The Five Handguns I Regret Buying
After my article on why we shouldn't listen to the guntubers about selling out Glocks for the new shiny things on the market, I got a few questions about whether there were some handguns that I regret buying. That answer is, of course, a resounding yes. There is even a Glock on this list.
1. Masterpiece Arms Defender M11-9. I remember this one specifically. I was at a gun show, saw one for way cheaper than an old school Ingram could be had for, and decided that buying one would be a good investment because surely they would be banned at some point and I would quadruple my money. The problem with this gun is that it wants to be a machine gun so badly (a job that the full auto versions never did very well themselves due to an uncontrollable rate of fire) and, as a semi-automatic pistol, it is bulky, difficult to conceal, tough to aim, and just unwieldy in general. As a range toy it's neat for a few trips but the novelty soon wears off. The gun is surprisingly accurate. It's a fixed barrel longer than most pistols and the gun is made by a pretty good company, so this isn't that surprising. However, the only real application I could see for this weapon is filling out a Form 1 and adding a stock upon approval. While that wouldn't be a terrible idea, this article is about pistols rather than SBRs and there are certainly better SBR options in 9mm out there. This gun looks cool and has a lot of firepower but, ultimately, it was never very practical so I sold it for something that was.
2. Glock 42. This was Glocks first actual pocket pistol. It was chambered in .380 and, for whatever reason, I just had to have it. Was it nice having a Glock that could actually fit into my pocket? Yes. But when the Glock 43 came out (followed by the 43X) I no longer had any use for the 42. There are some who say that a 380 has less recoil than a 9mm or that it's easier to conceal. I am not seeing that. We have 9mm pistols today that hold 12 rounds of ammunition and are super small. There is a better variety of defensive ammunition available for 9mm and usually for less cost than .380. We are truly in the golden age of the 9mm handgun and it didn't take me long to trade in this gun for something in 9mm. Did the gun work? Yes. I just didn't have a use for it when the 43 was released. With the Glock 43X and the Sig P365 today, the 42 is even more useless.
3. Keltec PMR30. In another instance of having more money than common sense, I thought I could get away with this turd of a gun because - even though it was a KelTec - I was getting 30 rounds in a handgun. I should warn readers that I had a VERY early model and I have heard that many of these issues have been resolved with newer generations. The bottom line is that the gun malfunctioned constantly unless the magazine was loaded a very specific way and the accuracy was absolute shit. I sold this gun to someone else who had more money than common sense and, if memory serves me right, it was after this gun where a buddy of mine and I took the "friends don't let friends drive drunk" slogan and modified it to say "friends don't let friends buy stupid shit for no reason at gun shows". Full disclosure: I have the Smith and Wesson version of this gun - the M&P 22 Magnum - and while it is objectively better than the first generation Keltecs, it still has reliability problems when loading 30 rounds into the magazine. Loading a 30 round mag to 20 rounds produced no issues. The was not true of the early Kel-Tecs.
4. Taurus Judge. I bought this gun for two reasons: rattlesnakes, and because I wanted to see if I could shoot clays with a handgun. I did, in fact, kill one rattlesnake during the time that I owned this gun. A single rattlesnake that I probably would have been better off just leaving alone. This is actually a pretty cool gun. It's robust and versatile shooting both 45 Colt and 410 shotgun shells. It's also very heavy and, unless you are in need of a gun specifically for killing snakes, there are much lighter options than this. I bought it my first time venturing into true rattlesnake country and thought I would see them everywhere. They really were not a big problem. I would have been better off buying a good quality 357 magnum and buying some of that CCI ratshot. Or, again, just leaving the snakes alone. Oh - and I almost forgot. It really wasn't that hard to hit a clay firing 410 from this handgun. I was hoping it would become a cool stupid human trick. Well, as the Fonz said, if everyone can do it then it isn't a trick.
5. Wildey Survivor - 475 Wildey Magnum.. There is nothing that beats the pure aesthetic value of some of the big autoloading magnum handguns of the 70's and 80's. There is the AMT 44 Automag made famous in the Dirty Harry movies - a beautifully magnificent piece in its own right - and then there is the Wildey Survivior in 475 Wildey Magnum made famous by Charles Bronson in Death Wish 3. Although Bronson's character, Paul Kersey, would have us believe differently in the Death Wish movie, the 475 Wildey is not "a shorter version of the African big game round." It's parent case is the .284 (hardley an African big game round) and it's the rough equivalent to a 454 Casull (meaning its more powerful than the 50 AE, but not by much). This gun looks REALLY cool. That is about all it does. The grips are so large that it's almost unshootable and the thumb safety works the opposite of how it ought to. Forget getting a high firm grip on this pistol. Ammo pretty much has to be reloaded at a cost of around $3.00 per round. I found the gun unreliable, expensive, and difficult to shoot. Even though it saw a rebirth in the mid-2010s when new models started coming out, customer service since that time has been an absolute nightmare. One part on my gun broke and that was the end of it. I sold it for parts and bought a new rifle and suppressor.
