Mistakes - Guns you wish you had not bought ...

[Ron M.]

Colt Officer, Heavy barrel, that had the front strap cut down for Fuzzy grips, then covered it up with a rubber wrap-around to hide the modification. Weasel, but I should have checked. Bought it at a gun show up in Northern CA from a dealer, not a private party, so I'm fairly certain that this was known to him. Good lesson for me.

 

[leswad]

Glock model 36 for me.

 

[Grayfox]

S&W 4006. I bought it when they first came out. Foolishly fell for the hype: ".45 Power + 9mm capacity". Damned thing never did shoot worth a hoot. I fought this thing for two years. Numerous factory loads and handloaded every bullet and powder I could get my hands on. Never could get it anywhere near as accurate as a 9mm or .45acp.
Finally gave up and tried to sell it. That's when I discovered you couldn't give these things away. It took a year, but I finally managed to trade it off to a LGS. I lost my butt on the deal, but didn't care. I was glad to be rid of it.

Ruger Flat Top Bisley .44 Special. I love the .44 Special cartridge and when these came out I thought "Wow, that's so cool!" WRONG! First trip to the range the rear sight pin backed out and you could feel the right grip panel shift on the frame with every shot. Accuracy absolutely sucked. This thing shot patterns rather than groups. This really disappointed me because I know how good the .44 Special is.
I sent it back to Ruger. Four months later I get it back. They fixed the sight and grips. Accuracy still sucked. So I took it to the next gun show and dropped it like a hot rock.

 

[model70hunter]

Colt Combat Commander in SS at a gun show. That Colt was worst gun I ever owned including a RG-10, which at least worked.

Still have it? My first carry LE was as you describe, I'd like to have another even it it was only to look at...

 

[model70hunter]

My 1st auto, a Star mil surplus 9mm When I was a teen. It FTE every time. looked at the bore and chamber. You could'a hid VW bugs in the pits. I took some heavy Army surplus gun grease and lubed every bullet. The next buyer did not care he had grease. Why I remember is very shortly after I got rid of my $25 dollar wonder I happened to look in a Shotgun news that Rexall had just started carrying. In it were full page ads from places like Sarge's and others that sold brand new surplus Star bbls, cheap.

I bought and later subscribed to the Shotgun News. Before the internet it was king.

I bought enough bargain shotguns and rifles that I eventually became a fair smith by fixing broke crud. Then I actively sought it out, cheap broke fixed up was a money maker, not rich but enough to let me trade into or by nicer non broke guns.

 

[finesse_r]

Still have it? My first carry LE was as you describe, I'd like to have another even it it was only to look at...

No I don't still have it. I spent over $300 and a couple of weeks work getting it into good working condition. After all that I was so disgusted with it, I sold it for two hundred less than I paid for it. The most expensive foul up I ever had with a gun. It should never have left the factory in that condition. The gun had multiple problems including bad magazines, which I ended up replacing. To look at it, it was cosmetically beautiful, but mechanically a wreck. It originally sold by Gander Mountain, and was resold to a dealer who brought it to the gun show and dumped it on me.

That experience caused me to loose all faith in the newer Colt guns. I am almost totally a S&W and a Ruger fan. I only have two handguns that are not either a Smith or a Ruger and I inherited one of them.

It was the final straw in burning me out on gun shows also. LOL Mostly they just were getting worse and worse as far as having anything I was interested in buying.

Funny thing, I have never had a problem with a used gun, only with new ones or supposedly new ones.

 

[Gregor]

Walther p-22 aka ***-22. Worst handgun I ever owned. Sent it back to S&W for warranty repair and was sent a new replacement that I traded for a Springfield Micro Compact 1911.

Was treated so well by S&W that I bought a 617 10shot 6" shortly after.

Marlin Model 39AS .22 lever action. Bought new around 2004. Had to buy a Conetrol mount and rings from George Miller to mount a scope to it, the factory one was a ***. Rebounding hammer prevented the hammer from hitting the firing pin to fire the gun. Had to do some modifications to get the rifle to work. Hate the thing, but will not pawn my problem off on someone. Thought about making a floor lamp out of it.

 

[chief38]

The one and only gun I've regretted was a Bauer .25 Auto in Stainless Steel which I purchased as a newbie back in the early 80's, if memory serves. Don't even ask me why because I couldn't answer you! The damned thing never worked for more than two shots in a row and after sending it into Bauer 3 times to get repaired (they never did get it working properly) I traded it into the LGS for a S&W 1905 4th change with the addition of $75 bucks.

I have sold a few guns over the years that I found I wasn't using or just didn't want anymore but have NOT regretted buying them because I always came out ahead.

 

[brigeton]

Marlin/Glenfield mod 60. .22, Jamomatic.

 

[Arik]

Oh yea! Quite a few. Most of the time it my my stubbornness to admit that not all guns are "just as good as" I thought I'm saving $150 when in fact I was wasting double the price of the gun (once to buy, once to trade in on something better). And there were a few that made no sense.

