History ReliablyUnreliableGuns / RealLife

* The M16 assault rifle, early in its life, had this reputation as well no thanks to political meddling from the US Army Ordnance Board. The direct impingement gas system introduced carbon fouling and propellant gases into the rifle's interior by directly blowing some of the gas from firing against the bolt, which would be bad enough on its own, but was exacerbated by the fact that it was discovered almost at the last minute that the stick powder the rifle was tested with and designed for could not be mass-produced to the testing specifications, and the replacement was a form of ball powder that achieved the same ballistics as in testing but burned far dirtier. It didn't help that the original models of the rifle lacked a forward assist (rendering it totally inoperable when it jammed and requiring full disassembly to clear it) and were issued without cleaning kits and/or cleaning instructions (due to false advertisement that the rifle was "self-cleaning" [[note]]When used with proper ammunition, the gas tube (and ''only'' the gas tube) is considered self cleaning like all direct gas impingement systems. Someone somewhere took this to mean that the entire rifle didn't need to be cleaned manually.[[/note]] when no weapon is or ''ever has been, even today''; part of this was intentional sabotage from the Army Ordnance Board, who wanted to go back to the 7.62mm M14 battle rifle simply because they wanted to look better than all the competition from the private sector) and lacked chroming of the bore and chamber to save on costs. While quickly fixed (with the standardization of the Model 603 as the [=M16A1=] by 1967, around two or three years after the first mass adoption) the rifle [[NeverLiveItDown has yet to shake off the reputation]]. Many army veterans bitterly note that Army Ordnance never consulted ''them'' about how the M16 and/or its successors should have been designed and never tested the weapons in field conditions simulating those of the active front-line.

* Guns on aircraft came back into use after, based on experience with the Crusader, the Air Force tried to make later aircraft like the F-4 Phantom II use only missiles. The missile of choice, the heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder, ended up being an incredibly finicky and temperamental weapon, which would often fail to launch entirely, would launch but fail to actually track the target in question, or would switch from tracking the heat of the target's jet exhaust to either tracking the heat from the jungle canopy below and hit the ground or the heat of the sun and make an ill-fated attempt to leave the Earth entirely, leaving plane and pilot totally at the mercy of Vietnamese [=MiGs=], which still had cannons. Other missiles available at the time were even worse: the AIM-4 Falcon had a field of view wide enough that it often couldn't actually maneuver to hit the locked target, no proximity fuse (requiring direct hits to detonate, rather than the Sidewinder being able to blow up when it was close enough that it would still damage the target), and a smaller nitrogen bottle to cool the seeker (giving it a much shorter useful time window). The AIM-7 Sparrow fixed issues with heat-seekers by being radar-guided, but lead to its own slew of problems: the pilot had to look down into the cockpit (thus away from his surroundings) to aim the missile properly, he had to keep his plane pointed towards the target for the radar to continue tracking the target, and its significantly longer range was wasted at extremes because it was impossible, in the days before IFF systems, to determine if a target beyond visual range [[FriendOrFoe was actually the enemy]]. The Sparrow lives on, but only in naval use as the surface-to-air RIM-7 Sea Sparrow; for airborne usage it was replaced by the AIM-120 AMRAAM (which utilizes its own internal radar to guide it, rather than relying on the aircraft's radar), while the Falcon was abandoned entirely in favor of the Sidewinder, which saw multiple revisions and upgrades to make it more than serviceable, and is now essentially ''the'' standard short-range heat-seeking air-to-air missile (with not only most Western air forces using it, but even various Eastern ones using a Soviet copy, the K-13 or AA-2 Atoll, as well).

* The Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle, which is the standard rifle of the German Bundeswehr and is used by military and police forces in more than 40 other countries, is to be [[http://www.dw.com/en/heckler-koch-g36-the-rifle-held-in-all-the-wrong-places/a-18402772 phased out]] of Bundeswehr service by 2019, and will probably be phased out elsewhere, due to accuracy dropping significantly under sustained firing. The culprit in this case is under-engineering to save weight, which left a too thin free-floating barrel that droops when hot, supported by polymers that ''soften'' when hot, which together can cause rounds to drop off target as much as 50 centimeters at a distance of 200 meters or 6 meters at 500 meters. This is a significant black eye for H&K, which had been long considered a highly reputable manufacturer that supplies arms in particular to top-tier special operations forces around the world. As of 2016, H&K is litigating the matter in court to lay the blame with the German government. Ironically, the likeliest candidate to replace the G36 in many roles is the [=HK416=], Heckler & Koch's piston-driven version of the M16, a weapon design that is now nearly 60 years old.

