Lorcin, Byrco and family

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mbt2001

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Why do folks crap on Lorcin, Jennings, Bryco family guns? I have owned several for years now, no issues. Fire FMJ's (like winchester white box) and they are fine. They don't feed HP's that well...

The video here (http://youtube.com/watch?v=OPiJq3Vcy_4) is for all the haters out there. Would any other gun be able to do what this one did?? No, plain and simple. Most of the haters have never fired one and are getting their info from Brady sponsored propaganda against Saturday Night specials.
 
Most worked remarkably well, and others didn't. Even the ones that didn't normally would at least get through a magazine without stopping.
Some would do better than that...but the point was to offer an inexpensive pistol that would work well enough to give you an even chance against a larger or stronger attacker bent on mayhem at bad breath sniffin' distance. In that role, they succeeded quite well...and thus have both a niche and a purpose. Saturday Night Specials can also be Friday Night Saviors for the folks who can't afford a more high-end defensive pistol.

The old RG revolvers used to get a lot of bad press...but I know of one man who lived to a ripe, old age thanks to an RG.
 
I own 2 Jennings and 1 Jimenez--

I do own a bunch of other guns too--

Brycos, Lorcin, and any other "SNS" ROF gun are good for what they are--

Affordable handguns for those who like them or can't afford anything else. Someone said (I paraphrase this) "The ultimate in racism is to deny a large portion of the populace access to firearms for protection"--

I agree--

I do offer this-- Let anyone who derides ANY firearm stand 10 feet away and let someone shoot at them with one...

Point made---

I like Lorcins-- the look-- and all of the ROFs can be made servicable (if they have problems) by a little tweaking and F&B--- I will say the Cobra offerings of the Lorcins are way more reliable, and Cobra has pretty good customer service--

:)
 
They are highly reliable single shot pistols with a significantly above zero probability of delivering multiple shots.

If you can afford range fees and practice ammo these are not for you, but for those that can't, these beat the heck out of a baseball bat or knife or nothing!

--wally.
 
They are highly reliable single shot pistols with a significantly above zero probability of delivering multiple shots.

If you can afford range fees and practice ammo these are not for you, but for those that can't, these beat the heck out of a baseball bat or knife or nothing!

--wally.
Click to expand...

I dunno, they are good guns. One of the most accurate in my collection is a Lorcin .380 and it fits my hand like no other, shoots like a dream and has had 1 FTF in 1,500 rnds.

+1 to all the other comments. For the money, I believe these are decent guns and get a real bad rap for no reason.
 
"Most of the haters have never fired one and are getting their info from Brady sponsored propaganda against Saturday Night specials."

Sorry, folks, but I worked in a gun store where the owner didn't want to send repair work back to the factory; he thought we should fix the stuff in the shop.

I have fired a lot of those guns and, yes, some worked OK. But most did not. Jams, misfires, broken parts, and weak springs were the rule, not the exception. The arguments that they are OK for an inexpensive gun, and that all guns can fail just won't wash. The economy argument is made for Hi Point, but there is a difference. Every Hi Point I ever fired worked. Sure other guns fail, but the failure rate on the Bryco-Jennings stuff is simply too high and having a gun like that for personal defense is only going to give the owner false confidence.

BTW, nope, I don't work for the Brady bunch or anyone like them!

Jim
 
I'd like to point out I own three Jennings, in .22, .25, and .380. None would empty a mag out of the box. The .25 was trivial to fix though as there was flash on the followers. The others needed some tinkering but I got them to usually go thru a box of ammo before they got dirty enough to fail to feed.

I've got them proudly hanging on the wall in a glass case as thief bait hooked to a pepper spray "bomb" -- www.stopthecrime.com

--wally.
 
My sister bought a Raven Arms MP-25 not long ago... her first gun, in practically new condition. She paid $80 for it. We took it out and went through about 30 rounds - got a couple of feed jams, but it got better as the gun went along. I oiled it up and after it gets a few more rounds through it I think it'll be ok.

Honestly, I was thinking about picking up one or two of them to mess around with - they run between $50 and $80 at the local gun shows. But really - .25 ACP ammo is not as cheap as it should be. If I could find one in .22 LR I would be more excited about it. Gun show this weekend, though, so who knows what I might find.
 
I wouldn't mint grabbing a couple of Ravens for the fun of it..

I remember the Raven as the firearm I was shot with when I was 14yrs old by my brother accidently. It worked fine on me!
 
"Why do folks crap on Lorcin, Jennings, Bryco family guns?"

Because they're cheap junk that might or might not work? Sort of like buying a $300 car. Somebody will probably tell me they're still driving their Yugo, but I didn't want one then and don't now.

Metal so soft you could shave it with a knife. I don't recall who said it, but I've always wanted to try it. Anybody ever tried it?