1. Masterpiece Arms Defender M11-9. I remember this one specifically. I was at a gun show, saw one for way cheaper than an old school Ingram could be had for, and decided that buying one would be a good investment because surely they would be banned at some point and I would quadruple my money. The problem with this gun is that it wants to be a machine gun so badly (a job that the full auto versions never did very well themselves due to an uncontrollable rate of fire) and, as a semi-automatic pistol, it is bulky, difficult to conceal, tough to aim, and just unwieldy in general. As a range toy it's neat for a few trips but the novelty soon wears off. The gun is surprisingly accurate. It's a fixed barrel longer than most pistols and the gun is made by a pretty good company, so this isn't that surprising. However, the only real application I could see for this weapon is filling out a Form 1 and adding a stock upon approval. While that wouldn't be a terrible idea, this article is about pistols rather than SBRs and there are certainly better SBR options in 9mm out there. This gun looks cool and has a lot of firepower but, ultimately, it was never very practical so I sold it for something that was.
2. Glock 42. This was Glocks first actual pocket pistol. It was chambered in .380 and, for whatever reason, I just had to have it. Was it nice having a Glock that could actually fit into my pocket? Yes. But when the Glock 43 came out (followed by the 43X) I no longer had any use for the 42. There are some who say that a 380 has less recoil than a 9mm or that it's easier to conceal. I am not seeing that. We have 9mm pistols today that hold 12 rounds of ammunition and are super small. There is a better variety of defensive ammunition available for 9mm and usually for less cost than .380. We are truly in the golden age of the 9mm handgun and it didn't take me long to trade in this gun for something in 9mm. Did the gun work? Yes. I just didn't have a use for it when the 43 was released. With the Glock 43X and the Sig P365 today, the 42 is even more useless.
3. Keltec PMR30. In another instance of having more money than common sense, I thought I could get away with this turd of a gun because - even though it was a KelTec - I was getting 30 rounds in a handgun. I should warn readers that I had a VERY early model and I have heard that many of these issues have been resolved with newer generations. The bottom line is that the gun malfunctioned constantly unless the magazine was loaded a very specific way and the accuracy was absolute shit. I sold this gun to someone else who had more money than common sense and, if memory serves me right, it was after this gun where a buddy of mine and I took the "friends don't let friends drive drunk" slogan and modified it to say "friends don't let friends buy stupid shit for no reason at gun shows". Full disclosure: I have the Smith and Wesson version of this gun - the M&P 22 Magnum - and while it is objectively better than the first generation Keltecs, it still has reliability problems when loading 30 rounds into the magazine. Loading a 30 round mag to 20 rounds produced no issues. The was not true of the early Kel-Tecs.
4. Taurus Judge. I bought this gun for two reasons: rattlesnakes, and because I wanted to see if I could shoot clays with a handgun. I did, in fact, kill one rattlesnake during the time that I owned this gun. A single rattlesnake that I probably would have been better off just leaving alone. This is actually a pretty cool gun. It's robust and versatile shooting both 45 Colt and 410 shotgun shells. It's also very heavy and, unless you are in need of a gun specifically for killing snakes, there are much lighter options than this. I bought it my first time venturing into true rattlesnake country and thought I would see them everywhere. They really were not a big problem. I would have been better off buying a good quality 357 magnum and buying some of that CCI ratshot. Or, again, just leaving the snakes alone. Oh - and I almost forgot. It really wasn't that hard to hit a clay firing 410 from this handgun. I was hoping it would become a cool stupid human trick. Well, as the Fonz said, if everyone can do it then it isn't a trick.
5. Wildey Survivor - 475 Wildey Magnum.. There is nothing that beats the pure aesthetic value of some of the big autoloading magnum handguns of the 70's and 80's. There is the AMT 44 Automag made famous in the Dirty Harry movies - a beautifully magnificent piece in its own right - and then there is the Wildey Survivior in 475 Wildey Magnum made famous by Charles Bronson in Death Wish 3. Although Bronson's character, Paul Kersey, would have us believe differently in the Death Wish movie, the 475 Wildey is not "a shorter version of the African big game round." It's parent case is the .284 (hardley an African big game round) and it's the rough equivalent to a 454 Casull (meaning its more powerful than the 50 AE, but not by much). This gun looks REALLY cool. That is about all it does. The grips are so large that it's almost unshootable and the thumb safety works the opposite of how it ought to. Forget getting a high firm grip on this pistol. Ammo pretty much has to be reloaded at a cost of around $3.00 per round. I found the gun unreliable, expensive, and difficult to shoot. Even though it saw a rebirth in the mid-2010s when new models started coming out, customer service since that time has been an absolute nightmare. One part on my gun broke and that was the end of it. I sold it for parts and bought a new rifle and suppressor.
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