Gun Discussion

Background Pony #AC48
@Ebalosus  
I think you’re not wrong.
 
Additionally, the Chinese have never been big believers in spending one more cent on QC than they absolutely have to. Anything marked “made in China” is a crapshoot. Some of the firearms and related stuff are a little better because they’re made in government arsenals by workers who know that if they screw up too badly there might be consequences, because there are some standards for military contracts. Nonetheless–
 
Chinese SKS carbines are okay, though people complain about the barrels being pinned in place instead of threaded in. The Polytech M14/M1A clones imported into the US in the 1990s were praised for the good heat treatment of their receivers, though the barrel threads were some oddball metric size that caused no end of headaches for people who wanted to rebarrel them, the bolts were extremely soft, poor quality metal with bad or absent heat treatment that caused no end of dangerous headspace problems, and so on. Chinese AKs imported into the US in the 1990s, before the bans, were decent–not great, just okay, with impractical polished hot dip blue finish on the metal and enormously oversized gas ports that caused them to have much more recoil than an AK really should in 7.62x39mm and launch their ejected cases into low orbit. Current Chinese AKs imported into Canada are by every account absolute garbage, all soft metal that peen the op rod, bolt, and front trunnion until one of fails catastrophically, possibly injuring the user, usually in well under a thousand rounds. Norinco 1911s imported into the US in the 1990s were okay, nothing special, meaning they passed the rather low bar of being built on forged frames that were closer to spec and had fewer dimensional problems than Essex or Crown City or Fed Ord. Norinco Tokarev copies generally and the “Model 213” 9mm version in particular were dead-soft metal that’d peen their slides to the point of jamming and sticking on the slide rails if they didn’t fracture their frames in 500 rounds or less if you actually shot them. Norinco Ithaca 37 clones were okay, though some had burrs on the internals that an alert user could generally fix with a set of needle files and some patience, and they had the ugliest, softest “chu wood” stocks you ever saw on anything that wasn’t a BB gun. Norinco 870 clones and the “Stevens 320,” which seems to be closer to a Winchester 1300 clone, mechanically speaking, are okay, nothing special.
 
This isn’t to say the Chinese are the only ones ever to produce firearms of low quality. Remington products have serious QC problems. We all already know that anything imported by Century might be okay but anything made or assembled by Century is to be avoided at all costs. Swedish Lahti 9mm pistols were made in one hell of a hurry, with poor heat treatment if any, and fracture the frames all the time if you actually shoot them. Postwar Walther P1s (P38s with an aluminum alloy frame) broke their frames so much that after 1964 they put in a hexagonal crosspin as reinforcement, but it didn’t help.
 
In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s lots of WWII surplus 1911 parts kits got built up, kinda sorta, on craptastic cast Essex, Steel City, and Fed Ord frames that were dead-soft metal with lots of air bubbles and casting voids, which had egg-shaped holes, holes drilled at odd angles that were supposed to be drilled perpendicular to the side of the frame, holes in the wrong places, slide rails way out of spec, etc., and Essex and Sarco sold plenty of “replacement slides” and barrels that were not one whit better. Auto-Ordnance 1911s were never any better–I’ve heard the claim that they’re better since the Kahr buyout, but having personally examined some Kahr M1 Carbine clones (Kahrbines?), I doubt very much that QC is a priority at Kahr.
 
Llama and Astra handguns are infamous for being gun-shaped dangerous garbage and Star products were only slightly better, this from personal experience with a Firestar that broke its extractor and a 30M with “15 round” magazines that had razor-sharp feed lips and held only 14 and had its safety lever frozen in place. Taurus is only above the Llama/Astra category for the Beretta 92 clones they make, which are made on a military production line by people who sorta have their shit a little together a little of the time, everything else they make is gun-shaped dangerous garbage not fit to be loaded with blanks and used as a stage prop, this despite four decades of glowing reviews in the gun rags, normally on the opposite page from a big full color ad for Taurus products. Bersa is soft metal garbage; a relative of mine about fifteen years ago bought a Bersa .380 for CCW and discovered that in less than 100 rounds the slide jammed in place and would not move. The gunsmith determined that the ejector was soft unhardened metal and the repeated impacts peened it and flattened its tip like a rivet until it jammed the slide in place. I have not heard anything in the interim to suggest that Bersa products have improved.
 
