ocharry - That's interesting and I thank you for checking it out and letting me know. That is pretty much my experience
with a stoeger. My current Spartan/Baikal also has cocking levers but I don't know if the same problem would occur with it and haven't tried. Somewhere, on some forum, in a place that recent searches have failed to find, I thought I remember some guy who said he was a gunsmith who warned that people can "bugger up" their shotguns when they do this and try to fix it. He said he had a tool in his shop that fixed it right quick and safely. Now I'm not sure what damage one could do in the way you and someone on Shotgun Forum said, upside down on a bench unless he was saying that one could bend the cocking levers by working them outside of the channels in the forearm. I too would and do drop the hammers (with snap caps) on any gun I am storing assembled. It would appear, however, that the factories intend, maybe by default, a gun to be stored disassembled to be stored with the hammers cocked since they don't address the issue of recocking on a bench at all but do suggest checking to make sure the gun is empty before removing the forearm (thus cocking the hammers). It also seems pretty clear to me that a new gun out of the box is shipped with hammers cocked, otherwise they probably would tell us to turn the receiver upside down on a bench to cock the hammers before assembly. Many owner's manuals say that their guns are "preserved" enough to last for two years in the pipeline before sale, i.e. a new gun could have sat for a year or two with hammers cocked, disassembled in the box. If that is so, perhaps dropping the hammers is of little merit. Interesting stuff (to me at least
) and I really appreciate you taking the time to check it out on your Stoeger.