Do cheap handguns serve any purpose?

racist origins.

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Don't forget , a WHOLE lot of "community leaders", who are themselves black and from the inner city, have been against affordable guns ( or guns of any price range.)

Anyway, I also think that the notion of the "saturday night special" may be somewhat outmoded. Yes, there are still very inexpensive guns, but affluence and conspicuous consumption have permeated all economic levels of American society.

The typical experienced criminal, regardless of his impoverished background, will have no difficulty buying a Glock. Most of their guns are stolen, anyway.

It's the poor people who AREN'T selling drugs or pimping that only have enough money for a Hi-Point.

That every man have the right and means to defend themselves.
The use of such terms on these boards is abhorant and feeds the anti 2A Zombies.

I formerly lived in the Texas Panhandle and frequented a gun dealer/surplus store who always ran a special price on a pistol on saturday evenings so people who wanted one could buy a real "saturday night special", I always got a chuckle in that place.

To the point of "marketing to criminals": I don't believe criminals go to a store and buy their guns, I understand they buy them off the street or steal them. The idea is ludicrous.

Now, while I was growing up, the "SNS" terminology was well in use.

One meaning was from the rather ludicrous numbers of "pot metal" firearms brought over from europe circa 1915 - 1935 or so. Quite a few of those were likely only ever going to work once, on "Saturday Night." Such weapons, ones that might only ever fire one shot, were much carried, if nto much used, during the Depression.

Another meaning, out the edge of city to farm or ranch country was for those weapons pawned on Friday to pay for a "Saturday Night" out. If a person's weekend went badly, the firearm might stay at the Pawn shop, to be bought by another, perhaps as insurance for a roll of cash carried on a Saturday night.

It was not until the '70s that I began to hear a connotation of cheap arms and minority use/ownership.

To return to the automobile allusion above, why would anyone drive a $100 vehicle?
Because the $50 have been crushed and melted.
This is not a case (generally) of being able to afford a Lexus and buying a Geo Metro instead. It's a case of needing a ride and only being able to afford a Yugo.

Sadly, there are elements on our side (as well as against) who would suggest nothing less than a limo is the minimum standard. I feel sorry for those people.

You folks might want to google the term "Saturday night special"

The origins go back to the late 1800's and had racial motivation and references from the beginning.

Most people who are pro gun and haven't been influenced by the propoganda put out by the Brady Campaign don't disrespect or refuse to acknowledge the place of cheap guns in the firearms world.

When I was a little younger I lived in a rough place and had a tough time getting by, let alone buying a gun that was even in the $200 range. I was on a Ramen noodle or sandwich every night for weeks kind of diet. I bought a Raven MP25 for protection when I couldn't afford anything else and was very happy that a sub $100 gun was available to people. Weak caliber, sub standard zamak construction, low capacity magazine, and still felt better having that than a bat or golf club. Why? Because if I am shot by someone 9 feet away that broke in and am dying with a bat in my hands the last thing on my mind is going to be "what the hell was I thinking?".

I still have the gun and have shot it quite a bit now, it works fine and hasn't blown off my hand yet. Funny how the guys who ridicule .25acp as a low power and worthless round will act like it makes a gun into a hand grenade capable of mass destruction when talking about zinc guns.

People who have never been that broke will always say "what is your life worth" or "save up for a month and buy something else" they don't get it because they've never been there. Where houses within a few blocks get robbed all the time and you've got to choose between a kitchen knife or a 911 call for protection and you know either will probably get you killed.

Gun beats knife unless the wielder of the knife has serious close combat training and the guy holding the gun is a novice.

Also, for those of you who don't know, the term SNS was coined by anti-gun people saying that cheap guns were only there to be used by criminals...that there was no legitimate use for a gun in that price range.

Hey it isn't that I think people shouldn't upgrade to something better as they can afford to, I just have been in the situation where I can respect the place of cheap guns.

I now own quite a few brand name guns and several quality milsurp pieces but I've kept the MP25 to remind me not to forget the hard times.

monotonous_iterancy said:

What does it shoot like?

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Very accurate and has been reliable too. Trigger takes a bit of getting used to but it is still a pretty decent gun for less than $100.

I'm just curious, who is the intended market for a $75 to $150 handgun?

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The non-gun buff who wants a self defense appliance. They will buy a gun as a weapon, a box of fifty rounds, testfire the gun twenty rounds to make sure it will work and to give them confidence they could use it if they had to, keep it in the bedside table, and usually when they die, the estate sale will include a barely used gun and a partial box containing thirty rounds of ammo.

Back in the sixties, that would be small inexpensive pocket-size revolvers or automatics like Iver Johnson, H&R, Roehm, Titan, and so on.

AS the author of the 1975 book "The Saturday Night Special" Robert Sherrill pointed out, gun crime represented at most 1 of 400 guns in any year. NAS NRC 2004 pointed out that homicide involved 1 out of 10,000 handguns. So gun crime can reflect a random selection of the available pool of guns.

