Not-So-Favorites

Last time I asked about favorite guns—which ones you like and why. This time it’s the dark side. Tell us about the worst guns.

Let me start with a couple of candidates for the Shotgun Hall of Incompetent Technology. I’m sure that you can trump these, but here are my token offerings:

Ithaca Model 51 gas-operated semi-auto. On the surface, how could you miss? It was a nice-handling, decent-looking gun from an established company, and it came with a lifetime guarantee. The problem was that it ate parts like a puppy eats kibble. Not to worry—lifetime guarantee. My pal and I each had one that we used for International Skeet, and we’d send back broken parts by the pound. In return we’d receive pounds of parts for free. At first they were even kind enough to send us a few extra of the particularly fragile bits so that we could stay ahead.

After awhile that font of beneficence dried up and they would send us only one new part when they received the old broken part. We should have seen the handwriting on the wall. Then the company went broke, and that lifetime guarantee went to the same place as Madoff’s money.

Sometimes a pretty face can hide a cruel heart. I have faced particular misery in Repro-land. When Browning got Miroku to make those Model 12 Repros, I jumped on a 28-gauge Model 12. It was beautiful, with wood to die for. I’ve always loved Winchester Model 12s and 42s, so I was prepared to fall in love all over again.

Not to be. The gun was perfect in all respects, save for one little flaw: the trigger interrupter. With a real Model 12/42 pump, you can keep a little rearward pressure on the forend when you shoot and the shell ejects immediately. Not so when there is an interrupter. It was put there by lawyers to save you from yourself. The forend actually has to go forward slightly after the shot to release itself so that you can pump it. A 12- and 20-gauge have enough recoil to do this automagically, but not a 28 or .410. Aarrgghhh! The slick pump became a jam-o-matic. I tried everything to take that little interrupter lever out, but to no avail, so I sold the wretched thing to someone who pumped slowly. If the Model 12 28 had been nasty looking or poorly made, I wouldn’t have felt so bad. But this was a heartbreaker. So close, yet sayonara.

The Parker Repro also thrust a dagger in my heart. I bought a beautiful 28-gauge two-barrel set. It was gorgeous. After I had the single trigger tinkered with so that it actually would work occasionally, I sent off the gun to get the ejectors fixed. With those out of the way, I again returned the gun to get the chokes on one set of barrels reground to fix a barrel convergence that was off by a full pattern’s width at 35 yards.

But that wasn’t all. With the gun working more or less properly, I still struggled to shoot well. The factory stock was ridiculously short for me. Just lengthen it, I smugly thought. Not to be. Some historically correct genius had inflicted it with a steel skeleton buttplate that cut well into the stock at the top of the heel. Length could not be altered without cutting at least an inch off of the existing dwarf stock and adding back on two to three inches of wood. I sold that wretched thing to a man of smaller stature who would not need to alter it.

And then there is ugly. My vote for the ugliest gun I’ve seen recently is a special limited-production Browning Cynergy displayed at the SHOT Show this year. The Cynergy itself, actually a decent gun mechanically, has a swooshy pseudo-modern computer-game look that takes some getting used to. This special edition went a step further. The buttstock and forend were done in pink camouflage! I rest my case. Can you top that?

Have you run across a gun so ugly or so intrinsically poorly designed that your garage door refused to open when you drove it home? Tell all. Get even.

Boots off. Beer open.