** The US' submarine-launched [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo Mark 14 torpedo]] had problems similar to the German torpedoes: both the magnetic and contact detonator versions had high failure rates. The worst problem was that the torpedo tended to run too deep - it simply passed under the enemy ship. This occurred because the test torpedoes were launched from normal atmospheric conditions. But since atmospheric pressure inside a submarine varied greatly, especially after prolonged submerged activity, the pressure inside the submarine would tamper with the sensitive instrumentation, effectively recalibrating the depth sensor. The detonator mechanism was a legacy from older models, and it worked for low-speed torpedoes, but for the high-speed Mark 14 torpedo, the same impact deceleration that caused the firing ring to move [[DidntThinkThisThrough was also large enough to cause the firing pin stem to bind and fail to detonate the booster]]. Then there's also the problem of circular runs, where torpedo being launched and programmed to turn doesn't stop turning and end up hitting the launching submarines. The surface version, the Mark 15, were fitted with collars to prevent this, but the submarine version never got this. Worse, the problem with magnetic detonator is that the Rear Admiral who helped develop the thing keeps obstructing with the orders to deactivate its usage.

** Wartime examples of the Luger are notoriously ''not'' drop-safe, even with the safety catch engaged. Part of this is an issue of people swapping parts in Luger pistols without finely tuning them and the rest is a matter of bad carrying habits.

* The Chauchat light machine gun, at least the M1918 variant issued to the American Expeditionary Forces in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. While the original Chauchat did indeed have some problems, most of which had to do with its open-sided magazine and the fact that Gladiator, a bicycle company with no prior firearms experience, was the one handling most of the production, it did not jam after several shots as some pop-historians would have you believe - most instances of them doing so in the modern day are from the simple fact that the weapons are a century old at this point and simply haven't been maintained properly (to say nothing about the weapon taking deliberate abuse from its detractors, as several people literally wanted to smashed it into a tree to prove how bad it was while they would never do the same to the machine guns they considered the best).\\

Most of the M1918 version's bad reputation is the issue of having been rechambered from the original 8mm Lebel to the American .30-06 Springfield. The M1918 was, in short, a godawful conversion that didn't take into account the significant differences in cartridge size (8x51 to 7.62x63) and shape (straight-cased Springfield versus tapered Lebel), in addition to several other mistakes (in particular screwing up the conversion from metric to English units - and never noticing this until well ''after'' the war - meaning the M1918's magazine and chamber weren't even the correct size). As a result, the majority of M1918s didn't pass factory inspection, and the few that did make it to the frontline experienced severe jamming issues and were usually discarded by US troops before they could fire off a full magazine (most automatic riflemen squadrons giving up on that and switching back to the bolt-action Springfield M1903).\\

* A less famous, but no less awful example of light machine gun design was the Italian [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda_30 Breda 30]] which saw service in World War 2. Its [[http://www.forgottenweapons.com/light-machine-guns/breda-model-30/ numerous design faults]] teamed up to make it an ''extremely'' unreliable weapon, especially in the desert conditions of North Africa. The gun used a short-recoil-operation that had a ludicrously short unlocking period (which most people mistake for a pure blow-back mechanism), necessitating that the rounds be '''oiled''' to prevent them from being ripped apart during extraction. This didn't always work, leaving the front part of spent casings hopelessly jammed in the chamber, plus the oil attracted dirt into the working areas of the weapon, causing another type of jam. Furthermore, the gun used the same bad idea as the Chauchat with an open-sided magazine that invited even ''more'' dirt onto the oiled rounds and into the operating mechanism. On top of ''that'', the closed-bolt design reduced air circulation and also put rounds in the chamber at risk of cooking off if fired continuously without being allowed to rest at all, which could injure or ''kill'' the gunner. Oh, and the magazine was not meant to be detached and replaced under normal conditions, instead making use of 20 round stripper clips to reload it, which had the effect of drastically slowing the rate of fire. So even in perfect conditions where every round fired and extracted correctly, one would still wind up spending most of his time reloading it. The only good thing about the Breda 30 was the very high quality of the machining operations done to make the parts fit together.
** The worst thing about the Breda 30 is that it was probably ''not the worst automatic weapon of the Italian Army''. That would be the [[https://www.forgottenweapons.com/medium-machine-guns/fiat-revelli-m1914/ Fiat-Revelli Modello 1914]] heavy machine gun: designed before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, it was a wedge-delayed blow-back design with a stationary water-cooled barrel. The operation of the action was simple, but the Revelli action had harsh extraction problems and it also gave the gunner a risk of losing his fingers. Contrary to popular belief, there was no integral cartridge oiler until the middle of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI (necessitating that the assistant gunner apply oil to the typewriter-style magazines), but the oiler didn't make things much better. The 1935 revision of the design, while more modern with a change to a heavy 8x59 mm cartridge, an air-cooled barrel, and a proper feed-belt crafted for it, was considered ''even worse'' than the 1914 design (notably because the violent extraction of the heavier cartridge required the use of more oil) and was usually thrown out in favor of its very reliable competitor, the Breda M37.

