Question: What’s the derpiest gun you’ve ever owned?
It was the first gun show after the passage of the 1994 ban on “assault weapons”. No one was really certain the impact the law would have so I, along with everyone else in East Tennessee, did the reasonable thing and panic bought. Everyone had to have an AR-15, including me. And they were overpriced and very few were to be had. But I was determined to get one. And I got this one:
Yup. That’s an Olympic Arms with an 11.5 inch barrel and a 5.5 inch flash suppressor welded onto it. Olympic doesn’t have the best reputation for quality. But we didn’t have the gunternet back then and I just knew I had to have an AR because the .gov said I couldn’t.
Why is it derpy? Why would you want an 11.5 inch barrel and a welded flash hider? 16 inches of barrel would just be better. And it wasn’t a high quality firearm. And it had an old school laser sight on it. You know, the kind that were a foot long and you had to run wires to the trigger guard. And it was mounted on the carrying handle. Yup. Derp.
What’s your derp gun?
December 22nd, 2017 at 1:35 pm
Tec 9 with around a 2″ barrel, sporting a laser on a custom mount.
December 22nd, 2017 at 1:38 pm
I still have it- my first handgun. A Taurus 627 Tracker, .357 with a 6.5″ full underlug barrel. Basically wrong on all points, while still being a pretty decent handgun. If I were going back, I ought’ve gone with the 4″ barrel, probably a Smith or Ruger, although I was poor then, and the Taurus was just right pricewise, compared to the others.
December 22nd, 2017 at 1:44 pm
So far, Lyle is winning.
December 22nd, 2017 at 2:17 pm
I built up an 7.5″ barrel 5.56 AR pistol with gunshow parts and a spare lower – I can’t imagine a less useful gun (though it IS fun to shoot, especially at night!) For extra derp points I screwed on a Chines clone of a Pig Break.
December 22nd, 2017 at 2:57 pm
CZ52
December 22nd, 2017 at 3:26 pm
A Chinese SKS w/ a pinned stock, removable mag, and railed receiver cover w/ old style red dot. I spent more on the crap then on the rifle, but the early 90’s were all about excess. Esp. for a stupid college student. BTW the removable mag made it a jam-o-matic. I could load almost as fast w/ strippers even when the removable mag worked.
December 22nd, 2017 at 4:16 pm
While you were buying the Oly, I went ahead and bought Colt AR15 Sporter II that had been registered and converted to Full Auto in 84. Ther kicker is it didn’t cost anymore than a semi at the time. It did come with a $200 anal probe, though.
December 22nd, 2017 at 5:31 pm
Stand behind a pawn/gun counter for a decade or four and you’ll see (and by default own) a lot of derpy and quite a few outright dangerous firearms.
But for true uselessness as much as I like the S&W AR Sport (as I mentioned before I bought two new ones for cheap after watching your torture test link to replace a couple of clunkers I dumped from my shtf stash), I gotta say the .22 version (and yeah I still have one) is right up there. Just can’t see why anyone would pay 400 for one instead of 200 for a 10/22. IMO. YMV.
December 22nd, 2017 at 6:02 pm
In my case, the derp wasn’t so much the gun I bought, but the one I sold. My late father’s 1903 Springfield 30.06 that he’d won in a shooting contest while in the Marines.
Total Derp.
December 22nd, 2017 at 6:37 pm
SPQR; Hey now! The ’52 is a cool gun. A bit of an odd cartridge, but that’s part of its coolness. The roller lock and co-axial recoil spring were very good ideas (makes for a low profile slide) and I’d like to see some modern versions of it, e.g. a double stack 10mm with the mag release in the proper place.
Oh! I forgot about my Chinese SKS, with polymer stock, Bubba’d adjustable cheek piece, Harris bipod, a hand-made collapsible gas tube to allow for the hand-made, forward optic mount which attaches through the rear sight block where the gas tube half-pin used to be, and then screws into the left side of the receiver. Sports a hand-made compensator at the muzzle too. Factory 10 round mag, serviced by a very large number of clips. Lightened hammer, and a trigger job to reduce creep. Top THAT for derp, bitches!
All it’s missing is a Chinese optic (I had to settle for something good. Had a first-generation Holosight on it for a time, and then a Japanese Scout scope).
I would say it’s apex-derp, except for the fact that it lead directly to the creation of UltiMAK (still have it, too). Therefore I tend to defend most of the Bubbas and the Cletuses out there. Keep it up, Bubba and Cletus!
December 22nd, 2017 at 7:09 pm
Even though derpy, “you’re not the boss of me!” is an excellent reason to buy a gun, even an Oly.
December 22nd, 2017 at 8:07 pm
Robert, your story made MY nuts hurt. I bought one for $200 around 1993, didn’t know what I had and traded it shortly thereafter for some long-ago-sold shotgun. It makes me sick to think about it now, so I can’t imagine how you feel.
December 22nd, 2017 at 9:10 pm
Lyle, I bought it for your reasons (had a CT ME contemporaneously so a roller locking kick) but everyone who saw it had to comment on its supposed ability to defeat the lower end of bullet resistant vests. So it derped by 3rd parties.
