User blog comment:MyOpsAreBlackerThenYours/Should shotguns become seconarys in BF3 or next Battlefield?/@comment-1726879-20120402182907

A small breacher shotgun, yes, not the large ones that people tend to run around with.

It'd only ever be balanced if either the shotguns are on par with a pistol (which wouldn't be good) or if some form of punishment was forced onto the player for using a shotgun. Hell, if they allowed a shotgun to be a left/right D-Pad attachment, that'd be considerably fair. (you know, considering that you can have a mortar that can hit anyone on the map, an RPG which pretty much 1-shots an entire group, a grenade launcher which does a slightly worse job than an RPG, several sticks of C4 which insta-kill anything, and of course claymore mines) As a soldier, it'd be right for a shotgun to be available instead of a grenade launcher, for example.