Why hasn't the market for a good disposable gun been filled?

[Creature]

...and how would you dispose of said disposable firearm? toss it in the trash?

 

[mustang_steve]

It's called a Hi-Point....the 380 can be had for under a hundred dollars if you look around hard enough.

 

[jimjc]

A disposable gun is not out of the realm of engineering today by no means. All polymer with thin lined barrels simplified trigger systems with built in redundancy not a problem.

But people buy guns for MANY different reasons and while there are some that buy for purely utilitarian reasons most do not. We like to collect them, we like different kinds and many buy for the craftsmanship.

A disposable gun is not going to happen any time soon because the politics is about making firearms and ammo far more expensive, this, in and of its self reduces the amount of arms sold and thats what they want.

 

[Fleetwood_Captain]

Well the thing is that you can get a gun that isn't a disposable for a few dollars more than something engineered to break, if not cheaper.

A used Hi-Point can be had for a hundred bucks easy and come with a lifetime warranty. Thats only about 30 bucks more than a new POS Raven cost 20 years ago.

For long guns, a Mosin can be had all day long for a c-note and i've seen Stevens 94's sell for under $50.

As far as the Raven's are concerned, I think the main thing keeping their prices up where I live are the annual Chicago gun "buy-backs" where you can get $50-100 bucks for them.

 

[HGUNHNTR]

It would be difficult to become proficient with a disposable gun, falling off of a bike however is as easy as well...............falling off of a bike.

 

[FROGO207]

Really the High Point 380 is close enough to disposable in most peoples books it seems. And regarding a previous poster's comment I have personally shot 5K of reloaded 380 with Ranier bullets out of my High Point CF 380 in the last 10 months. I wanted to see if I could kill the pistol. So far I have not succeeded in ruining it to the point of returning it to the factory for repairs yet. Still groups 3" at 15 yards like it did when it was new. Just sayin

 

[KosmicKrunch]

Go to the auction sites and buy and old RG or FIE, that is about as disposable as it gets. Sadly, even those are commanding high bid prices as they are hard to come by and everyone wants a throw away gun in their stash. Took me close to a year to finally win a .38 special snub FIE and paid $140 + S&H + FFL fee. Gun wise, low cost or cheap is way way way out the door.

Due to metallurgy laws (so called POT Metal guns) for firearms, guns are just not cheap anymore, add to that the manufacture excise taxes, even cheaply made NEW guns will be $300.

 

[jdowney]

Because outside of the criminal world, there is simply no demand for throw away weapons. The majority of the US gun market is in non-professional shooters who acquire far more weapons than they need on a day to day basis - and I do not intend that to sound negative, I have 20 or so rifles and usually only take one or two at a time to the range. Why would anyone bother spending money on a weapon that would be thrown away and replaced? Hell, we do that with computers, which is why I buy more guns than computers

 

[DashCasey0120]

Gcburner you stole my thoughts about the OSS gun saw some for sale in an auction mag once and a friend that's a WWII buff told me about them

 

[FIVETWOSEVEN]

Hi Point?

 

[writerinmo]

Yes, Hi Point... made in the USA, under $200 new in most places, lifetime warranty on the gun whether you are the first or fiftieth owner. Simple blowback design, kinda nose heavy, fixed barrel, 8-10 round cap mags and look like a cordless drill. Polymer frame, Zamak slide, steel barrel and slide insert for the firing pin and springs.

I have two.. the C9 Comp 9mm and the JCP .40, both very accurate due to the fixed barrel. Bought the C9 used and abused, made one call to HP with a parts list, three days later I had everything I asked for. Bought the JCP new, 180 bucks total out the door. Had some magazine issues early on but fixed those, both have over 1k rounds through them by me, I have no idea how many through the Comp but I can tell its a lot.

They're better known for their pistol caliber carbines than the pistols.

 

[monet61]

Disposable gun


Crooks'd steal em all.

 

[seantyler09]

What would be the point?

We have many guns that are very reliable that are going to last a life time. Yes guns are meant to be heirlooms, but that doesn't mean they arent going to function, if you have an antique cabinet for a long time just because it;s old doesn't mean the doors won't open. In the end it's cost ineffective and like some one said earlier if you want disposable buy a hi point.

 

[RS14]

Or trigger assemblies that pop in and out with no more difficulty than a printer cartridge.

Don't give them any ideas!

More seriously, I expect it would be quite hard to produce an accurate and reliable gun from cheap parts with such a short lifespan.