And then there are all the potmetal trash handguns favored by low-IQ lowlifes for settling disputes over who will deal crack cocaine on which playground, from Rohm, RG, and Clerke .22 revolvers to Jennings and Hi-Point and Raven centerfire pistols, which are the ghetto equivalent of last-ditch cast-iron bolt-action single-shot Volkssturm rifles assembled by slave laborers in a bombed-out factory five minutes before the Russians arrived.
 
Colt 1911s and revolvers had serious, dangerous QC problems in the 80s and 90s during and after the UAW strike. S&W revolvers went down precipitously in quality right around the time they introduced the Hillary Hole, a.k.a. the “child safety lock,” and now routinely ship with barrel-cylinder gaps in excess of .012”, when previously .009” was maximum. Lots of the Gen 1 M&Ps had problems with triggers failing to reset, mag springs wearing out prematurely, and so on.
 
Springfield M1As produced since the mid 1990s are infamous for being made almost entirely of the exact same Chinese soft cast repro parts that went into the Polytech M14s and trying to get one to run reliably is by all accounts a money pit.
 
Kimber is infamous for shipping .45 caliber 1911s with 9mm extractors, and vice versa–which is why LAPD SWAT doesn’t buy Kimber products any more. You’re paying Colt money for Fed Ord quality. Pass.
 
A company called “National Ordnance” made really shitty M1 Carbine clones in the 60s and 70s, using a cast receiver of dubious strength with, usually, lots of shitty Taiwanese repro parts that didn’t pass mil spec. The guns frequently won’t run and aren’t even fixable. They also sold ‘03 Springfields back in the 70s that were built up from parts kits and stuck on a receiver that was essentially soft cast iron. They still show up at gun shows. They are essentially gun shaped pipe bombs looking for a human face to detonate into. Pass.
 
Ruger’s .22s and revolvers have always been absolutely rock solid, absolutely bombproof. Any Ruger product that’s not a .22 or a revolver? Well, you’re taking your chances there, and are you absolutely sure you can’t get something roughly equivalent from a different manufacturer for the same price, maybe used, or on sale? Really really sure? I have personally seen egg-shaped muzzle crowns on Mini-14s made in the 90s.
 
Armalite’s AR180B, the resurrection of the old 1960s-70s AR18, by all accounts was pretty decent except for the plastic receiver, which was infamous for breaking a lot in use. Nodak Spud makes a replacement metal receiver that the parts will drop into, but Armalite doesn’t make the rifle any more, more’s the pity.
 
The Philippine 1911s imported under various brand names, for which everyone is gaga, impress me not at all–QC is, again, a crapshoot, with crooked trigger guards the norm (don’t believe me? look at an RIA next to a Colt or Springfield or even a Kimber and take a good close look at the lines of the trigger guards; one of them is crooked, and I don’t think it’s the Colt), frame feed ramps milled off-center or at odd angles, frame holes drilled crooked, and a slide-frame relationship best described as “casual.” They rattle like a kid’s toy, though sometimes it’s a very badly undersized trigger stirrup bouncing around in its slot in the frame rather than the slide clattering around in its grooves on the frame. Yeah, I know, they’re coming from a Third World country and they’re sometimes almost $50 less than a Springfield that’s on sale. I’m not impressed. Holding one does not fill me with confidence or any desire to buy, and the enormous ugly brand name billboard on the side of the slide and the ugly, not especially practical, smooth pale “chu wood” grip scales help not a bit. Yes, supposedly they’ll fix it–if you ship it back to the Philippines by tramp steamer and wait for Enrique and Bong Bong to get it and take it to the cave they use as a workshop and take it apart and put it on the chunk of railroad track scrap metal Bong Bong’s great grandpa stole from the Panay Line during the war, that they use as an anvil, and beat on it with a big rock until it’s straight. Er. Ish. Then they ship it back to you by tramp steamer. Which is at least a better warranty than Norinco ever offered. Maybe it’s more profitable than making cheap scrap iron barongs and kris daggers for the tourist trade, which Enrique and Bong Bong were doing up until last Thursday. No thanks.
 
