Everyone has bias, and revealing bias is important. I have a bias toward anything that uses gauge to describe the round it fires. I also love when those repeating claymores are short; shorter is better. The wave of 12-gauge, pistol-grip-only firearms that are not under the purview of the NFA is my bread and butter. I say all this to say that I like the Mafteah on principle.
A short, semi-automatic, pistol-grip-only firearm works its way into my heart with ease. The Mafteah is the first of these firearms to use an inertia-based system to operate the weapon. IWI describes it as a recoil-operated system; an inertia system certainly utilizes recoil energy to cycle the weapon.
The Mafteah has a 14-inch barrel and an overall length of 27.75 inches. It weighs 5 pounds and 11 ounces. The gun holds five rounds of 2.75-inch 12-gauge shells and is capable of chambering 3-inch magnums.
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The thing is, the Mafteah isn’t just a copy/paste of a semi-auto, inertia-based firearm. IWI wasn’t afraid to be a little different in how they approached the gun’s ergonomics and design. This makes the IWI Mafteah a little different and makes it a standout firearm.
What’s Different About the Mafteah
Let’s start with the optics system. The Mafteah is red dot ready, and in more ways than one. You can slap a rail to the top of the receiver, like most modern shotguns. Where the Mafteah does do things differently is the other red dot option. The gun comes cut to accept Glock MOS plates.
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Using MOS plates opens up a world of optics options. Toss the plate on, then toss the optic on the plate. This gives you a lower mount than a red dot on a rail. Lower-mounted dots tend to be the better option for shotguns; the closer we get in line with the bore, the better.
That’s not the only trick up the Mafteah’s sleeve. The charging handle can be swapped to either side, making it the second 12-gauge I know of to use this feature, and the first was a niche, uber-expensive shotgun that’s now out of production. As a right-handed shooter, I benefit from this.
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I can access the charging handle with my support hand with ease. Doing an emergency port load is much easier. The charging handle doesn’t get in my way as I slam rounds into the gun’s ejection port.
The Mafteah also uses a vent rib to set the bead at the correct height, preventing any point-of-aim or point-of-impact issues. A vent rib is nice, and it’s attractive. With specialized mounts and optics, it provides a third place to mount optics.
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The handguard is massive and covers a good portion of the barrel. The handguard has numerous M-LOK slots for accessory mounting. One included accessory is an M-LOK-mounted hand strap that can be tightened and loosened to the user’s needs.
The Mafteah At the Range
12-gauge pistol grip only firearms are well outside of the beginner’s realm for guns. With that said, semi-automatic variants are much easier to handle than pump-action variants. The Mafteah’s action absorbs a fair bit of recoil that you’d normally feel with a pump-action.
More than that, IWI designed the gun to be easy to handle. That strap up front works extremely well to establish a push/pull recoil mitigation technique. Tighten it down, and it sticks to your hand. Push forward on the gun and pull rearward on the grip, and you can cut recoil by a large margin.
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The massive handguard allows for a comfortable grip on the gun, and you can hang onto it without a problem. I can put two rounds of full-power buckshot on target in less than a second from the low ready. I can dump the entire tube as fast as possible without losing any control over the gun.
Throw in low-recoil Federal Flitecontrol or even just birdshot, and this thing is a kitten to control. At least as far as 12-gauge pistol grip kittens go. The gun’s quite light and well-balanced, making it easy to steer and drive between multiple targets.
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Putting lead on three targets in less than two seconds is easy. I did a pseudo El Presidente with three targets and no reload. One shot per, but the targets were nine feet apart. Two seconds was all it took. Shift my body like a turret and engage as I go. The Mafteah wasn’t fighting me along the way either.
Hitting Straight
The Mafteah comes with a cylinder bore and no chokes available. From a cylinder bore the gun delivers a 7-inch pattern with 00 buckshot at ten yards. With Federal Flitecontrol, it throws a fifty-cent-sized hole into a target at the same range.
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The bead is big and white, easy to use. A red dot isn’t needed, but if you’re like me, you’ll appreciate one. The red dot allows for a bit quicker engagement when that bright reticle captures your eye and makes it easy to see against the target.
With the bead sight, the vent rib guides your eyes down the bore, prevents canting, and helps ensure fast and accurate shots. This makes it fairly easy to keep the gun running and pointing it just right for accurate hits. For fun, I took some reduced-recoil Federal Tactical slugs out to 50 yards with the Mafteah.
Without a stock, it’s not as fast, but I can consistently put those slugs into a torso-sized target. Hearing that smack of a one slound piece of lead crash into a steel target is absolutely heartwarming.
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I mentioned a lot about the front end of the gun and charging handle, but there’s more to the ergonomics than that. The bolt release is massive and easy to hit. It drops and makes reloads fast. The gun uses a European-style shell release, so it requires a button or trigger press to release the first shell.
The benefit of this design is how easy it is to do slug select drills. When you empty the chamber, a round doesn’t feed from the tube automatically. Only if the button is pressed or the trigger pulled. Toss the slug in and make that long-range shot.
Final Thoughts
Using an inertia system means the gun can be more shell sensitive. In my experinece it runs most rounds quite well. Even that reduced recoil Federal Flitecontrol, which is 00 at 1145 FPS, works fine. Where you might run into issues is with light trap and skeet loads. These birdshot loads aren’t going to work well in this gun.
Standard 7.5 shot at 1,200 FPS? Not a problem. A 1,000 FPS trap load? Probably not going to run well. Keep that in mind when choosing ammo for this gun.
Mafteah means key, and the Mafteah is my key to happiness. It’s short, it’s hard-hitting, cycles fast, and gives you an innovative, ergonomic pistol-grip firearm for a modern age.