So is the thicker barrel really necessary for most situations? As mentioned before I intend it to be a duty shotgun once I get on the force. I doubt the heat shield is really necessary for a weapon that will likely be more of a target weapon than anything else.
I do like the sound of the ghost ring sight if it aid in accuracy very much. Can slugs be shot out of a 590 without a rifled barrel? How accurate would that be? I shot 5 slugs out of my 500 and never hit a thing.
(edited to add) There are many variations of the 590. Look on the Mossberg website, there are the 14" Cruizer models, the "DA" trigger models and many others.