** On a visit to Britain, Mikhail Kalashnikov was shown the SA-80 by its designers, who proudly asked him what he thought of it. The old man shook his head sadly, and explained to his British counterparts that he had designed a weapon for the Russian Army on the principles of simplicity of construction, use and maintainance. He had deliberately engineered a weapon with the fewest possible moving parts so that even the dumbest soldier could strip, reassemble and maintain it in ''any'' conditions. The stupider the soldier, the simpler the weapon: design to the lowest common denominator. He then took another disbelieving look at the SA-80 and remarked
--> Going by this, all British soldiers must evidently be geniuses.

** Most sources mention the biggest issue with the Sten wasn't the mechanism, but rather the magazines (which were very similar to the magazines used by the [=MP40=]). Indeed, the [=MP40=]'s magazines were prone to spring failure when fully-loaded with 32 rounds, though most soldiers got around that by only loading 28 or 30 instead.

** The Type 14 Nambu, the official Japanese service pistol throughout the 1930s and [=WW2=], was itself an ''adequate'' enough weapon, though wholly unremarkable. The 8x22mm Nambu round it fired was barely adequate by modern military standards (its power was comparable to the .380 ACP); otherwise it would have been a decent weapon. Oh, and the firing pin was also somewhat fragile... and instead of implementing Colonel Nambu's rather simple fix to this one, they just ''issued spare firing pins'', with the expectation that when one broke the officer would ''disassemble his gun and replace the pin after the fight was over''. Even worse was that the primary striker spring tended to weaken over time, which nobody could quickly replace (in contrast, the aforementioned belittled Type 94 had an unusually reliable firing hammer spring-a bit too reliable for those foolish enough to abuse their weapons on purpose). No surprise that many chose to draw their sword when their Nambu jammed.
** Other weapons like the Type 26 revolver were just horrible in almost every way. Essentially a clone of a Smith & Wesson top-break revolver with all the good parts removed, it fired a 9mm round that had very little punch at all and was a proprietary round (it was similar to the weakest loads you can find of .38 S&W and almost exactly the same size, yet just different enough to not be interchangeable), making it difficult to supply in the field after the invasion of China. Other distinct "merits" were its horrendous double-action trigger pull (made worse by the fact that it was ''double-action only'', so it could not be cocked manually) and an unfortunate tendency to have its barrel and chamber misaligned, causing a catastrophic misfire when doing so.
** The Japanese had also experimented with making a copy of the American M1 Garand, the Type 5. It would have been rechambered for Japan's own 7.7mm Arisaka cartridge, and rather than utilizing the M1's en-bloc clip it would be fed via a pair of regular stripper clips in the same manner as the British SMLE. It ultimately ended production at about 250 units, none of them seeing service, and many more of them not even being assembled, due to frequent jamming. Given the abysmal condition of Japanese industry in 1945, and the fact that the war ended before they had any real chance to work out the bugs in the design, this isn't surprising.

** The Australian-designed Owen, which was supposed to replace the Sten and the US Thompson in Commonwealth forces, had a similar problem made worse: even with the safety engaged, it was still known for accidental discharge. The Aussies didn't care, though. They considered its near-immunity to jamming far more important, especially given their tendency to be fighting in muddy jungles or sandy deaserts where any reliability problems get exaggerated. Perhaps the common-sense solution was not to leave a loaded Owen gun lying around unattended.

** Other weapons like the Type 26 revolver were just horrible in almost every way. Essentially a clone of a Smith & Wesson top-break revolver with all the good parts removed, it fired a 9mm round that had very little punch at all and was a proprietary round (it was similar to the weakest loads you can find of .38 S&W and almost exactly the same size, yet just different enough to not be interchangeable), making it difficult to supply in the field after the invasion of China. Other distinct "merits" were its horrendous double-action trigger pull (made worse by the fact that it was ''double-action only'', so it could not be cocked manually) and an unfortunate tendency to have its barrel and chamber misaligned, causing a catastrophic misfire when doing so. If that wasn't worrying enough, a special tear gas grenade attachment was developed for it as well. A flare gun based on the Type 26 was, however, satisfactory.

** The Type 11 light machine gun had similar issues stemming from its feeding system. The weapon used a unique hopper design to feed ammo from six of the same five-round clips used by the famed Arisaka rifle. This allowed users to top off their ammo without having to remove the hopper, but it also gave it a tendency to jam with the slightest amount of dirt, an undesirable characteristic in the mud and grime of the Pacific Theater. Additionally, the side-mounted hopper required the butt-stock to be offset to the right. In spite of its flaws, the Type 11 was used whenever better weapons were not available. Chinese soldiers certainly didn't toss away captured examples.

* The French MAS 44, 49 and 49/56 rifles are been known to slamfire due to their free-floating firing pins getting stuck in the forward position, though only with commercial ammunition. The free-floating firing pin was never a problem with French military ammo, which has unusually hard primers even by military standards, and in military service they were famous for extreme reliability. But the 7.5x54mm ammo now produced for civilian sale has standard primers, and even a light strike can cause them to fire. Some owners solve this problem by grinding about half a millimeter off the tip of the firing pin, while others prefer to load their own ammo using the military-style hard primers that the gun was designed for. Of course, these designs also have the problem of being direct impingement designs, but unlike the M16/AR-15 family are surprisingly easy to clean.

