As a gunwriter and just a firearms enthusiast in my private life, I’ve had the opportunity to handle and shoot a lot of guns over the years. Most have been great—modern firearm design is amazing—but there have been a few duds. I’ve shot some guns that were downright terrible. In some cases, they were a bad design or an inexpensive get-what-you-pay-for situation, and in other cases, they were fine guns, just not suited for me. Thus I present: The worst guns I’ve ever shot.
1. The First Gun
The very first gun I ever called my own was given to me by my first husband, who was a stereotypical good-old-boy who thought he knew everything about guns (because all men do automatically by birthright … right?). And in the early 2000s, “everyone knew” that a woman needed a lightweight snub-nosed .38 Special for protection. So he bought himself a .357 Magnum and bought me a super lightweight, .38 Special version of the same gun.
I hated that gun—but it wasn’t the gun’s fault. It’s an excellent, well-made firearm (I still own it, and I like it better these days), but at the time, it was the wrong gun to put in the hands of a woman who didn’t know how to shoot handguns. It’s snappy, and I couldn’t hit anything with it, and those two things added together made it no fun at all to shoot.
2. The Worst Trigger Ever
A few years later, when I had a little (emphasis on little) more experience with guns and an upgraded husband to boot, I decided to buy my own concealed-carry gun that I picked out myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t know enough at the time to make the smartest decision, so I bought the smallest striker-fired microcompact .380 I could find on the market. It was easily concealed, for sure.
The trouble was, the trigger was so stiff that I literally couldn’t pull it. I took that gun to the range, pointed it at my target and squeezed until the trigger wouldn’t go back anymore, and nothing happened. I used every bit of strength I had in my small hands (admittedly, that’s not a lot) and couldn’t get the gun to fire. I had to hand it to someone else to shoot to make sure the thing wasn’t broken. Talk about worthless! I eventually sold that gun to a male friend, but only after I made him shoot it first so he’d know what he was getting into.
3. The Hard-Hitting Shotgun
I was on a duck hunt in Louisiana with a game call company, and they’d secured a gun sponsor. We all got handed a 12-gauge pump and some ammo and hopped in an airboat for a trip to the duck blind. No problem—I’d shot a lot of 12-gauges at that point, and I wasn’t worried.
Well, I should have been. The gun was inexpensive—which is great for buyers with an entry-level budget, but that does usually mean you forego some comforts, like a recoil pad. Loaded with duck loads, that gun felt like a cannon. I think I actually said “ouch” out loud the first time I pulled the trigger. The gun was rattly and stiff at the same time, and it kicked like a mule. I ended that hunt bruised from my upper arm to my shoulder and onto my cheek.
Again, this is another case of a gun just not suiting me. It didn’t fit, and I was wearing just a T-shirt because it was hot outside, and while the gun was everything you’d expect from a $200 shotgun, it wasn’t for me.
4. The Gun He Shouldn’t Have Bought
I guess I have bad luck with husbands buying guns for me. My current husband, early in our marriage, was well aware that I am a little bit of a gun snob, and there’s a specific brand of firearm he was told never to bring into our house. Well, he thought he knew better. He meant well, I guess.
So he bought a pistol from this forbidden brand and brought it home, intending to wrap it up for my birthday. Being safety-minded, he went to lock the slide back to triple-verify again that it was unloaded, and as he did so, a couple of pieces of the gun (springs, maybe?) went flying across the room. It was at this point that he decided maybe his wife was right to ban this brand from the house and he’d better not press his luck trying to put it back together. He went straight back to the store and exchanged it for a Beretta Neos .22 LR semi-automatic pistol, which I still shoot occasionally to this day.
Technically, I never actually shot or even saw this “gun he shouldn’t have bought,” but it still makes the list of total duds.
