(As is my habit, I’m posting this when everyone else is probably in bed, or headed there. Since I’m not asleep…)
Would anyone have any suggestions for the worst guns ever made? As in effectiveness, quality, and/or tendency to explode.
So far I have the Type 94 Nambu pistol, and the Chauchat light machine gun, right off the top of my head.
But surely there are more—and probably worse. Who’d like to share?
You know, these threads might turn out to be more productive if you took the time in the OP to actually explain why your examples are relevant. At least take a second to add a little context to create a discussion instead of simple polling for hyperlinks.
Just my $0.02.
Yeah, yeah…fair enough. I thought the two examples given were famous enough in the circles of folks who’d be interested in the thread that it wouldn’t be neccesary, but—you’ve got a point.
The Type 94 was known for low quality, a relatively underpowered cartridge…and a design flaw that allowed the weapon to be fired by applying pressure to part of the receiver, without a finger on the trigger.
The Chauchat had “performance and reliability issues”—I’ve heard that some were so badly built, that the parts weren’t even interchangable, and it’s magazine had big openings in the side, allowing one to see the ammunition within. This for a weapon intended for use in muddy conditions on the WWI Western Front.
I’m sure you’re right, but as one of the folks who don’t know much about the topic I don’t know. Popping into threads outside my area of knowledge like this is a good way to learn, which makes the Dope so great.
Anyways, this is probably bordering on threadshitting, apologies.
This one surely?
The Nock gun: a 7-barreled monstrosity that, when fired, tended to break the wielder’s shoulder.
One of my best friends in high school had the last name of Nock. I wonder if he is descended from the man who invented that contraption. It’s a pretty uncommon name.
I believe the Klobb is modeled on the real-life submachine gun Skorpion. Even as a kid I hated how you could always get shot a million times and not die in video games. The Klobb was often mocked by us Goldeneye-playing sixth graders.
Just in terms of aesthetics the Hi-Point 995 Carbine is just hideously ugly and cheap looking. I think I brought that up already in another thread.
What is it with all these gun threads lately? Or maybe it’s just my imagination? Or is it now that the weather’s getting warmer, more people are going out to shoot?
I nominate the Rogak P-18. It was a (possibly) unauthorized copy of the Steyr GB. This was one of the earliest “wondernines” and absolutely one of the worst pistols ever. They didn’t work as designed, so they were kludged up to sort-of work as a straight blowback. These were so bad, I’m surprised they didn’t permanently poison the US market for high capacity 9mm’s. The parent gun, the Steyr GB, did work but never sold well here. I can’t help but think it was because of the shoddy Rogak’s reputation.
I’m not sure about worst but silliest surely is the gun that could shoot square shot at people deserving of a bit of punishment.
Here we are, the Puckle Gun.
I’d vote for those early European cannon that were made, I’m told, from metal bars soldered and riveted together, rather than cast as an integral piece. This was obviously from the years when people still had no idea what they were doing, and sound like a make-your-own-shrapnel disaster waiting to happen. I’d rather use the made-from-a-bored-out-log cannon that Jamie and Adam built for Mythbusters.
No, that’s a perfectly valid argument. It would have been threadshitting if you had come in and talked smack on gun owners.
To follow up on the Chauchat, it is an oft-repeated tale that the AEF soldiers in WWI would kill the Germans with the Chauchat by beating them with it after it stopped working and then take their Mausers.
So, what is the worst gun ever made? I nominate anything made by Jennings, Lorcin, Jimenez, or Phoenix. They are the brands most associated with the term “Saturday Night Special”, and that is probably a rightful association. You use one of those at your own risk. In this day and age, there is no reason why something cannot be manufactured to higher quality and still be sold at a modest price. Those are pot-metal ripoffs.
As bad as the Chauchat was, it’s not fair to criticise the holes in the magazine that let in mud and grit, since the belt-fed machine guns from the same period used canvas loops that also became waterlogged, muddy and frost-bound. Finally the British developed brass links that snapped off as they were fed into the receiver.
