The snow is starting to fall. The wood rack is full. Time to gather around the woodstove to enjoy the warmth.
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What firearm did you purchase and decide it just wasn’t for you?
Have you have you ever picked up a firearm and had “hate at first manipulation?”
Anytime I pick up a pistol with a grip angler greater than 18 degrees I know it’s not for me. A Glock pistol has a 22-degree grip angle which causes a natural point of aim 6 degrees too high. Any pistol with a 16–18-degree grip angle provides a natural point of aim within my line of sight when I extend the pistol forward from my chest with eyes closed. When I open my eyes after achieving the shooting position, the point of aim and line of sight match perfectly. Muscle memory needs no correction or adjustment.
Re firearms that weren’t for me, several.
S&W 460, aka the Roger Rabbit gun. Taught me my recoil tolerance.
Beretta PX4 with rotating barrel. Neat action, felt too weird. (Which is odd given I really like the Grand Powers.)
CZs and clones. Fine guns, just don’t feel right in the hand.
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All of them have gone onto new owners who appreciate them. In fact, the big Smith has gone through two … along with the ammo for it, with two less cartridges than when I sold it. 🙂 I will say it was a dream to shoot .45 Colt out of it.
My exposure to “recoil tolerance” was (a) shooting .357 magnum from a S&W 66 short-barrel, and (b) the misjudgment of putting “high velocity” .22 LR rounds into a Mini 22.
Second that. my alaskan 454 shoots 45c real nice. Even hot ones.
Sorry Glock fanboys, but when I first picked up a Gen 1 Glock all I thought was
“this is as ergonomic as a two by four.”
I concur 😉
I’ve never owned a Glock, never been tempted.
Not many firearms instill hate in me. Only one comes to mind is a Smith 645( I think) shoots nice, my buddy loved it. I didnt like the way it felt and safety was backwards for me, up was off, down was on… inherited a couple model 10 .38s I sold at auction not because I hated them, just already have a couple .38/357s and they would have sat around collecting dust. Everthing esle is getting kept, I lost a bunch years ago due to a bad situation and as some say- “never again”..
I’ve like everything I’ve bought, but the one I care the least about is my Hakim. I bought it on a whim as a don’t need it but a deal is a deal. Seller wanted $250 I said eh I only want to pay $100. He sold it to me for $100 for some reason lol.
I only bought two guns (the others are heirlooms), both Boberg. The XR9 is fine; the XR45 would be great if only it would feed reliably. I think the magazine is at fault, and I’ve tried to rework it so it looks like the XR9 mag. No luck so far. Bond Arms is selling the XR9 (supposedly with tweaks for improved reliability) but they haven’t done so with the XR45. I keep hoping; a pocket .45 ACP that doesn’t break your hand is a nice concept.
On regrets, the heirloom Mini 22 revolver comes with a sad story. It was marked showing the company’s original CA address. I sent it in for a free safety upgrade (the cylinder with safety notches to rest the hammer). What I got back is a fully updated gun — that’s fine — BUT they sanded off everything except the serial number from the frame, obliterating the original address. I’m not a collector so I view this as a WTF annoyance; if I were a collector I would have been seriously p***ed off at having the factory wreck a collectable aspect of the gun.
Then there is the one that I didn’t buy that I regret a bit — an Arisaka 6.5 that looked really nice. I dithered too long and by the time I was convinced I should go for it, it had already been sold. I learned the ammo is still available (still made new), amazing.
My oldest brother had a 6.5 Jap (Arisaka), he had the bolt handle bent down, and the chamber made to fit the 257 Roberts case but still shoot the 6.5. He and the younger brother that wound up with it, loved it.
I got a great deal on a Para Ordinance LDA 4 (forget the actual model name). This is a 1911, double stack, double action pistol.
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Wait, what? There is no such thing as a double action 1911. Nope, the LDA stand for Light Double Action. What this pistol does is take the 1911 action, and it used the recoil to “half cock” the hammer. Actually it pre-charges the trigger so that it is a lighter pull, and a shorter travel. Neither of which is required for a 1911 in reality, but I will say dry firing the pistol in the shop was AWESOME! I have not felt anything like it in any pistol since. Why can’t every pistol have action like that?!???
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But, what a stinker. The recoil was two to three times as harsh as any other 1911 I have ever shot. The accuracy was… debatable, I may not have been that good of a shot at the time I owned it. But, the recoil made me want to put the gun down and never shoot it again.
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As for a gun I had an instant hate it sensation… the HK VP9. Could not give it back to the dealer fast enough. It was awful. I agree with Nuke Road Warrior above, the Glocks have all the ergonomics of a 2×4, but I would rather shoot Glock exclusively for the rest of my life than so much as pick up the VP9 again. I do not care if it is the best pistol ever built, it was the worst gun I have ever picked up.
1st post on here, but been reading awhile. I only bought one in the last week. Vet owned 1911A1 that was in WW2, Korea and Vietnam.