*Desert Eagle 50 - why? What was the point of that? Lol
*FN 5.7 - a very expensive .22
*AK47 pistol - expensive and not practical
*CZ75 compact - good quality gun and I wanted to like it but the 50# DA trigger pull and the lack of slide real estate was a no go
*Taurus PT111 - all around junk that I felt I was getting a great deal by saving a bucks over another brand
*Taurus PT145 - same junk that my friend couldn't shoot so we swapped the 111 and the 145.
*Star B - 1911ish style in 9mm that was not compatible with any 1911 parts. No ambi safeties and poor performance.
*Norinco 1911, Citadel 1911, Springfield 1911. These 3 belong in the same category because it was my attempt at yet again buying something cheaper to get it to where I want it only to spend more money than it would have been to just buy one right one. On top of that the Citadel was junk.
*Savage 1912 32acp - another one of those brain fart purchases. There was no reason to own that
*Standard FAL ban era- again, trying to save a buck. Cost more to convert back to normal and turned out that standard parts were harder to find then metric.

 

[chaparrito]

I can only think of one. A neighborhood kid won a brand new Norinco copy of an 870 12ga but didn't want it. I gave him a hundred bucks for it. What a ***. Half a box of shells and the pot metal receiver was so hot you'd burn yourself, smoking a little bit like a cheap hot skillet.
I took it to the next show and got 150 for it from some rube. So no regrets.

 

[wbraswell]

Colt Official Police .22 lr. Horribly refinished, horribly inaccurate. How does something that locks up like that, shoot all over the place. Memo: Wear your glasses when buying guns.
Beretta 418, that damned Beretta. Now I know why M hated it.
Remington 1148. Damn that thing kicks, and it's a 20ga.
Colt Diamondback .38 snub. Colt takes a sweet Detective Sp. and mucks it up.
I would put my Python on this list, if it wasn't worth 3 times what I paid for it.

 

[ChattanoogaPhil]

I'm satisfied with all my guns as far as meeting or exceeding expectations at the time of purchase. So in that regard I have no regrets.

There are some things I now wish I had done differently. Instead of having Colt and Kimber 1911s, I'd prefer to have a Wilson Combat.

Sometimes I think about sell my 1911s and getting a Wilson, but then I handle them and think about what excellent guns they've been so why get rid of them? But if I keep the Colt and Kimber and buy a Wilson, I know that I'll rarely if ever shoot them so why keep them? So then I think maybe I'll sell them... and so goes the never ending circular indecision...

 

[S&W Fan]

I too got a Star PD years ago, hated it. Thankfully was able to sell it and got a Commander lol-bigger but better.

 

[M1A]

In the early 80's I bought my first semi. A S&W Model 59. Shot it a lot, but never liked it or the 9mm.
Traded it in on a Series 70 and have been happy ever since.

 

[Cyrano]

Here are the ones I remember; there've probably been a lot more:

Asgtra 400. Shot it with 9mm luger ammo only. Kicked violently; the shape of the grip made it like trying to hold a giant watermelon seed. Not very accurate, eiher.

AMT Backup in 380. Jammed a lot. When it worked, the recoil was painful: it had a grip safety, so the recoil was entirely taken up by the two narrow strips of frame on either side of the grip safety pedal.

Browning Baby 25: jammed once or twice for each magazine full, even after I tweaked it as much as I could. Shot 'way high; I could keep my shots on a 55 gallon drum at 100 yards if i did my part.

EAA copy of a SAA. Metal was soft, and the cylinder stop notches began to wear quickly. The front sight was so high that if I shortened it to to hit the point of aim, I'd have filed it flush with the barrel.

There have been others, but thankfully I've forgotten about them.

 

[Snapping Twig]

Stainless Ruger Mini-30

The accuracy was about nine inches at 100 yards

Bought an original 189 series (blue w/.308 barrel) just like the one I bought new in 89 and stupidly sold.

Shot 14" left at 100 yards. Seller thought he pawned off a lemon, buuuut...

I knew what to do. An evening of the gas block tension and an action job to 3# for the trigger and now, it's MOA good! No joke, it's a laser.

Can't get too many shots off before it warms up, but for hunting, it's real nice with 150 NBT's and 4198.

That said, the biggest *** I ever bought was a Kimber 1911. Glad to be rid of it.

 

[RobertJ.]

Long ago I traded a beautiful 870 Wingmaster that I could hit anything with, for a Charles Daly SxS 12 Ga. It was a nice enough gun, made by Moruku, but when you pulled a certain trigger first (I can't remember which one) both barrels would fire. I traded it to a friend who said that didn't bother him. And later I replaced the 870.

There was a thread a while back that asked what the hardest recoiling guns you ever fired were, and I forgot to list that one.

Try as I might, I can't think of another one that I was unhappy with. There have been guns that I realized had no practical use, that I got rid of, but no others that I wanted to dump because of performance.

I was initially unhappy with my Marlin 1894, it would jam every single time you tried to run anything through it. I read up on it, and found out about the "dreaded Marlin jam". I ordered a new carrier from Brownells, then it worked just fine.

 

[pharmer]

Only 2 come to mind: 1) A Maadi AK 47 with plywood stock. Rusted internally and showed signs of being in a fire. Doubled my money during the AWB. 2) An FEG R9 HiPower clone. Except it wasn't. After 100 rds, severe peening started in more than one place. It was hard firing 2 boxes as it had a 30# trigger pull. Traded it for a 2" Model 10. Boy was I happy. Joe

 

[SilentKnight]

I bought a stainless S&W, ported, +P+ rated, 38 hammerless, J-frame, beaded finish, snubby in 1995. It was a special custom job that I just had to have. It was so loud and the flash so great you could not shoot it from waist level. It was accurate... but when fired at night it was like a flashbulb going off in your face. Beautiful little beast, but it had bad manners. Carried it for maybe three weeks and it went into the safe. I need to put another un-ported barrel on it... if possible. Beauty is only skin deep, ugly is to the bone.