December 22nd, 2017 at 9:47 pm
Taurus Model 608 DAO (bobbed-hammer) 8-shot 2″ barrel .357 magnum. The long and heavy trigger pull and crazy recoil insures that accuracy is the general category. It is also very heavy to carry. When I take it to the range and let friends drop the hammer on random empty chambers, the flinching is risible.
I bought it on a lark and looking back I should have gotten it as a more conventional SA/DA and a 4″ or 6″ barrel.
December 22nd, 2017 at 9:49 pm
Rossi .357 Stainless 4″ with non fluted cylinder full underlug barrel with full solid rail and finger grip rubber grips
https://s3.amazonaws.com/mgm-content/sites/armslist/uploads/posts/2015/04/11/4231987_01_rossi_m_713_4_357_magnum_revol_640.jpg
December 22nd, 2017 at 10:42 pm
Not derpy, but stupid… Bought a S&W Airweight, was told I shouldn’t, and I did it anyway. It runs backward from a Colt, and I never could get used to it. Gave it to a friend. Sigh…
December 22nd, 2017 at 10:54 pm
Kel-Tec PF-9. I had 3 of them at one time. One was in for a new slide, because it cracked. So I bought another one while I waited for the repair. And then there was a deal on one. Two is one and one is none, after all. I sold them all fairly soon after that. It wasn’t fun to shoot and micro 9mms were getting popular enough that I didn’t need a Kel-Tec to fit that roll anymore.
December 22nd, 2017 at 11:59 pm
I’m with Lyle, the CZ52 is a pretty cool gun
Derpiest thing I owned was a Carbon-15. The only gun I’ve sold and been glad I did.
December 23rd, 2017 at 3:37 am
Actually, most of the old CAR-15s ended up with comically long flash suppressors because their barrels were so short they were prone to shortstroking otherwise. The long flash hider kept the pressure up in the gas tube longer enough to keep driving the BCG adequately far rearward.
December 23rd, 2017 at 6:41 am
Heavily sporterized German Mauser. It was my first rifle, and probably a dumb choice, but boy howdy did I learn a lot from it. Lessons like “A $175 gun is worth what you paid for it” and how to comb through gun shows for ammo like a Fallout character.
December 23rd, 2017 at 8:40 am
Egyptian AK-47, that came with a thumbhole stock and ten-round magazine. There was no internet in those days, so although I found a buttstock that would drop in, I had to make the handgrip myself. (Nice too, out of epoxied and brass-pinned layers of 1/8″ marine plywood.) Then I bought three 30-round “banana clips”. Then I sold it because I could not get five shots on the paper at fifty yards.
December 23rd, 2017 at 11:45 am
What, no Calicos, with laser sights?
December 23rd, 2017 at 11:57 am
Derp free.
December 23rd, 2017 at 1:26 pm
Had the exact same Olympic CAR-15. Traded it outright for a post-ban Colt as the ban’s sunset approached. Goofy muzzle brake on it, but good bones that have served me well over the years.
December 23rd, 2017 at 3:48 pm
ParaOrdnance double stack .45 ACP. Lost it in a burglary, along with a nice leather bomber jacket and a Cold Steel tanto knife. I missed the jacket more than I did the gun.
December 23rd, 2017 at 6:44 pm
Same with the Mauser.
8MM, kicks like a mule, more of a patern than zero.
December 24th, 2017 at 12:59 pm
There is Derp at both ends of the cost spectrum. I own a Rossie switch-barrel single shot .22LR/.410, bought on a whim when I saw it on sale. Initially I thought my kids would enjoy shooting it as a plinker on range trips. They knew better.
Used it once with them, cleaned it, and its been in the safe ever since. It cost $99 plus a remaining handful of .410 ammo I’ll likely never use. And it has about as much resale value as a mismatched pair of used socks.
December 25th, 2017 at 7:20 pm
Pump shotgun from an NCO in my first unit. He had cut the barrel with possibly a hacksaw. Can’t even remember what I did to get rid of it.
December 25th, 2017 at 7:24 pm
Derp, squared: Bought some sort of H&R single-shot 20-gauge with a pistol-grip “survival stock” – basically a scaled-up “Snake Charmer” – for $80 back in the late 90s. It was completely useless, so a couple of years later I traded it even-up for a numbers-matching 6.5 Swede Mauser with a 1906 manufacture date. Wood was kind of dinged up but the metal and bore were fine. Then – this is the derp-squared part, but I needed the money – I sold the Swede to a gun-show dealer a couple of years ago for $160. From the way the guy’s eyes lit up, I knew I’d screwed myself as soon as I agreed to sell. Even if I did double my meager investment. Sigh.
December 26th, 2017 at 4:09 pm
The Grendel P-10, in .380 ACP.
Forerunner to the Kel-Tec designs, the P-10 used a top-loading stripper system into an internal magazine.
Unloading it meant shooting all 10 rounds, or cycling the action 10 times.
A major PITA to field-strip, with crap sights and a snappy recoil, I should have just gone with a used S&W .38 Spl.
Had to have that plastic fantastic pistol, though… Derp!
December 26th, 2017 at 7:53 pm
Hi-Point C9 in the $100 bill camo finish. Pimp daddy throw down special.
December 28th, 2017 at 10:27 am
The worst gun I had was M4 carbine,it requires constant maintenance and cleaning and the worst part is that it dont work in sandy, dusty or dirty conditions.