A neighbor texted me, asked me to come over, and when I did he handed me a pistol case and asked if I could evaluate it and tell him what’s wrong. He’d only put a few rounds through it and was already deep in buyer’s remorse.
I’m not exactly the world’s greatest expert on the current gun market and told him straight up that I’d never heard of this brand.
A very little research told me it’s a California company, and this model was introduced about 15 years ago. I found some Youtube videos, all about nine years old, all glowing, most of them obvious shills. The only negative they agreed on was that the trigger sucks. Which it really does. But they all claimed the gun – a very low-cost Glock clone – was generally reliable.
Yeah, not this one.
In four magazines, mostly with Fiocchi 124 grain FMJ, my best practice ammo, call it 56 rounds, the gun jammed approximately 50 times. Mostly just failure to go into battery, which is a common new-cheap-gun problem that can be corrected by a thumb on the back of the slide. But some – several, like twice per magazine – really concerning failures to extract. The first problem will usually fix itself if you want to spend more money on ammo than the gun originally retailed for. The second? Kiss of death, as far as I know.
And all this dumbass graffiti…
To paraphrase a character in an old movie, ‘a man who would carry a gun like that would wear flowers to a preacher’s funeral.’
I really can’t believe Front Sight thought slapping their name all over this lemon was a smart thing to do.
I had an old worn Star B in 9 MM that would fail to feed or jam every other round or three, including stovepipe ejections. After a lot of examination with magnification lenses, concluded the gun was pretty much worn from use but OK, the magazines OTOH were so worn that each round that came up did so at a different angle and maybe happened to load, jammed the feed, did not go into battery properly or fired but extracted gimpy due to slight wedging in chamber. Suggest your friend get a nice new magazine (assuming they exist), clean and lube the weapon then give it another try.
^^^ Yeah, what he said. ^^^
What Terrapod said, and tell ’em to polish the feed ramp. 1000 grit and a dremel would do the job nicely.
But you don’t understand. Its a gun made in Callyfornication. That’s the way its supposed to work by not working. You cant have someone shooting a poor little ghetto savage just trying to support his 6 kids and 4 baby momma ho’s and working to better himself by talking your stuff..
But seriously, There are lots of quality guns out there that you can get for a decent price. But there are lots of crap being sold also. Just because some high cost Gun Range or alleged Tier 1 super operator puts their name on it or push’s it doesn’t mean anything except you will pay for for the gun or accessory. Look at the SIG 320 push after they bought a govt contract and hired the leadership of the military testing program.
I always try to help newbies when I see them looking for a gun but see the sellers pushing them to get guns they aren’t ready for or don’t need or really just cant handle. Lots of folks just getting into guns stop after a while for various reasons but lots of time its due to the choice of weapons they may have been pushed into.
Magazines. Best investment you cab make.
Destroy it with fire, er a drill press and a cutting wheel or torch. An accident just waiting to happen – bad guns make for bad handling and bad practices. Used older 9 mm’s are cheap now days – tell him to get something with a known name (not a glock fan here, but even that would do.) Pawn shops will work fine.
Another fine example of the shitificaton of America.
If its indeed a Glock clone will it take actual Glock mags?