While I normally prefer the safety aspect of a break open gun (easier for everyone to tell it's unloaded), for new shooters if organized sporting clay shooting is going to be on the agenda my vote goes to a 20 gauge gas operated autoloader & particularly if the shooter is of small stature as most young shooters are.
Several times I have been on a sporting clays squad where small statured shooters (one was an adult woman & the others were children) shooting break open guns could not open the gun & have the bbls clear the bar across the front of the shooting station & at some point in the round they turned around and faced the squad to open the gun.
This is an extremely dangerous situation & in the case of the woman shooter she had only fired one bbl & had a live round in the other bbl with the gun pointed directly at the squad.
Obviously these are cases of extremely poor gun handling, lack of concentration & or proper training & supervision but the point is that they were set up to fail with guns that they couldn't safely handle in a situation they were put into.
I think they would have been much better served by a well maintained 20 ga autoloader both from the aspects of ease of safe handling & lower perceived recoil. I say well maintained because I've observed malfunctioning auto loaders bringing up other unsafe gun handling issues & not always from children or novice shooters.
Also, I would consider a .410 of any type to be a handicap for a young shooter. I might consider a 28 ga but I see no advantage over a 20 ga with light loads.
