §4.2), so a smooth-bore semi-automatic is a legitimate slug gun; the rifled tube is the only route to any rifling on a VR80 and is, at worst, a harmless open tube for a slug (Vol 4 §4.5). The primary load is the right one of the two for the ranges the optic implies (Vol 5 §5.2). The optic’s magnification matches the band in which a slug gun is useful, and the adjustable cheek riser and soft pad address the two costs of putting a tall optic on a hard-recoiling gun.

Three points are worth attention.

1. The optic’s reticle is calibrated for a rifle cartridge. Its drop marks will be wrong for a slug until they are found on paper at 6× (Vol 5 §5.5).
2. The alternate load is not interchangeable with the primary. Its path and wind drift differ enough at 100–150 yards that a zero found with one is not a zero for the other (Vol 5 §5.6).
3. The factory warranty is, on RIA’s own wording, already compromised by the aftermarket stock alone (Vol 3 §3.10). Keeping the factory stock, tube, trigger group and chokes is cheap insurance.

6.3 Where the Parts Come From Now

The owner’s record names Tooth and Nail Armory as the “best place for VR80 mods and acc”, and links one of its product pages. It is no longer a working source.

• The site’s last normal capture in the Internet Archive is dated 21 March 2025. A capture of 24 April 2025 reads “Website Disabled”. By 2026 the domain returned only a redirect to a generic “lander” page, and archived paths under it were unrelated to firearms.¹
• The product page on the owner’s record — the VR80 drop-in trigger kit — returned the same redirect when checked on 19 September 2026.
• Whether the business trades under another name or address could not be established, and nothing here suggests either way.

What the archived store sold is still useful as evidence — it documents the VR80’s trigger, pins, safety parts and weak points in more detail than RIA’s own literature does — and Volumes 2 and 3 use it that way. As a place to buy parts it is gone.

The maker’s own side of the business now fills most of the gap. Advanced Tactical, which describes itself as “A Subsidiary of Armscor / Rock Island Armory”, lists about a hundred VR80 parts, factory magazines in five sizes, aftermarket AR stocks sold for the VR80, and the Mimtac trigger recorded for this gun (Vol 3 §3.10.1). Its stock on 19 September 2026 was patchy for gas-system parts.

6.4 Michigan: the Zone Is Gone, and the VR80 Was Always Legal In It

The rule that made slug guns a Michigan institution — the limited firearms deer zone in the southern Lower Peninsula — was eliminated effective 12 September 2026. The hub’s .450 Bushmaster dive documents the change from the Department of Natural Resources’ own current regulations and the Natural Resources Commission’s release of 15 May 2026, quotes the old rule, and records a discrepancy between the current digest and the Wildlife Conservation Order chapters still posted. That material is not repeated here.

One point from it bears directly on this gun. The old rule’s list of what was legal in the zone began: “(a) A shotgun with a smooth or rifled barrel.” A VR80 with a slug was therefore always legal in the zone; the elimination did not add anything for it. What the change removed was the slug gun’s position as the default — a hunter in the south of the state may now use a centrefire rifle of any calibre above .22 rimfire — and with it much of the reason a southern Michigan hunter would configure a shotgun this way in the first place. The .450 Bushmaster dive’s Vol 6 compares the 12-gauge slug with that cartridge on the owner’s own two slug loads (Vol 6).

6.5 The Six-Shell Rule: Five Plus One Is Exactly the Limit

What did not change is the capacity limit for semi-automatics. The .450 Bushmaster dive quotes the current digest: “You cannot hunt deer with a semi-automatic shotgun or semi-automatic rifle that can hold more than six shells in the barrel and magazine combined.” It also notes that the Wildlife Conservation Order’s version is broader, reaching possession “in an area frequented by animals” as well as hunting (.450 Bushmaster Vol 3, §3.4).

For a VR80 the arithmetic is unforgiving:

Table 4 — For a VR80 the arithmetic is unforgiving

Magazine	Source	Capacity + chamber	Deer-legal in Michigan?
2-round (VR80 only)	Advanced Tactical	2 + 1 = 3	✅
5-round (factory)	Armscor; Advanced Tactical	5 + 1 = 6	✅ exactly at the limit
5-round with a +2 extension	Taylor Freelance, “creating a much-more-useful 7+1”	7 + 1 = 8	❌
9-round	Advanced Tactical (“Will only feed 2¾ shells”)	9 + 1 = 10	❌
9-round with a +3 extension and its spring guide left in, the maker’s “Low-Cap state”	Taylor Freelance, “10+1”	10 + 1 = 11	❌
19-round	Advanced Tactical	19 + 1 = 20	❌
21-round drum	Advanced Tactical	21 + 1 = 22	❌

Capacities are as the sellers describe them, read 19 September 2026.²

⭐ The factory five-round magazine is compliant with no margin at all. Any extension, any larger magazine, or a spare larger magazine carried afield where the WCO’s possession wording reaches, takes the gun over. The Taylor Freelance extension is sold through Armscor’s own parts subsidiary and advertised as turning the factory magazine into a “much-more-useful 7+1”; for Michigan deer, that is the configuration to avoid. The owner’s record lists only 5-round RIA magazines for this gun.