 

[elcaminoariba]

First response nailed it. Why would you want a disposable gun? Our 24/7 shopping culture pushes for disposable items at every turn because constant sales is the only thing that can pay the high property taxes and business taxes. The gun market is one place where common sense and reality still hold sway. You seem to be calling for a disposable gun because we've all been brainwashed into the disposable culture and we think we're "supposed" to have a disposable item from every product line. The gun market reminds us that it's not the gun market that needs to bend. It is the rest of the marketplace that has left reality behind.

 

[GLOOB]

Disposable guns won't happen until a magazine full of bullets costs more than the gun. Witness one-shot rocket launchers. Perhaps when someone invents a $1000 smart-bullet, this will happen. Or perhaps there will be something like a "metal storm" handgun - just a barrel with a handle, where the bullets are all pre-loaded in the barrel in series, to be fired with an electrical ignition. If not completely disposable, perhaps you'd trade it in when empty, to be reloaded at the factory like a disposable camera.

As for "how does one practice?" Who needs practice for a disposable gun? The instructions will be included. (Or you could buy more than 1?)

 

[1911Tuner]

That niche was actually filled many years ago with such things as the Jennings and Raven pistols...and the ubiquitous Rohm RG revolver. Those little guns actually sold quite well, and the buyers quickly discovered that it was wise practice to only fire them enough to insure function...and then leave them alone unless and until an emergency came up.

The cry is heard:

"It's stupid to have a gun that you can't practice with!" It comes from shooters. People like us who like to shoot and who understand that it's just common sense to maintain some level of proficiency with the gun that we count on to enable us to continue to pursue life, liberty, etc...yet there are countless numbers of people who have bought pistols and revolvers...loaded them and placed them in the nightstand...and never fired them more than a few times...or not at all.

Here's a surprise. Not everyone who buys a gun is a shooter. Many of them don't even like to shoot.
A high-volume ammo dealer once told me that 5% of the shooters use 95% of the ammunition. It made sense. I have a friend who is an avid hunter, but never shoots for recreation. He bought a Model 10 back in the late 70s, along with a box of ammunition. He still has about half a box of it.

The cry is also heard:

"RGs are junk! Whey would anybody want one?"

And they were junk, as many people who bought them discovered...sometimes in as little as 50 rounds.
It was pretty well-known that they were junk that might or might not work for 50 rounds. Yet they sold in the tens of thousands. There are a good many RG revolvers that still lie in wait after decades...never fired. I saw a .38 not long ago that had been fired five times, and almost bought it for the princely sum of 50 dollars just as a curio...a reminder of a simpler time.

Many of these guns have served their owners well in their moment of truth. Others have failed because the owners either couldn't hit the water if they fell out of a boat...or they just plain couldn't make themselves pull the triggers when the time came.

The fact stands, though...that our chances of surviving with a gun are far greater than our chances without one...regardless of our level of skill or the gun's intrinsic accuracy or its quality or anything else. The presence of the gun just makes us more comfortable when things go wrong. Whether or not it's largely a false sense of security is another matter that may or may not be decided when the flag flies. Most of the time...it doesn't.
The gun made us feel better about the situation, and that may be the cheap, non-shooting gun's main role.

 

[danprkr]

falling off of a bike however is as easy as well...............falling off of a bike.

Did you really have to go there?

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Not a Jimenez Arms-type Saturday night speciall, but rather something designed to function well for a few uses. Maintain the high standards and quality control, with lower manufacturing costs and a lower price.

It seems to me that there is an untapped market for a gun - with the same high standards of safety for the operator, accuracy and ergonomics - that could be trashed after a hunting trip/range trip rather than being cleaned.

Keltecs and HiPoints seem to fill the niche quite nicely. I take it that you are not very familiar with the market that you claim is untapped.

Sure, there is a market for high performance quality instruments. Hunters, competitors, daily grinders. But most guns are the equivalent of having a fully rack of of heart surgery equipment for trimming a hangnail.

So you are likening a self defense shooting to being comparable to trimming a hangnail with heart surgery equipment? I don't think you grasp the importance of a self defense shooting. Like heart surgery, it is a life or death situation.

Guns are designed to be heirlooms.

Okay, now you are just making up stuff. No they are not. You can't find a single gun design set of specs or blueprints that includes "heirloom" in the design. You are just misinterpreting the fact that guns are made well enough to withstand the rigors of repeated use are there for made to be heirlooms and that just is not the case.

A home defense gun has to be 100% reliable when needed, but they don't all need to be 100% reliable for thousands and thousands of rounds.

Sort of reminds me of the old McDonald's food packaging that kept the hot side hot and the cold side cold, but how it know?

It seems to me that there is an untapped market for a gun - with the same high standards of safety for the operator, accuracy and ergonomics - that could be trashed after a hunting trip/range trip rather than being cleaned.

Knock yourself out, but as folks have noted, such guns are already being made. So the market isn't untapped.