** Wartime examples of the Luger are notoriously ''not'' drop-safe, even with the safety catch engaged.

Most of the weapon's bad reputation comes from the M1918 version rechambered from the original 8mm Lebel to the American .30-06 Springfield. The M1918 was, in short, a godawful conversion that didn't take into account the significant differences in cartridge size (8x51 to 7.62x63) and shape (straight-cased Springfield versus tapered Lebel), in addition to several other mistakes (in particular screwing up the conversion from metric to English units - and never noticing this until well ''after'' the war - meaning the M1918's magazine and chamber weren't even the correct size). As a result, the majority of M1918s didn't pass factory inspection, and the few that did make it to the frontline experienced severe jamming issues and were usually discarded by US troops before they could fire off a full magazine (most automatic riflemen squadrons giving up on that and switching back to the bolt-action Springfield M1903).\\

** The worst thing about the Breda 30 is that it was probably ''not the worst automatic weapon of the Italian Army''. That would be the [[https://www.forgottenweapons.com/medium-machine-guns/fiat-revelli-m1914/ Fiat-Revelli Modello 1914]] heavy machine gun: designed before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, it was a wedge-delayed blow-back design with a stationary water-cooled barrel. The operation of the action was simple, but the Revelli action had harsh extraction problems and it also gave the gunner a risk of losing his fingers. Contrary to popular belief, there was no integral cartridge oiler until the middle of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI (necessitating that the assistant gunner apply oil to the typewriter-style magazines), but the oiler didn't make things much better. The 1935 revision of the design, while more modern with a change to a heavy 8x59 mm cartridge, an air-cooled barrel, and a proper feed-belt crafted for it, was considered even worse than the 1914 design (notably because the violent extraction of the heavier cartridge required the use of more oil) and was usually thrown out in favor of its very reliable competitor, the Breda M37.

** Most sources mention the biggest issue with the Sten wasn't the mechanism, but rather the magazines (which based on the magazines used by the [=MP40=]). Indeed, the [=MP40=]'s magazines were prone to spring failure when fully-loaded with 32 rounds, though most soldiers got around that by only loading 28 or 30 instead.

* The Nambu Type 94 Japanese issue pistol was notorious for firing if touched wrong, due to an exposed sear bar that could drop the hammer if deliberately mashed or carelessly slammed when the safety was off (this is a problem for any Luger pistol that's found missing its trigger sear cover plate). While Japanese [=NCOs=] had their pistols issued to them by the military, Japanese officers purchased their own guns, and quite a few did not buy native.[[note]]The most popular choices by Japanese officers were the German Mauser Models 1910 and 1914, American Colt Model 1903 and Belgian FN Browning Model 1910. Once the war started, though, the supplies of new pistols were cut off: Belgium was quickly conquered by Gemany, the US and Belgian government in exile obviously weren't exporting pistols to their enemy, and Germany was too busy making weapons for its own military, not to mention that Allied naval superiority made continued imports from Germany a rather iffy proposition.[[/note]]
** It was only a substitute standard pistol taken into military service due to shortages of the standard Type Taisho 14 8mm automatic pistol, which replaced the older "Papa Nambu" in the 1920s. The Type 94 was apparently originally designed as an export item for commercial sale overseas; one can only assume that the designers anticipated selling them to fairly gullible customers. The standard Type Taisho 14 pistol was perfectly safe (though rather underpowered compared to most other combat handguns of the war, much like the rest of Japan's arsenal at that time) -- as long as you remembered not to leave the locking piece out of the mechanism after field-stripping and reassembling it (not that anyone careful enough to field-strip the pistol without losing any parts in the process could ever think that the locking block was NOT important). It would fire without the locking block, exactly ''once''; the result would be the bolt immovably jammed in the full-recoil position (not very useful in a firefight). For cultural reasons, Japanese officers [[KatanasAreJustBetter tended to charge with a sword in hand anyway]].

** Other weapons like the Type 26 revolver were just horrible in every way. Essentially a clone of a Smith & Wesson top-break revolver with all the good parts removed, it fired a 9mm round that had very little punch at all and was a proprietary round (it was similar to the weakest loads you can find of .38 S&W and almost exactly the same size, yet just different enough to not be interchangeable), making it difficult to supply in the field. Other distinct merits was its horrendous trigger pull (made worse by not even having the option of firing in single-action mode; despite the hammer being exposed it had no spur and could not be manually cocked) and an unfortunate tendency to have its barrel and chamber misaligned, causing a catastrophic misfire when doing so. If that wasn't worrying enough, a special tear gas grenade attachment was developed for it as well.

