I got hung up tonight on the claims from some gun owners, self-styled experts, that the President's shotgun photo was a fake. So night is turning to day, I've finished my effort via an email, and I thought I'd try to post it here.
This written effort began at 5am, so if I screw things up I'll fix them later today. The authenticity of the President's August 4th, 2012, photo is challenged on three fronts, not including his stance and whatever I've missed from folks who hate what's happened. Of all things, he met their requests for a photo, and on top of that we now have these TCU references to him skeet shooting. How horrible for the haters.
Sorry to digress. More after the orange thing that's between me and my bed.
So here's what I see as the three challenges:
(1) Where's the recoil !?!? ;
(2) There shouldn't be gases from smokeless (or whatever) modern gunpowder ; and
(3) Why is there only a discharge from the right side, or right port, of the upper barrel?
Well, here we go. #1, 2, and 3 right back atcha haters who claim to know a thing or two about guns. I am not a gun owner by the way. I have nothing against gun owners, except for the stupid ones and leaders like Wayne LaPierre who incite fear & violence for profit. And I support what I believe are citizens' Second Amendment rights to bear arms. We, not simply, have to continue working to balance rights and regulations. And more importantly, we need to have an educated populace that values life.
Answer 1 (Recoil): There's clearly movement of the President's weapon in the picture distributed by the White House. In other words, it's not at the same level of focus of his body. The focus on the shotgun is good, and the picture was obviously taken using an excellent camera (possibly a Canon EOS 5D Mark II is my guess). But comparing his hands and shoulder to nearby parts of the shotgun shows recoil caught with a high-performance fps camera.
As an added by-the-way, the shotgun's Browning manual states that barrel porting reduces recoil and muzzle jump. How about that? Someone should tell the NRA crazies.
Answer 2 (Smoke): The President is using a Browning 725 Citori Overunder shotgun imho. There are many variants of this gun, but I'm 99% certain I'm at the right base model mark. The gentleman who is "skeet" shooting in the linked eight-minute video is using a variant of this shotgun. If the reader immediately skips to about the four-minute mark and just watches, you'll see all kinds of gas coming from the front and side ports. So much for smokeless guns in this modern era of smokeless powder and haters who are full of @#$%.
http://www.youtube.com/... (Again, jump to four-minutes)
Answer 3 (Left Port): I thought this would be the toughest, but all it took was zooming in on the President's barrel's pixels. The President's shotgun is simply porting to the left, on our side of the picture.
That's it. Done with answer #3, and I think it's very safe to presume it's also porting to the right, since we can only see his left side with regard to the gun's aim, and since the left & right gases are only in one line of sight.
The (hopefully) linked/inserted image shows the President's weapon discharge on the top, and a section of a Browning 725 Citori Overunder stock photo on the bottom for reference. While there is both horizontal & vertical movement in the President's weapon (a.k.a. recoil & muzzle jump), one can see that the gas is clearly on this side -- the left side -- of what I believe is called the rib, the topmost part of the gun.
In the bottom stock image, one can see that the ports are mounted high on the upper barrel being fired by the Prez, which minimizes the gas we see alongside the barrel.
It's terrible what lengths those who hate President Obama will do to deny simple truths, in their area of expertise no less.