From a PBS documentary on the Jennings family ring of fire companies...

"The guns are made of such poor metal that they have become a disposal problem for law enforcement agencies. In Sacramento, California, a local recycler who had melted the guns together with other junk metal refused to accept them any more; the low-quality alloy adversely affected entire batches of material. Sacramento's guns are now placed inside junked cars and shredded."

Soft metal is cheaper to work. The old man really knew machine work because he made aerospace parts before he got involved in inexpensive guns.

Bryco, one of the Jennings' companies, used to make up to 6000 guns a day I've read. They had buckets of parts and paid minimum wage, or less I'd bet, to the assemblers. Probably hired them all down at the soup kitchen, but I don't know that for a fact.

"The group included Bryco, Raven Arms, the now-defunct company George Jennings started, as well as Davis Industries, Phoenix Arms and Sundance Industries, which are all owned by Jennings' relatives, and Lorcin Engineering Co., owned by James N. Waldorf, a high school friend of Bruce Jennings."

John
 
Main cause of dislike I believe is they don't cost enough. Same problem with Lee reloading products. People have long lost the idea of value for dollar spent, if it costs twice as much it must be twice as good. With this logic we all should be happy with the price of gas now, it must be alot better than what we were buying last year.
 
Jim Keenan said:
Sorry, folks, but I worked in a gun store where the owner didn't want to send repair work back to the factory; he thought we should fix the stuff in the shop.

I have fired a lot of those guns and, yes, some worked OK. But most did not. Jams, misfires, broken parts, and weak springs were the rule, not the exception.
Click to expand...

So guns that came to you broken or with issues.... had issues? uhhhh ok

JohnBT said:
They had buckets of parts and paid minimum wage, or less I'd bet, to the assemblers. Probably hired them all down at the soup kitchen, but I don't know that for a fact.
Click to expand...

You know until recently they were located in CA. So in the commie capital of the world, you are alledging quite a bit. The guy that "bought" the company (now Jiminez Arms) was an ex employee.

Like 1911Tuner says, any steel that is harder than another steel can be used to shave / cut that other steel.

As I said, I have bought several. Most FTFeeds come from the mags, using improper bullets and the like. If you use brass cased FMJ bullets, that helps, as does getting new mags or fixing up the old ones.

Hi point firearms came around AFTER the Saturday night special witch trials. I am sure that Glock would have been in their sghts had cops not been the one using them. Any alternate frame materail (other than steel) wouldn't have passed their "melt" tests.
 
The lawsuit that Bryco was embroiled in was kind of a kangaroo court. The snippet is below and just for "balance" I took it from the Brady sight.

http://www.gunlawsuits.org/docket/casestatus.php?RecordNo=80

Maxfield v. Bryco Arms, et al., Superior Court of the State of California, Alameda County

On May 7, 2003, a jury awarded $50.9 million in compensatory damages to a plaintiff in a case against Saturday-Night Special manufacturer Bryco Arms.
The jury found gun designer Bruce Jennings, manufacturer Bryco Arms and its distributors liable for designing a defective firearm which resulted in the paralysis of a seven year old. Bryco Arms manufactures �Saturday Night Special .380-caliber Bryco handguns, which were found to be unreasonably dangerous due to their lack of safety features and defective design.

Brandon Maxfield was unintentionally shot in the jaw on April 6, 1994, by a family friend who was trying to unload the handgun. The gun was designed in such a way that it could only be unloaded when the safety was turned off. The gun's magazine was also designed to be hidden inside the gun, making it hard to tell if it was loaded. The friend thought he had unloaded the gun and unintentionally shot Brandon. Brandon was rendered a quadriplegic. If the handgun had been properly designed and manufactured with sufficient safety features, the accident would not have occurred.

The manufacturer and designer of the gun, Bryco Arms and Bruce Jennings, as well as the guns� distributors, the pawnshop where Brandon's parents bought the gun, and Brandon's parents and the shooter were also held liable. The jury concluded that Bryco Arms manufactured a defective firearm because of its design features and that it was foreseeable that an ordinary consumer would be injured by the defective handgun.

The Legal Action Project has assisted in the case since its inception. Richard Ruggieri, of San Rafael, California is counsel for the plaintiff.
Click to expand...

Defective, in this instance, means that you disengage the safety to unload the gun (remove the live round from the barrel). 1911's work that way, so do most other guns I know of. These kind of cases gave us magazine disconnects and loaded chamber indicators.

Had "family friend" followed even 1 of the 4 rules, nothing would have happened. Defective eh?
 