** World War 2 era Japanese weapons tended to be horrible, with a few exceptions, most notably the Arisaka rifle. Most of their machine guns in particular were overweight, underpowered and unreliable. R. Lee Ermey test-fired a [[RareGuns Type 92]] in both ''Lock N'Load'' and ''Mail Call'' where he addresses the gun's unnecessarily heavy weight, low rate of fire, and horrible tendency to jam (due to any mistakes made by the gun crew). In fact, in ''Lock N'Load'', an improperly-loaded ammo strip caused a fragmented case to cut his knuckle, also jamming the gun in the process.

** The Type 11 light machine gun had similar issues stemming from its magazine design. The weapon used a unique hopper design to feed ammo from six of the same five-round clips used by the famed Arisaka rifle. This allowed users to top off their ammo without having to remove the magazine, but it also gave it a tendency to jam with the slightest amount of dirt, an undesirable characteristic in the mud and grime of the Pacific Theater. Additionally, the side-mounted hopper required the butt-stock to be offset to the right.

* The M16 assault rifle, early in its life, had this reputation as well. The direct impingement gas system introduced carbon fouling and propellant gases into the rifle's interior by directly blowing some of the gas from firing against the bolt, which would be bad enough on its own, but was exacerbated by the fact that it was discovered almost at the last minute that the stick powder the rifle was tested with and designed for could not be mass-produced to the testing specifications, and the replacement was a form of ball powder that achieved the same ballistics as in testing but burned far dirtier. It didn't help that the original models of the rifle lacked a forward assist (rendering it totally inoperable when it jammed and requiring full disassembly to clear it) and were issued without cleaning kits and/or cleaning instructions (due to false advertisement that the rifle was "self-cleaning" [[note]]When used with proper ammunition, the gas tube (and ''only'' the gas tube) is considered self cleaning like all direct gas impingement systems. Someone somewhere took this to mean that the entire rifle didn't need to be cleaned manually.[[/note]] when no weapon is or ''ever has been, even today''; part of this was intentional sabotage from the Army Ordnance Board, who wanted to go back to the 7.62mm M14 battle rifle) and lacked chroming of the bore and chamber to save on costs. While quickly fixed (with the standardization of the Model 603 as the [=M16A1=] by 1967, around two or three years after the first mass adoption) the rifle [[NeverLiveItDown has yet to shake off the reputation]].

** It was only a substitute standard pistol taken into military service due to shortages of the standard Type Taisho 14 8mm automatic pistol, which replaced the older "Papa Nambu" in the 1920s. The Type 94 was apparently originally designed as an export item for commercial sale overseas; one can only assume that the designers anticipated selling them to fairly gullible customers. While there's no known instance of a Type 94 going off while the safety is engaged, it was probably a good idea to carry without a round in the chamber, just in case. The standard Type Taisho 14 pistol was perfectly safe (though rather underpowered compared to most other combat handguns of the war, much like the rest of Japan's arsenal at that time) -- as long as you remembered not to leave the locking piece out of the mechanism after field-stripping and reassembling it (not that anyone careful enough to field-strip the pistol without losing any parts in the process could ever think that the locking block was NOT important). It would fire without the locking block, exactly ''once''; the result would be the bolt immovably jammed in the full-recoil position (not very useful in a firefight). For cultural reasons, Japanese officers [[KatanasAreJustBetter tended to charge with a sword in hand anyway]].

* The Colt Double Eagle handgun was essentially a multi-caliber modernization of the classic M1911, but overall failed to find a market, and part of the reason very well could have been a lack of proper quality control. Gun writer Dean Speir [[https://web.archive.org/web/20150916024643/http://www.thegunzone.com/gunwriter.html chronicled]] a pair of shoddily-made 10mm Auto Double Eagles he'd tested around December 1990 and January 1991 - in the first, a round ''exploded'' upon firing, showering his face in burned propellant and brass shards, due to a chamber which he described as looking "like it had been assaulted by a Dremel-wielding dope fiend three days into withdrawal"; and then he couldn't even load the second one, since it was marked on the box as 10mm Auto, had 10mm Auto stamped on the receiver, and came with a 10mm Auto magazine... but was fitted with a .45 ACP barrel, so the entire carriage slid down the barrel and out the muzzle, cartoon-style.

** Also, despite the memes, [=AKs=] - even those built to high (or any sort of, as the case may be) standards - are actually rather prone to jamming while covered in mud. The AK's scheme for preventing jams when dirty is to have high tolerances - that is, spaces between parts inside the gun - so the grime has a place for moving parts to just push it out of the way and let the user worry about actually cleaning it out later. While this works phenomenally well against grease and burnt gunpowder, it can only be pushed so far with external dirt before it causes a jam. Some of the AK's children, such as the Israeli Galil, are sealed like more modern military rifles to prevent this.

