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*disclaimer: the following is merely my opinion based on the reports of one of the interested parties in the story.  This opinion may or may not be shared by WizardPC, and should not be construed as anything beyond one man’s opinion.  By the way, if by some strange circumstance, someone would like me to test and evaluate their equipment after reading this, let me know.  Buying the stuff I review is pretty expensive.*

So, it looks like Linoge got to test and evaluate one of US Firearm’s new ZiP guns, and things did not go well at all.  You can read his write up here.

Initially, I was eager to read a review from him about this weird little new firearm.  Like him, there’s something inside me that attracts me to unusual designs.  This one is about as quirky as it gets with modern firearms.  It’s a .22 pistol that uses Ruger 10/22 mags.  The magazine not only is used to feed the rounds into the chamber, but also as the hand grip.  The creators also designed it with the idea of attaching it to a rail under a long gun.  I’m not sure what practical use having a small .22 slung under your rifle or shotgun would give you, but there you go.

First up, that lovely 25 round BX-25 magazine that you see sticking out of the ZiP gun on their website and other promotional materials?  Yeah… don’t use those.  Well, unless you’re willing to buy their modification parts to mod the “BX-25 magazine you already own.”  So, the magazine that they designed the gun around won’t work with their gun unless you modify it, but they advertise that it will work anyways.  This throws up a red flag in my book from the get go.

As per Linoge’s write up, he unboxed it, examined it, and took it to the range with 5 different brands of .22 ammo.  Apparently it only like one brand out of those 5 and would consistently choke on the rest of them (mostly stove pipes).  While a couple of the brands used were cheap bulk ammo labels, one of them was CCI MiniMag.  As a fellow blogger has stated recently, if it’s not working with CCI MiniMag, it’s broken.

The thing that has really set off alarms  is that the gun fired not once, but twice out of battery.  After those incidents, he packed up and went home with the intent of calling the manufacturer.  He also was able to reliably reproduce the hammer falling with the pistol significantly out of battery.

And then the really, really scary part.  The CEO of US Firearms, Douglas Donnelly first blamed the ammo for the out of battery discharge.  I’ve shot a lot of bulk .22.  I’ve seen my fair share of failures to fire due to bad ammo.  I’ve never seen one spontaneously go off.  When questioned about the firing pin being allowed to drop when the gun is out of battery, apparently his response was “yes, it’s supposed to do that.”

Just in case Mr. Donnelly is unaware, there have been gun manufacturers that have been sued out of existence for lesser design flaws.

Mr. Donnelly also clarified that the reason for the other failures were due to either a. bad ammo, or b. the wrong spring being installed for the type of ammunition being used.  This is the first I’ve heard of someone needing to swap out a spring in a .22 depending on the ammo used, and the ammo being used in this case was, in my unscientific opinion, the most common type that it would see.

So… to sum up, the US Firearms ZiP gun is a gun of questionable use, requires the shooter to swap out recoil springs depending on the ammo, and even then has a high likelihood of blowing up in your hand if you don’t check to make sure that the bolt didn’t properly close ever time.

Do to this callous lack of concern of the safety of the end consumer, I don’t think I’ll ever touch, must less buy something from this manufacturer.  At least they named the gun properly.  Just like the items that that term originally referred to, it might work, and, if you’re lucky, it won’t blow up on you!

So… a buddy of mine posted this picture to his Facebook account:

At first I was confused why he was posting a picture of his HiPoint C9, then I noticed a bit of copper in the chamber…

And then I saw his next post:

Yep… round in backwards.

The story to go with this is that he was clearing a jam using the technique of racking the slide with the ejection port pointed at the ground and his hand over the chamber to catch the jammed round.  He pulled one round out this way, but the slide wouldn’t return to battery and the gun failed to fire a second time.  Upon inspection, he saw this wonderful sight.  He was able to clear the round with a cleaning rod (while praying he didn’t hit the primer).

His theory, which I agree with, is that the jam was a double feed.  Somehow, with the two rounds bouncing around while he was clearing it, one of the rounds managed to turn all the way around and find a comfy home in the chamber.  He’s currently planning on making use of the lifetime warranty that HiPoint offers due to the gun now jamming on him on a regular basis (he claims that it used to run like a top, but he’s put an awful lot of rounds through it).

He’s blaming this particular incident on “a combination of geometry and operator … eccintricity.”

*UPDATE* I was mistaken, the slide did fully cycle and the pistol was in battery with the round in backwards.  The operator didn’t notice the issue until the gun went *click* a second time, and pulling the slide back failed to eject the round.

The head of the Colorado Corrections Department was assassinated at his home last night.

First thought? This is related to the magazine ban somehow.

Upon further review? This is much more interesting.

UPDATE: It appears the prisoner in the link above was affiliated with Anwar al-Awlaki.

Al-Turki’s company holds the copyright to “The Lives of the Prophets,” a CD set of Islamic sermons that tell stories about Muslim prophets recorded by the U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed along with his 16-year-old son in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.