As Right & Rossi pointed out in their book on the felon survey "Armed and Considered Dangerous" felons reported getting guns from fellow criminals, fences, burglars, smugglers, etc. Because small, cheap, defensive guns (SNS) were large part of the gun market in the 1960s they began to show up in criminal hands, not because they were the "weapon of choice" but just because they were available.

MARKETING GUNS TO CRIMINALS?

As gator hunter Willie of "Swamp People" says, "If you think you can come out here and do it, good luck to ya."

James D. Wright and Peter Rossi, "Armed and Considered Dangerous", (Aldine 1986, 2nd ed 2008, ISBN-13: 978-0202362427), US NIJ Felon Survey of 1,874 convicts in 18 prisons in 10 different states. Felons convicted of felonies while armed. Felons "obtain guns in hard-to-regulate ways from hard-to-regulate sources". A link to the author's summation: http://www.rkba.org/research/wright/armed-criminal.summary.html

Handgun-using felons expected to be able to get handguns from "unregulated channels" within a week of release from prison: friends (mostly fellow criminals), from "the street" (used guns from strangers), from fences or the blackmarket or drug dealers (who often run guns along with drugs).

Of gun using felons, 50% expected to unlawfully purchase a gun through "unregulated channels"; 25% expected to be able to borrow a gun from a fellow criminal, and about 12% expected to steal a gun. 7% cited licensed gun dealers and 6% cited pawnshops (usually through a surrogate buyer, family member or lover).

40% of the felons surveyed reported stealing firearms. Sources stolen from included: 37% from stores, 15% from police, 16% from truck shipments, 8% from manufacturers, 21% from individuals.

How a gun maker could aim his product at the armed and dangerous felon market, considering how do you target guns to thieves and smugglers?

Actually gun crime represents maybe 1 of 400 guns to use Sherrill's figure.

The question I have, with criminals such a tiny slice of the gun market, why would a maker strive for such a tiny slice of the U.S. gun market?

This thread just makes me hum a certain Skynyrd song over and over to myself without really even focusing on the discussion. Oh well, back to "... put a man six feet in the hole". Maybe we need a thread about good tunes involving guns.

Yeah, I hear that song, "... put a man six feet in the hole" and remind myself sometimes the man put there "had it coming" and "brung it on himself". Just too bad that folks knifed and clubbed to death by our local psycho back in 2004-2005 did not have ready and loaded SNSs in their abodes.

I've shot them. I do not like them at all, and I don't see myself ever owning one.

But my thing isn't everyone elses' thing. They can and should own them if they want to, and I get really suspicious really quick when I hear any category of gun targeted for its 'legitimacy'.

I didn't read each response, but I hope somebody covered this:
When gun owners join the ranks of gun-control advocates in proclaiming certain guns as "unacceptable for legitimate sporting or defensive use", then we further perpetuate the notion that guns can actually, in themselves, "be bad". Our argument should be that no gun is in itself inherently dangerous, and that all of them, regardless of price point, are harmless, inanimate objects.
So-called SNS guns do have a legitimate market, and that market is largely made up of people who are less financially fortunate, but no less deserving of an ability to "even up the odds" against them when it comes to defense of self, family, and home.
Guns are tools, and some people buy higher-end, quality tools, and others buy only what they feel they need to get by. As long as the owners of both classes of tools master them and their limits, both classes of owners will do well with them.

monotonous_iterancy said:

Accurate? Reliable? This is making me think I want one. How clean is the trigger pull?

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Pretty gritty to be honest, the gun is was sold for $40 new and is still found at gun shows and pawn shops for under $100 now. They're decent guns and the later models are the best, the ones with the vertical safety and not the sliding horizontal safety.

I'd still recommend something else both for target shooting and for personal defense if you've got the money, my main point was that cheap guns do have a purpose other than crime. Lots of Ravens are probably still tucked away in some old guy/lady's sock drawer and haven't been fired since the early 1980's when the owner took the gun out and put one magazine through it to check if it worked.

The Raven got alot of good reviews in gun mags of the time and didn't become unpopular or junk until the massive smear campaign ran on cheap guns during the 90's.

I own a Jennings J-22 I bought new in 1987. It's pretty to look at, fun to hold, and quite reliable to shoot. I've only shot a few hundred rounds through it over the years, most of them in the first few years. It has never failed to fire, eject, or return to battery, and it's pretty accurate out to about seven yards or so. It's nickel-plated, so the sights can be hard to pick up in bright daylight, but these are "defense-distance" pieces, not range and target guns. Yes, the trigger is a little gritty, but you don't really notice that unless you're trying to make the gun perform like it's something it's not.
I think I paid around $65 for it, and I don't regret it one bit. I don't shoot it much, and don't carry it but, if I didn't have one, I'd probably be buying one just to have..

I lumped in low-cost pistols with "pot metal guns".

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Good. You should. Many are.