They are highly reliable single shot pistols with a significantly above zero probability of delivering multiple shots.
Click to expand...
The J22 I had wasn't even a decent single shot pistol, light strike city. I don't remember it ever firing two shots in a row without a malf. Useless ghetto piece of junk with a hard chrome finish. Worse than useless, an inexperienced owner might be fooled into thinking that they could defend themselves with the Jennings.
 
"You know until recently they were located in CA. So in the commie capital of the world, you are alledging quite a bit."

Sorry, I have no idea what your point is.

Does anybody believe they were hiring any kind of skilled or semi-skilled labor to assemble the absolutely most inexpensive guns made? I know if I keep looking I'll find a link to the article eventually. Or I could dig through the old magazines, but I think I won't bother. It's not worth the effort. I can't believe anybody cares this much about a bunch of pot metal jamomatics.

Did some of the guns work? Sure. Buy a bunch and hand them down to your kids, maybe they'll get a few good ones out of the bunch. Buy them a membership in the Ring 0' Fire Collectors Association, too. :)

Thinking back to those days, I would have rather had a similarly priced used H&R revolver or an old break-top of some sort. In fact, that's what I did have.

John
 
Forgot something:

Six thousand guns a day. Let's say they had ten skilled gunsmiths or almost-gunsmiths, which I sort of doubt, but do the math. That's 600 guns per day each they'd have to check out.

"By HOLLY YEAGER
Copyright 1997 Hearst Newspapers

COSTA MESA, Calif. -- The grayish brown one-story building in a quiet industrial park next to the John Wayne-Orange County Airport appears boring and nondescript. It rarely draws a second look.

But this is the manufacturing headquarters for Bryco Arms, a leading maker of cheap handguns. The plant is at the center of a national storm.

Inside, Bryco workers can turn out 6,000 handguns a day. The guns they make are small and inexpensive, retailing for $85 or less."
__________

Top Five U.S. Pistol Manufacturers in 1991 [autoloaders only]

Bryco Arms 202,510
Davis Industries 171,076
Sturm, Ruger, & Co. 170,384
Smith & Wesson Corp. 169,087
Raven Arms 117,300
 
For some people the choice is
A. Empty hands
B. $80 gun that has good chance of not getting all 7 rounds fired before it jams.

I'll take option B

Now, some folks have
C. $200 moderately used 38 special revolver, in good working condition.

In that case, i'll take C

But then, some folks have
D. No gun, guns are bad, but I am rich hollywood type with bodyguards.

In which case I'll take C AND D
 
For some people the choice is
A. Empty hands
B. $80 gun that has good chance of not getting all 7 rounds fired before it jams.

I'll take option B

Now, some folks have
C. $200 moderately used 38 special revolver, in good working condition.
____________________________________________

Nuts, the world is full of used H&R and Iver Johnson revolvers that aren't but $80 in 90% or 95% condition and are likely much more accurate than a ring of fire pot metal special. All they have to do is ask around. There's no reason to buy trash or to have to save up for a used $200 or $300 S&W or Ruger. Or even a Taurus or a Rossi.

John
 
Inside, Bryco workers can turn out 6,000 handguns a day. The guns they make are small and inexpensive, retailing for $85 or less."
Click to expand...

Typical anti distortion.

Do the math for the 1991 production numbers: working only 5 days a week and say shutdown for two weeks vacation you had 202,510/250 = 810 guns made per day. still seems like a high production rate to me, but its a long way from 6000 guns per day!

--wally.
 
the problem is bigger than not feeding, in one range session i saw two of them break, both were new less than one box through each one, i suspect that more of them would have broken that day, but they were the only two there. none of the shops will touch them around here anymore due to the high failure rate.
 
I and mine use[d] them for educational and teaching tools.

Someone would want / need a gun.
It could be someone buying for themselves, or a parent, or relative wanting to get one for a sister, daughter, neice, or friend.

-let them see one side by side with other small guns, like a Beretta Jetfire, or Bobcat.
-while small, let them shoot the Jetfire, or Bobcat and compare to a good used police revolver, even a snub nose.
-Safety was another, like while the gun was small, or cute, or pretty, just some folks felt more comfortable with a revolver.

They have a budget, concerns and we educated and let folks try before they bought.
Those "hardware" revolvers like Hi Standard and H&R were a lot of times bought instead.
Folks did lay-away on a good used Police trade in...

Just how I was raised and how me and mine did stuff.

Some years ago a lady wanted a gun buddy to order a Lorcin ( or one of these) with shiny finish and pink plastic stocks.

She knows about guns, is a great shooter, just...sentimental.
Her daddy got her one when she was a little girl.
Daddy's little girl got a little gun as she thought it was pretty and cute and everything.
It was shot a few times with daddy.
Daddy passed away a few years later, and nobody knows where the gun went.
Gun came in, and it worked.
Just cleaned up, put up and something sentimental to her.
 
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