The Mossberg 464 is an American-made lever action rifle that they brought out in 2008. From forum posts and lack of new stock at retailers, I believe that the centerfire 30-30 version is now discontinued. Can it measure up to the greats like the Winchester 94 and Marlin 336? Let’s find out!
Mossberg 464 Specifications
- 30-30 or 22LR (I love that it doesn’t come in a pile of different cartridges)
- Comes in wood or a horrendous tacticool stock set (SPX version)
- Straight grip or pistol grip
- 20″ barrel
- 6.75lbs on my scale
- 6 in the mag, 1 in the chamber for a total capacity of 7 rounds
- Comes in blued or stainless finish
- Drilled and tapped for scope bases (and angle eject so it’ll work with a scope)
- Hammer is threaded for an extension
- Tang safety, rebounding hammer, lever grip safety, firing pin safety block
Modern features
The Mossberg 464 mixes classic styling with modern features. The safety features on it are a good example. I hate to make the comparison, but it’s kind of like a Glock in how many passive safeties it has.
Safety features:
- Rebounding hammer, so the hammer isn’t resting on the firing pin when it’s let down and a half-cock position is not required.
- Transfer block, so the gun can only be fired when locked up
- Lever grip safety, so you have to be holding the lever in to fire
- A notched firing pin that will only go forward if the lever is in the correct position
- Tang safety that stops the hammer from hitting the transfer block and firing pin. Note: you can pull the trigger when the safety is on but the hammer won’t hit the firing pin and it won’t go off
With this many safeties, you have options in how you could carry the rifle loaded but still safely. You could either decock the action and cock the hammer when you’re ready to fire or leave it cocked with the safety on and flick it off when you need to fire. I wouldn’t both decock and put the safety on, that’d be silly.
Shooting the Mossberg 464
It. . .loads and shoots like pretty much every other lever action 30-30. Being able to load the gun and chamber a round while the safety is on is a bit of a novelty. The lever cycles smoothly, more smoothly than the Win 94 I reviewed here.
And it’s accurate enough for deer at ranges that 30-30 is effective at.
Pros and Cons
This one’s used so I don’t have the privilege of reviewing from new, but some complaints I’ve heard of:
- General roughness when you first get them. Needing a breaking in period before they’re smooth
- Hammer spurs/extensions breaking
- Failing to feed due to crap in the action/mag tube
- Worn out extractors & ejectors causing fail to extract/eject
- The folding rear sight is kinda crappy
Womp womp. Pretty basic/crap rear sight but I guess you could just run a scope.
For the pros: the gun has a lot of features for the price. I think it’s not more popular because of:
Bad timing in the market
In 2008, manufacturers were starting to get really good at making cheap, accurate bolt action rifles, so a lot of people were moving from old lever action rifles that were low powered and not as accurate, to these new, cheaper bolt action rifles. Since then, the pricing on value-priced bolt action hunting rifles has only got better (when taking inflation into account). This caused a huge gap in demand for lever action rifles.
Why would you get a Mossberg lever action rifle when there were still plenty of used Win 94’s and Marlin 336’s at reasonable prices? So the Mossberg’s saw low demand and they eventually discontinued them.
Fast forward to today and lever actions have got very expensive over the past 4 years. Some people think it’s because of the popularity of the show Yellowstone while others think it’s because manufacturing has greatly slowed and the used market is now tapped out of those cheap, unwanted lever actions.
If Mossberg were to bring back their centerfire 464 today, I think they’d sell a PILE of them. There’s just very little on the market for centerfire, lever action rifles in the value priced segment. Instead, we have (Canadian pricing as of 2024):
- Marlin 336’s at $1500+
- Chiappa’s at around $1500
- Browning BLR’s at $1500
- Pedersoli’s at $1800
- Henry’s at $1500
- Rossi’s at $1200
In my neck of the woods (Alberta), even old, VERY used Winchester 94’s are going for $1000-ish. Compared with that price difference, the Mossberg 464 would be very competitive in the market.
