Conflict Armament Research documented 22 12-gauge shotguns among weapons recovered from Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria during field investigations from 2014 to 2017.
| Claim | Sources |
|---|---|
| Islamic State forces possessed or fielded 12-gauge shotguns in Iraq and Syria during the 2014 War Against the Islamic State. | Sources: CAR Weapons of the Islamic State |
| CAR documented 22 12-gauge shotguns in the recovered Islamic State weapons sample: 2 in Iraq and 20 in Syria. | Sources: CAR Weapons of the Islamic State |
| The public sources do not identify a specific battle, unit, or engagement in which those shotguns were fired. | Sources: CAR Weapons of the Islamic State |
Timeline
CAR began documenting weapons recovered from Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria in July 2014, the field program that later produced the published 12-gauge shotgun count.
Sources: CAR Weapons of the Islamic State
CAR's Weapons of the Islamic State report listed 22 documented 12-gauge shotguns in Iraq and Syria, including 2 in Iraq and 20 in Syria.
Sources: CAR Weapons of the Islamic State
Conflict Armament Research's 2017 report on Islamic State weapons lists 22 12-gauge shotguns in its appendix of weapons documented in Iraq and Syria. The table breaks that total into 2 shotguns documented in Iraq and 20 in Syria, making the 12-gauge shotgun a directly documented but small part of the recovered Islamic State small-arms sample.
CAR states that, unless otherwise noted, the materiel in the report was recovered from Islamic State forces and documented by its field investigators. For this weapon family, the public evidence supports recovered or fielded Islamic State possession rather than a named tactical use in a specific battle.
Sources: CAR Weapons of the Islamic State
CAR deployed investigation teams along Islamic State front lines from July 2014 to November 2017 in Iraq and from July 2014 to September 2015 in Syria. The organization reported 111 days of physical documentation across 84 site visits in Iraq and 27 in Syria, covering 1,832 weapons and 40,984 units of ammunition recovered from Islamic State forces.
The 12-gauge shotgun count appears in that larger recovered-weapons dataset. CAR's public web summary describes the report as a three-year field investigation into Islamic State supply chains and states that it analyzed more than 40,000 recovered items from 2014 to 2017.
The shotgun entry sits beside assault rifles, machine guns, RPG-type launchers, pistols, and other conventional weapons in CAR's recovered-weapons appendix. Its share was 1.20 percent of the Iraq-and-Syria weapon sample in that table, far below the Warsaw Pact-calibre rifles and machine guns that dominated the documented Islamic State arsenal.
CAR's earlier 2014 dispatch described the same investigation model at the start of the war: field teams examined weapons and ammunition captured from Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria between mid-June and early August 2014, working with Kurdish YPG and Peshmerga forces. That dispatch supports the capture-and-documentation context, while the later 2017 report provides the direct 12-gauge shotgun count.
Sources: CAR Weapons of the Islamic State, CAR 2014 Dispatch