But I digress. I will agree that nothing marked “made in China” has ever filled me with any particular desire to own it, especially things where normal use means betting my life on quality of construction and reliable function, like a firearm.
Background Pony #AC48
@ᏰᎯᎠᎻᎬᎯᏒᎿ  
Where are you finding ammo?
 
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Every place locally that sells firearms or ammunition has been descended upon in the last few weeks by hordes of idiot Boomers from the ‘burbs who refused to believe that the world was on fire until they could see the flames from the front porch. They waited until the last possible second and panicked, of course, as they always do. They’ve scooped up everything designed after the Civil War, all the reloading supplies, all the ammo in practical or usable calibers, and all the handgun ammo, leaving nothing but the oddball Elmer Fudd stuff (16 and 28 gauge shotgun ammo, all the commercial non-military rifle rounds, .17 rimfire, etc.) and empty shelves, and are bitching about there being no modern firearms suited for self-defense, no handguns other than big stainless Ruger revolvers in .454 Casull and .480 Ruger, plus Italian cowboy guns (for which there is not one round of .45 Colt or .44-40 or .357 Magnum to be had, anywhere, for any price), no long guns other than “sporting clays” doubles and bolt-actions with no iron sights in weird impractical non-martial calibers. I was in a sporting goods store this morning and told one of them that he waited six months too long and now what’s left on the shelves is what there is to choose from, for the foreseeable future, so he might as well pick an Italian SAA clone and try to git gud with it–by dry-firing only, because there’s not a round of .44-40 left in the country available for love or money. I wish him luck making a stand with that when the Lord Humungus rolls into his neighborhood. He has no one but himself to blame. Maybe he can find some enterprising person on Armslist who’ll sell him some .44-40 for fifty bucks a round.
 
Sorry, not sorry. These are all the SAME GODDAMNED PEOPLE who waited for the Wubonic Plague to notice they were low on TP and then panicked like a bunch of retarded children and went out to fight over the last roll of toilet paper and the last can of Spaghetti-Os on the shelves at Kroger. I’d laugh at them, but I have to live on the same continent with them and the shelves are empty for me too. This is “the new normal.”
 
Twelve years. Twelve years of ammo panics and gun panics. I am so sick of never being able to get .22 LR to go to the range and practice with. I am so sick of never being able to get AR15 parts. Boomers and normies go home! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Background Pony #5252
Enouy revolver. 48 shots. We heard you like revolvers so we put a revolver in your revolver.  
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And its smaller brother. 12 shots.  
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So these are the mythical high capacity assault revolvers. The bigger one even has an AFG. Super scary, gotta ban them.
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U mad?
Well yesterday the parts for my 2 airsoft rifles arrived along with one battery pack and BB’s. I let the pack charge overnight and tried them out this morning. Both work nicely, though you have to press on the magazines a bit to get them to feed into the gun. The BB’s I got won’t fit in the pistol though and I still need to figure out how to charge it with CO2. I just ordered another battery back so both have one, so altogether I got maybe $600 worth of airsoft guns for $150 (I made a post about this on my Facebook, and their shit system blocked my post saying it violated policy. Guess it thought I was trying to sell them or something. I appealed it and it was restored).
Background Pony #AC48
@liquidsodanium  
At Wal-Marts here, there’s plenty of .270 and .30-30 and .25-06 and all the other oddball Fudd calibers they sell a box of every other year, but zero handgun ammo, zero .22 LR, zero shotgun buckshot, zero 5.56, zero 7.62x39. The former ammo cases now contain 75% cheap binoculars and folding knives, 25% ammo and shrinking.
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