If you can't shoot the currently available and legal ammo in a gun, it's not practical for volume use, no matter how wealthy you are.
Best guns ought to be able to shoot cheap steel shot.
Why?? They'll get the ammo they need when money is no object.
When breechloaders replaced muzzleloaders, the muzzleloaders were relegated to the closets, or the poor folks.
When smokeless powder replaced black powder, the damascus guns were mostly retired from the field, unless nitro proofed or sleeved. No more new damascus guns were made.
There are likely new best guns made in Britain for two and and a half inch twelve gauge ammo, but I'd bet the overwhelming majority of exported best guns made in Britain, and virtually all the best guns made elsewhere in 12 gauge are two and three quarter inch chambered,,,,for shell availability.
Already, cheap repeaters are the rule shooting wildfowl in America, because of nontoxic shot regulations. But a light game gun never was a wildfowl gun, anyway.
Light game guns are taken to the places where they can still be shot several hundred times or more in a day. They require being able to shoot the readily available ammunition. If they can't, they stay in the vault back home, or get replaced with a shotgun that can shoot the ammo that's available.
It may be, that shooting small steel shot, say size seven or six, is not a problem with the existing soft soldered double guns with fixed chokes, for target use. But I'm only going to shoot that stuff when lead shot is regulated away.
If I were the King, then nontoxic shot would be outlawed, and lead shot mandated, for shotguns. Nontoxic shot regulations are by far and away the greatest threat to our beloved old fixed choke guns.
But I ain't the King, and won't ever be.
The Missouri Department of Conservation takes a bunch of Mossberg 500 twenty gauge guns, and big buckets of 2 3/4" 20 gauge shells, to teach youngsters how to shoot shotguns on the ranges here in Missouri. They've outlawed lead shot on all public lands, too.
Missouri is a gun friendly state.
Think about the places, that aren't gun friendly.
Steel shot is coming. It's the only metal that is cheap enough to replace lead for common use for practical shotgun use.
