The Cosmi is a premium grade Italian-made semi-auto that’s primarily built by hand — a slim and sleek firearm as fine as a Swiss watch.
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I learned the value of quality a long, long time ago. For a lot of practical and aesthetic reasons, it pays to invest in quality, no matter what you’re putting your money into. Of course, the concept applies to specific, tangible objects, but it also applies in the abstract. Humor me for just a moment, if you will, and I’ll show you where I’m going with this.
In shotguns, the recognized standard is set by what we call “best quality” guns. Usually they’re side-by-side or over/under doubles, and those of us who are fond of them are accustomed to thinking in those terms. On the other hand, there’s nothing “in the Constitution” or anywhere else that dictates that the class is limited to them. And the concept of “best” is, itself, a very subjective thing, and a thing that may well depend on one’s system of beliefs about what constitutes “best.”
Beyond that, I’ve always maintained that there’s a lot of room in life for all things of excellence as well as all things that are simply done well. I guess that’s a large part of the reason that I ended up with Sporting Classics, the magazine dedicated to “things of enduring excellence.” The strange thing is that I also like things that are just a little bit “different.”
Fit and finish are immaculate, as befits a premium grade gun.
I got off on this particular tangent after a talk with Landon Stone of Nighthawk Custom. Landon was telling me that their company is now the U.S. distributor for Cosmi shotguns. The Cosmi is a premium grade Italian-made semi-auto that’s primarily built by hand, with only a few components being CNC machined. He gave me the whole spiel about how nice they were, how well made and how well they handled. But the truth is, I’d never given much thought to the Cosmi gun. I’d handled a few and noticed that they were beautifully constructed, as you’d expect for a shotgun in their price range, but the whole idea of a break-open semi-auto just left me scratching my head.
After our second talk, Landon agreed to send me a nice, but well-used 20 gauge that I could “beat about” a little without having to worry too much about adversely affecting its condition. That suited me just fine, because I wanted to really get to know the gun.
When it arrived, I quickly noticed that it was pretty straight-vanilla as Cosmis go. I figured that was a good thing, because they’re all bespoke, handmade and no two are ever quite the same. The Cosmi is a long-stroke recoil-operated semi-auto like the Browning A5, but the similarity stops there. Mine weighed in at 7 pounds even, with a 26-inch barrel and a full complement of choke tubes. It’s got a fairly tight pistol grip and unlike any other semi, it has a surprisingly slim fore-end that feels really good in the hand. It balances just a hair in front of its hinge, giving it a wonderful follow-through without sacrificing any quickness.
Fit and finish are immaculate, as befits a premium grade gun. Wood-to-metal fit is near- perfect as is the metal-to-metal fit. The wood is attractively figured European walnut and is liberally covered with impeccably executed fine-line checkering. The overall feel of the gun is slim and well-balanced. Nimble is perhaps the best word to describe it. Just the way you’d expect a gun of this quality to be. Feeding and ejection were flawless, and operation is just as slick and reliable as a premium-grade, hand-built gun should be.
I guess this is the part where things go in a little different direction. Like Robert Frost in his famous poem, Rodolfo Cosmi took “the road less traveled.” To his credit, Cosmi designed his gun with a tang safety, like you’d find on a fine double. He also gave the design a top mounted operating lever that opens the action just above the trigger guard just like a double! It’s conveniently located and works well, and that’s a good thing because the gun has no handle on the ejection port, and the gun is loaded from the inside of the open action. With the gun open, you take your forefinger and flip a lever to retract the breach-block. Then you drop a shell into the open chamber and push the block forward to lock it. Additional shells are then loaded into the magazine, which is located in the bottom of the receiver and feeds shells into a tube in the buttstock. At that point, you can close the action and you’re ready to go just like any conventional semi-auto.
The gun that I examined holds five shells in the magazine and one in the chamber for a total of six. It also has a magazine cutoff that limits the capacity to three where required by law. The barrel is graced with a slender vent rib with a matte top. Because the forend has no magazine tube to take up space, it allows the gun to lay flat in the palm of your leading hand, just like a side-by. That gives the gun a very quick, natural feel.
When the action is open, all the internal parts are exposed, jewel-like in their polished, hand-fitted glory. Not only that, but the innards can be removed as a unit, if required. Looking into the gun’s innards reminds me of nothing so much as the mechanism of a fine Swiss watch!
With the top mounted operating lever that opens the action just above the trigger guard just like a double!
And if you are mesmerized by the craftsmanship of your Patek Philippe, then you’ll be likewise enchanted by the Cosmi!
In summation, the gun handles wonderfully. It balances awfully well. It’s slim and sleek and very, very quick.
You remember the cute blond who sat in the front row in high school, don’t you? The one with the pigtails and the quirky little smile. She wore tantalizingly short skirts and rumor had it that she was very quick, too. She drove a snappy little convertible and had a rich daddy, but you never got up the courage to ask her out and she moved away. Word was, she married a billionaire’s son.
That’s the Cosmi.