* The SIG Sauer P320. Originally released in 2014, the pistol largely flew under the radar of most gun buyers, until it was a finalist in the U.S. military's Modular Handgun System trials to find a replacement for the aging Beretta M9. On January 19, 2017, the P320 was announced as the winner of the MHS competition, and the U.S. Army would move to adopt it as its new duty handgun later that year. Interest in the P320 spiked after this, and its newfound fame led to ''pistoleros'' all across America [[ColbertBump buying it up]]. Then, six months later in July 2017, rumors started circulating that a certain police department was planning to suspend use of the pistol due to it not being drop-safe (i.e. the gun isn't safe to drop because it may fire). A week later on August 2, 2017, these rumors were confirmed when the Dallas Police Department did precisely that. Less than 48 hours later, SIG issued a statement claiming the pistols were safe, concluding with the sentence, "There have been zero (0) reported drop-related P320 incidents in [[ExactWords the U.S. commercial market]], with hundreds of thousands of guns delivered to date." [[TemptingFate What followed after this]] could only be described as the heavens deciding to [[{{Hubris}} strike down the haughty]]:

* A less famous, but no less awful example of light machine gun design was the Italian [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda_30 Breda 30]] which saw service in World War 2. Its [[http://www.forgottenweapons.com/light-machine-guns/breda-model-30/ numerous design faults]] teamed up to make it an ''extremely'' unreliable weapon, especially in the desert conditions of North Africa. The gun used a short-recoil-operation that had a ludicrously short unlocking period (which most people mistake for a pure blow-back mechanism), necessitating that the rounds be '''oiled''' to prevent them from being ripped apart during extraction. This didn't always work, leaving the front part of spent casings hopelessly jammed in the chamber, plus the oil attracted dirt into the working areas of the weapon, causing another type of jam. Furthermore, the gun used the same bad idea as the Chauchat with an open-sided magazine that invited even ''more'' dirt onto the oiled rounds and into the operating mechanism. On top of ''that'', the closed-bolt design reduced air circulation and also put rounds in the chamber at risk of cooking off, which could injure or ''kill'' the gunner. Oh, and the magazine was not meant to be detached and replaced under normal conditions, instead making use of 20 round stripper clips to reload it, which had the effect of drastically slowing the rate of fire. So even in perfect conditions where every round fired and extracted correctly, one would still wind up spending most of his time reloading it. The only good thing about the Breda 30 was the very high quality of the machining operations done to make the parts fit together.
** The worst thing about the Breda 30 is that it was probably ''not the worst automatic weapon of the Italian Army''. That would be the [[https://www.forgottenweapons.com/medium-machine-guns/fiat-revelli-m1914/ Fiat-Revelli Modello 1914]] heavy machine gun: designed before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, it was a wedge-delayed blow-back design with a stationary water-cooled barrel. The operation of the action was simple, but the Revelli action had harsh extraction problems and it also gave the gunner a risk of losing his fingers. Contrary to popular belief, there was no integral cartridge oiler until the middle of the war (necessitating that the assistant gunner apply oil to the typewriter-style magazines), but the oiler didn't make things much better. The 1935 revision of the design, while more modern with a change to a heavy 8x59 mm cartridge, an air-cooled barrel, and a proper feed-belt crafted for it, was considered even worse than the 1914 design and was usually thrown out in favor of its very reliable competitor, the Breda M37.
* The Enfield L85 (better known as the [=SA80=]) was basically Britain's way of telling the United States that when it came to the design of infantry weapons, "anything you can screw up, we can screw up bigger"; the design itself was fairly sound, albeit rather maintenance-intensive and complicated to disassemble, but had to be built to extremely fine tolerances. Unfortunately, the initial in-service version was the last project undertaken by the Royal Small Arms Factory, whose workers had recently learned they were all going to be laid off. The reader can doubtless imagine the effect this had on their workmanship. A report listed 50 issues inherent to the system, including spontaneous malfunctions, firing pin breakage, safety breakages, and magazines spontaneously dropping. This is what happens when a country forces through a new assault rifle just for the hell of it. Heckler & Koch managed to (mostly) salvage the design in the upgrade to the A2 standard, though the light support weapon variation is still not seeing much use at all except as a rarely-used DMR (non-changeable barrel and bullpup action make it very difficult to fire for long periods or even use magazines suited for that; its initial role is instead being fulfilled by the [=L110A1=], a British version of the excellent FN Minimi).

** The Australian-designed Owen, which was supposed to replace the Sten and the US Thompson in Commonwealth forces, had a similar problem made worse: even with the safety engaged, it was still known for accidental discharge. The Aussies didn't care, though. They considered its near-immunity to jamming far more important, especially given their tendency to be fighting in muddy jungles or sandy deaserts where any reliability problems get exaggerated.