⚠ Regulations change annually and this one sits alongside a rule that changed four months before this was written. The check date is 19 September 2026, and the current digest governs.

6.6 Waterfowl: a Rule Written for a Tube

The federal migratory-bird regulations add a stricter limit that applies to any shotgun used for ducks, geese and other migratory game birds. From 50 CFR 20.21, as currently published:³

“No persons shall take migratory game birds: … (b) With a shotgun of any description capable of holding more than three shells, unless it is plugged with a one-piece filler, incapable of removal without disassembling the gun, so its total capacity does not exceed three shells.”

The regulation then lists exceptions, including light-goose-only seasons and certain September Canada goose seasons.

The text was written for tube-magazine guns, where a plug goes inside the magazine tube and cannot come out without taking the gun apart. A detachable-box gun has no tube to plug. A two-round VR80 magazine exists — Armscor’s parts subsidiary sells one, “for VR80 only” — and with one chambered that is three.² Whether a gun that will accept a five-round magazine is “capable of holding more than three shells” when a two-round magazine is inserted is a question the regulation’s text does not answer, and this dive does not answer it either. A waterfowler intending to use a VR80 should put the question to the US Fish and Wildlife Service or the state wildlife agency before the season, not after.

6.7 Federal Classification

With its 20-inch barrel and roughly 40-inch overall length, the VR80 is an ordinary Title I shotgun under federal law. The National Firearms Act’s short-barreled-shotgun thresholds, the registration process and the $0 making and transfer tax that Public Law 119-21 set for short-barreled shotguns from 1 January 2026 are covered in the hub’s Suppressor Law dive and are not restated here. Nothing in the configuration documented here engages them: the stock change and the recoil pad alter length of pull, not barrel length, and a 20-inch barrel keeps the overall length well clear of any short-barreled-shotgun threshold with the stock at its shortest.

The manual’s state warnings are worth one line each, because they are printed in every copy: California and Massachusetts magazine limits of ten, New York’s of seven.⁴ Armscor lists the Stormtrooper edition as “Massachusetts Compliant: Yes” (Vol 1 §1.5); the parts subsidiary declines to ship larger magazines to a list of states that includes Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.² None of those limits applies in Michigan, whose own limit for deer is the six-shell rule above.

6.8 Owed Measurements and Photographs

This dive’s gaps are specific and can each be closed at the bench or the range. They are ranked in the README; in brief:

1. five-shot groups at 50 yards, factory Improved Cylinder tube against the Carlson’s rifled tube, same load and lot (Vol 4 §4.6);
2. the zero and the holds at 125 and 150 yards, with the ACSS mark used for each (Vol 5 §5.8);
3. a whole-gun photograph of the configuration as it stands (§6.1);
4. the importer and country-of-origin markings (§6.1.4);
5. the piston fitted and its rim marking; the gun’s weight as configured; the optic height.

References

Footnotes

1. Internet Archive, CDX index for toothandnailarmory.com, https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=toothandnailarmory.com/, and captures of 21 March 2025 and 24 April 2025; the live domain checked on 19 September 2026. ↩

2. Advanced Tactical (“A Subsidiary of Armscor / Rock Island Armory”): “VR80 - 12 Ga. - 2rnd - Blued Finish”, “VR Series - 12 Ga. - 5rnd”, ”- 9rnd”, ”- 19rnd”, ”- 21rnd Drum”, and “RIA VR Series +3 Magazine Extension by Taylor Freelance”, via https://advancedtactical.com/magazines/shotgun-magazines/vr-series-12-ga/ and https://advancedtactical.com/competition-parts/vr80-competition/, all read 19 September 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 50, §20.21, “What hunting methods are illegal?”, current text via the eCFR, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-50/part-20/section-20.21, read 19 September 2026. ↩

4. Armscor / Rock Island Armory, Users Manual VR80 Mag Fed Shotgun, 04/2020, p. 1, “State-By-State Warnings”, https://www.armscor.com/hubfs/RIA%20VR80%2004-2020.pdf, read 19 September 2026. ↩