The Japanese Type 26 Revolver was almost (but not quite) as bad as the Type 94 Nambu- while you couldn’t fire the Type 26 without pulling the trigger, the cylinders didn’t always align with the barrel. This is a bad thing, in case anyone was wondering.
The Canadian Ross Rifle wasn’t a bad rifle (they were very accurate and made excellent range rifles), but it was patently unsuitable for use as a general service rifle, especially in WWI. They jammed a lot in the mud of the trenches, and because of the straight-pull design, if they weren’t reassembled properly, the bolt could end up flying straight back into the firer’s face when the gun was discharged. This, too, is a bad thing.
The Mauser C96 “Broomhandle” was itself an excellent handgun, but during the Spanish Civil War a “Schnellfeur” (Full Automatic) version was developed, which had an insanely high rate of fire (something like 600 or 800 rounds a minute). On paper, this sounds all fine and dandy, but in reality, the Schnellfeur would empty its magazine in literally 1 second and very few of the bullets were likely to be anywhere near their intended target. This is, unsurprisingly, a less than desirable state of affairs.
The French also created a pistol in a calibre that didn’t exist (7.65mm Longue) during WWI as a result of misreading information from Britain and the US, who were working on a conversion device for their Lee-Enfield and Springfield rifles to make them self-loaders. The French caught wind of the non-existent 7.65mm Long cartridges (invented to confuse the Germans), made a pistol in the calibre, then looked very silly when the British and US asked them why they were making a gun for which ammunition didn’t exist. Needless to say, the French promptly made the cartridge as well and then quietly shelved it all once the ink on the Armistice was dry.
Some of the stuff the Germans knocked together in the closing stages of WWII would also qualify (Some of them were basically Zip Guns in 7.92x57mm Mauser), but they generally get a pass as being the products of desperate times, unlike most other “Worst Firearms Ever”.
The SA-80 also gets an honourable mention for initially being a spectacular piece of crap (with magazines falling out of the rifle while it was being fired and so forth), but the British recently sent them off to H&K for rearsenalling and that seems to have ironed out most of the issues and turned it into a decent gun after all.
There a WWI rifle with a curved barrel for shooting out of tank portholes… it was on one of those Hitler Channel specials and they reported that (predictably) the most likely outcome was that the barrel would explode after a few shots.
Colt’s Double Eagle has a very poor reputation as an unreliable mechanical monstrosity.
I started a thread a while ago asking if any replicas were available. I’d totally like to have one… in a smaller caliber, due to the recoil issue.
I was going to mention the Raven, but I checked Wiki first. Everything I’ve heard about it is that it’s a POS. But the article does have one line saying that some people say it’s not that bad.
I have a Raven. It belonged to my step-grandfather. The spring squeaks a little when you pull the slide back. And pulling the slide back feels… ‘mushy’. The firing pin looks like a nail. I’ve never fired it. (In fact, it is unfired.) I took the firing pin out and put a pencil eraser in its place so we could use it as a movie prop. It just feels like trash. But I like having it in the collection because of its poor reputation. Sometimes your collection needs a joke. I have most of a box of .25 Auto somewhere. (I made a few dummy rounds for the film by emptying the powder and firing the primers.) I might just take it to the range one day just so I could say that I’ve fired it.
I have no idea. I first heard about it when I played the game Gun, set in the Wild West. I thought the developers made it up because it sounded ridiculous.
Where is this from? Is it just an image, or was it really a physical object?
Speaking from personal experience, Davis Arms (started by a brother of the Raven company, IIRC) are absolute flaming POS’s.
It was pretty common to have to smack the thing on the slide every couple of shots to get it to close all the way, the ejector didn’t eject at least once per magazine, and it self-disassembled. That was the last time I fired the thing - I pawned it and good riddance.
I’m not alone, I’ve heard of other people having the slide fly off during shooting. I don’t want to hotlink to this other site, I’m not sure they’d appreciate the traffic, but if you’re interested -