Or if not a fully disposable gun, one with disposable parts to spread out the costs. Maybe a barrel that needs replacement every 500 rounds (send the used one back by mail, netflix style). Or trigger assemblies that pop in and out with no more difficulty than a printer cartridge. Put a color-change indicator in the plastic parts, for when they begin to overstress.

Wow, now you have changed gears from a disposable gun to one that requires high maintenance and evaluation with constant replacement of parts. Seems to me that making a quality gun would do away with the need for a complete Netflix style support industry and constant need to repair.

Trigger assemblies that pop out like an ink cartridge? Great. Know any ink cartridges make well enough that you would be willing to trust your life to them. When an ink cartridge fails to initiate properly, leaks, or clogs, nobody dies.

Along the same lines, I predict that society will eventually expect bullets to be sold already loaded into reliable, plastic-wrapped, fully-loaded magazines. Thumbing bullets into reusable magazines will seem outdated and dubious, something only hand-loaders and the military still does.

I predict this won't happen in your lifetime or mine with firearms.

 

[22-rimfire]

How many "good" knives do you own that you would throw away after a couple uses? Plastic knives are not good knives. Even $5 Vic kitchen knives are used over and over again as they should be.

Criminals have figured out long ago that all guns (or almost all) are disposable when you compare them to the cost of litigation and their use as evidence.

 

[pith43]

I cant think of a single reason I'd need a "bic" gun.

I've been racking my brain trying to come up with a scenario where I'd need a gun in the rarest of situations, and the only thing I can come up with is self defense.

My SD guns are the guns I actually shoot the most. I put thousands of rounds through the gun to
a) make sure the gun is reliable.
b) make sure that I am reliable.

Therefore the gun I need the least is the gun I shoot the most, and is usually the most well made. I wouldn't trust my life or my family's to the chance of equipment malfunction. On the same note, God forbid I ever need to use the gun, the last thing on my mind is the police confiscating my gun after a SD shooting. If a $2500 custom 1911 is the gun I shoot the best and is proven reliable enough for me, it is a small price to pay for my families welfare.

If all I want is a plinking gun, then there are plenty of cheaper guns that function well enough for the task, but I still would want a gun that would stand up to a few thousand rounds. Replacing the gun every 500 to a thousand rounds would be more expensive than buying a decent gun to start with.

 

[mcdonl]

Replacing the gun every 500 to a thousand rounds would be more expensive than buying a decent gun to start with.

I could not imagine there is a gun made with such a short life span.

 

[Grey_Mana]

If you think there is no market, then you aren't the target market. I imagine you didn't see a market, Facebook, Kindle, or fully-body microwave scanners at airports.

As for what to do with a disposable gun - mail it (or just whatever parts ATF mandates) and mail them back to the company. Or install drop boxes at police departments, like Best Buy has for used cell phone batteries. Or better yet, change the law.

As for liability - well, bad laws are the go-to reason for why anything that makes no sense is the way it is. Allow me to beg the question, and ask you to imagine the US having good government for long enough to fix our rapacious liability/legal system.

As for why you would throw away a perfectly good gun - Luvs makes a fine brand of diaper, but I'm rich enough not to have to bother cleaning a used one. Some folks re-use contact lenses far beyond their nominal limits. Moderately rich people pop in new ones, from sterile packaging every morning.

Syringes for injection used to be glass, with big metal needles. Nice, expensive, painful. Now the needles are as thin and cheap as the product to be administered will allow (some medicines shear, or the volume is to great). Re-use of needles is limited to junkies, third world countries, and disasters where there is a local shortage of needles.

 

[ForumSurfer]

If it were built "good" why would one dispose it?

Exactly.

Guns are designed to be heirlooms.

No. They are designed to fire projectiles at a fast speed, repeatedly. Some are engineering marvels with beautiful craftsmanship that become heirlooms.

How exactly would one practice with a gun designed only to work a few times?

Exactly.

Baby car seat manufacturers and bicycle helmet makers recommend trashing their product if it has been used once, because it might possibly not be safe.

Because their inherent design is to fail. Car seats bend and flex to absorb impact. The plastic doesn't return to it's original strength. Helmets contain materials that compress when struck (or dropped from sufficient height, I ruined a $500 custom motorcycle helmet when it slipped off my handlebars). Once that material compresses, the helmet is a paperweight with no crash protection.

Or trigger assemblies that pop in and out with no more difficulty than a printer cartridge.

A glock is a textbook example of a simple firearm. If you can't disassemble a glock down to bare parts, chances are that you shouldn't be fiddling with the inner workings of a device that is built to contain explosions, anyway.

 

[writerinmo]

I think everything has been said on this subject...