"Pot metal" usually refers to a zinc alloy. Nothing wrong with zinc alloy, although it is not as strong per pound as steel, and more brittle. Zinc alloys (like ZAMAK) are used in the manufacture of many guns by many companies, including the (Umarex) Walther P22, old RG revolvers (yech!), Hi-Point pistols and carbines, and most of the inexpensive .22/.25/.32/.380 pistols you have referred to as built by "The Ring of Fire."

Again, once you accept "pot metal guns" as a perjorative label for guns that someone "shouldn't be allowed" to own or manufacture, or "The Ring of Fire" as some evil conspiracy, you are doing the gun-banners' work for them.

RG revolvers had an awful reputation in the market, and we don't see them any more. The fact that other zinc-alloy guns do not have a similarly awful reputation shows we shouldn't be concentratiing on the material, but on the function and durability of the final product.

And the market can do that just fine, without any abusable-and-abused "gun consumer protection" regulations.

Loosedhorse said:

Good. You should. Many are.

"Pot metal" usually refers to a zinc alloy. Nothing wrong with zinc alloy, although it is not as strong per pound as steel, and more brittle. Zinc alloys (like ZAMAK) are used in the manufacture of many guns by many companies, including the (Umarex) Walther P22, old RG revolvers (yech!), Hi-Point pistols and carbines, and most of the inexpensive .22/.25/.32/.380 pistols you have referred to as built by "The Ring of Fire."

Again, once you accept "pot metal guns" as a perjorative label for guns that someone "shouldn't be allowed" to own or manufacture, or "The Ring of Fire" as some evil conspiracy, you are doing the gun-banners' work for them.

RG revolvers had an awful reputation in the market, and we don't see them any more. The fact that other zinc-alloy guns do not have a similarly awful reputation shows we shouldn't be concentratiing on the material, but on the function and durability of the final product.

And the market can do that just fine, without any abusable-and-abused "gun consumer protection" regulations.

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Thank you, this is what I've been trying to tell people for years.

The only thing I disagree with you on is Rohm revolvers. Some of the later models work fine, I own two that have worked through many hundreds of rounds. Do I think I can take them out and abuse them like a MK3 and they'll run forever? No. Do I still own and shoot them? Yup. They're a gun that I can toss in my pocket to bounce around with my keys and I don't care if it comes out all beaten up after the hiking trip.

Still though even I'll say to avoid early models like the plague. The RG10 and RG14 ruined the company's name. Their later guns weren't nearly as bad.

There are even a few forum members that can attest to this. Almost all of the Rohm horror stories, while probably true, are with the RG10 or the RG14...the two worst guns they ever produced.

I'm just curious, who is the intended market for a $75 to $150 handgun?

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People who don't have enough disposable income to drop $200 to $800 on a higher quality/larger caliber/higher capacity handgun.

My ex-wife's first pistol was a Phoenix Arms Raven ($79 at the time) because that was literally all we could afford, and a .25 in her pocket when she was home alone was a darn sight better than a $500 Glock in the display case at the gun store. The Raven was absolutely reliable and she shot it regularly enough to be proficient; the only downside was that it was intended for carry with the chamber empty, so you had to rack the slide before shooting.

A couple of years later, our financial situation improved, and she got a Glock 26 and a Florida CHL, but that Raven served its purpose and served it well.

FWIW, a lot of definitions of "Saturday Night Special" include very high quality, very expensive pistols that are simply too small for the prohibitionists' taste. For example, a Beretta Tomcat titanium in .32 ACP is like an $800 pistol, but is a "Saturday Night Special" under a lot of proposed laws because of its size.

The only thing I disagree with you on is Rohm revolvers. Some of the later models work fine

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I appreciate the correction. As I guess I've just demonstrated, a bad rep can be hard to shake.

I've never considered myself anything other than average middle class, but when I was starting my business, SNS's were the only things in my price range.

The L.A. riots were either taking place or were recent history. I lived far away from L.A, but with the volitility of those types of communities, you never knew. All I could afford (or justify) for concealable protection at the time was a new Stallard 9mm, and a .25 Raven that I'd purchased about 10 years earlier for $60, as I recall. I found the recuipt for the Stallard a few weeks ago - it was $159 new. I bought the 9mm for it's extra power, and kept my old Raven as a back up.

I wouldn't buy guns like those now, but I was sure glad they were available back then when I couldn't afford a S&W semi-auto.

My only contribution would be that my great grandfather carried a S&W Top Break chambered in .32 Short. Not sure how much it cost back then but it only has about a $150 value today. He wasn't a gun guy but just a doctor that had it just to have a gun. His son and my grandfather had an H&R hammerless clone of that S&W in the same caliber. My grandfather is rumored to have had a Luger or some other semi auto handgun but my anti gun aunt and uncle got it first and turned it into the Police.

My dad's first gun was a Charter Arms .38 that only cost him just over $100 because he wanted something when my older brother was born. He is now much better armed but those cheap guns helped my Great Grandfather, grandfather, and father. I wouldn't call it cheap but my grandfather on my dad's side still relies on a .22 PPK to this day for home defense.