* The Nambu Type 94 Japanese issue pistol was notorious for firing if touched wrong, due to an exposed sear bar that could drop the hammer if deliberately mashed or carelessly slammed when the safety was off. While Japanese [=NCOs=] had their pistols issued to them by the military, Japanese officers purchased their own guns, and quite a few did not buy native.[[note]]The most popular choices by Japanese officers were the German Mauser Models 1910 and 1914, American Colt Model 1903 and Belgian FN Browning Model 1910. Once the war started, though, the supplies of new pistols were cut off: Belgium was quickly conquered by Gemany, the US and Belgian government in exile obviously weren't exporting pistols to their enemy, and Germany was too busy making weapons for its own military, not to mention that Allied naval superiority made continued imports from Germany a rather iffy proposition.[[/note]]
** It was only a substitute standard pistol taken into military service due to shortages of the standard Type Taisho 14 8mm automatic pistol, which replaced the older "Papa Nambu" in the 1920s. The Type 94 was apparently originally designed as an export item for commercial sale overseas; one can only assume that the designers anticipated selling them to fairly gullible customers. While there's no known instances of a Type 94 going off while the safety is engaged, it was probably a good idea to carry without a round in the chamber, just in case. The standard Type Taisho 14 pistol was perfectly safe (though rather underpowered compared to most other combat handguns of the war, much like the rest of Japan's arsenal at that time) -- as long as you remembered not to leave the locking piece out of the mechanism after field-stripping and reassembling it (not that anyone careful enough to field-strip the pistol without losing any parts in the process could ever think that the locking block was NOT important). It would fire without the locking block, exactly ''once''; the result would be the bolt immovably jammed in the full-recoil position (not very useful in a firefight). For cultural reasons, Japanese officers [[KatanasAreJustBetter tended to charge with a sword in hand anyway]].

** Similarly was the original model of the Type 100 SMG, a copy of the Bergmann MP 18 which, in addition to balance issues caused by the side-mounted magazine, would frequently jam due to a feature where the firing pin would not operate unless a round was fully chambered. A lightened, folding-stock version for paratroopers was even worse, as the lighter weight made the weapon too fragile for general use. The updated Type 100/44 removed this feature, among other improvements, but the weapon was still also underpowered compared to the submachine guns in use by the other armies in the war, and production for all variants only amounted to 27,000 weapons at best.

* The M50 and M55 Reising were submachine guns issued to the Marines during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII as a substitute for Thompsons, which were in short supply (especially for the Marine Corps, which always had to wait until Army and Navy orders were filled before getting anything) and too bulky and heavy for constant jungle patrols. The Reising was accurate and reliable in trials -- unfortunately, the trials were designed for a civilian law enforcement weapon, not a military one. While a cop would have no trouble with his gun (since he'd only be using it in his own city, and would be keeping it in storage most of the time), the complex internals of the gun would easily foul and jam in the sand, mud, and salt water of the Pacific campaign. The design of the magazine meant that it could also easily be slightly damaged and make the magazine useless. The folding stock of the M55 lacked any sort of locking mechanism to hold it in place, thus it would often fold in by itself when fired. It would even jam just from too-humid air, which rusted the firing pin. As if this wasn't enough, the weapon was cocked by pulling back a tab attached to the bolt... at the bottom of the handguard. In other words, a rapidly reciprocating piece of metal right by your delicate fingers. The cocking piece was ''inside'' the handguard (which had a groove cut into it for that purpose), meaning that your fingers were probably safe... unless you accidentally slipped them into the groove instead of around the side.[[note]]This would be ''very'' bad, as the cocking tab was strong enough to ''break your finger''.[[/note]] But this provided the most common of the Reising's many opportunities to jam; if the groove filled with mud, the cocking lever would be blocked from moving. To make things worse, the Reising had parts that didn't properly interchange from one gun to the next, and replacement parts needed to be hand-fitted. The only reason the Marines used them at all was they were available ''immediately'', rather than "maybe in a few months" like the Thompson. Not surprisingly, Marines would take almost anything else and dump their guns as soon as possible. Lt. Col. Merritt Edson commanded his battalion to dump all of their Reisings in a river so they could draw better guns. One NCO reportedly "decommissioned" his gun by smashing the stock over the head of a rather unruly prisoner in the brig. After the Marines' dismal experience with it in the Pacific, the remaining Reisings were either foisted off on Canada and Russia, or assigned to duty they were more suitable for: issue to stateside police, factory guards and Coast Guard patrols.
** It should be noted that the ones Canada bought where only given to battalions that were still stationed in Canada and the guards of POW camps in Canada, in order to free up better guns for the units that would actually serve overseas and see combat. Which shows how little faith they had in the gun.

* American-made versions of the British Hispano .404 were unreliable, due to the use of a longer chamber (a flaw that was never corrected) [[note]]The US considered all guns about 15mm caliber as artillery, which meant they were built to looser tolerances[[/note]], which was the reason most American warplanes were equipped with the .50 caliber Browning instead. One of its descendants, the Colt Mk 12 autocannon, had a tendency to jam during hard maneuvers. Seeing as how dogfighting involves hard maneuvers, this was obviously bad for the plane and pilot.

Most of the weapon's bad reputation comes from the American M1918 version rechambered from the original 8mm Lebel to .30-06 Springfield. The M1918 was, in short, a godawful conversion that didn't take into account the significant differences in cartridge size (8x51 to 7.62x63) and shape (straight-cased Springfield versus tapered Lebel), in addition to several other mistakes (in particular screwing up the conversion from metric to English units - and never noticing this until well ''after'' the war - meaning the M1918's magazine and chamber weren't even the correct size). As a result, the majority of M1918s didn't pass factory inspection, and the few that did make it to the frontline experienced severe jamming issues and were usually discarded by US troops before they could fire off a full magazine (most automatic riflemen squadrons giving up on that and switching back to the bolt-action Springfield M1903).\\

* American-made versions of the British Hispano .404 were extremely unreliable, due to the use of a longer chamber (a flaw that was never corrected) [[note]]The US considered all guns about 15mm caliber as artillery, which meant they were built to looser tolerances[[/note]], which was the reason most American warplanes were equipped with the .50 caliber Browning instead. One of its descendants, the Colt Mk 12 autocannon, had a tendency to jam during hard maneuvers. Seeing as how dogfighting involves hard maneuvers, this was obviously bad for the plane and pilot.

* A less famous, but no less awful example of light machine gun design was the Italian [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda_30 Breda 30]] which saw service in World War 2. Its [[http://www.forgottenweapons.com/light-machine-guns/breda-model-30/ numerous design faults]] teamed up to make it an ''extremely'' unreliable weapon, especially in the desert conditions of North Africa. The gun used a short-recoil-operation that had a ludicrously short unlocking period (which most people mistake for a pure blow-back mechanism), necessitating that the rounds be '''oiled''' to prevent them from being ripped apart during extraction. This didn't always work, leaving the front part of spent casings hopelessly jammed in the chamber, plus the oil attracted dirt into the working areas of the weapon, causing another type of jam. Furthermore, the gun used the same bad idea as the Chauchat with an open-sided magazine that invited even ''more'' dirt onto the oiled rounds and into the operating mechanism. On top of ''that'', the closed-bolt design reduced air circulation and also put rounds in the chamber at risk of cooking off, which could injure or ''kill'' the gunner. Oh, and the magazine was not meant to be detached and replaced under normal conditions, instead making use of 20 round stripper clips to reload it, which had the effect of drastically slowing the rate of fire. So even in perfect conditions where every round fired and extracted correctly, one would still wind up spending most of his time reloading it.
** The worst thing about the Breda 30 is that it was probably ''not the worst weapon of the Italian Army'' in the war. That would be the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat-Revelli_Modello_1914 Fiat-Revelli Modello 1914]] heavy machine gun: designed before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, it had ''the same extraction problems as the Breda 30'', a ridiculous indexing magazine that could required special loading tools, an oil pump added only on the later variants (earlier variants required the assistant gunner to manually apply oil to the magazines), and by 1940 it had been out of production for twenty years, thus adding the troubles of age and wear. The issues were ironed out with the later Modello 1935, an improved model with air cooling, no oil pump and, most importantly, ''belt-feeding''. Except it jammed ''worse'' with un-oiled rounds, so they had to put back the oiler.

** On a visit to Britain, the Mikhail Kalashnikov was shown the SA-80 by its designers, who proudly asked him what he thought of it. The old man shook his head sadly, and explained to his British counterparts that he had designed a weapon for the Russian Army on the principles of simplicity of construction, use and maintainance. He had deliberately engineered a weapon with the fewest possible moving parts so that even the dumbest soldier could strip, reassemble and maintain it in ''any'' conditions. The stupider the soldier, the simpler the weapon: design to the lowest common denominator. He then took another disbelieving look at the SA-80 and remarked

* The FAMAS F1 was designed a few years after France withdrew from NATO[[note]]Sort of. France withdrew from NATO's military command structure after the US and UK basically laughed at their demand to be given equal authority of NATO operations. But they remained a NATO member. Given that NATO is an exclusively military alliance, what that distinction actually meant is somewhat complicated.[[/note]], in turn allowing France to design a new infantry weapon without being forced to comply to NATO standards. The result was one of the most mind-bogglingly weird and boneheaded assault rifles designs of the twentieth century, not helped by a laundry list of poor decisions. The downsides stem from the fact the FAMAS F1 has a higher barrel twist rate than either version of the AR-15/M16 family rifle (i.e. it's optimized for ''neither'' the original American M193 cartridge nor the NATO-standard [=SS109=]), optimized for the locally-produced steel-cased 5.56mm "F1" cartridges; as time passed and production of the rifle and ammunition ceased, the French military was left sitting on their reserves. As operations in Afghanistan and Chad showed, when a standard FAMAS F1 was fed with American-issued 5.56 NATO ammunition, the effective range would drop to an abysmal average of 50 meters (about 165 ft; a modern 9x19mm ''pistol'' can equal this, for context), effectively making the rifle useless. Because France was not anymore able to produce this proprietary ammunition locally, they had to contract a manufacturer in the Emirates, however ammo purchased from them turned out to be of low quality and poor manufacture; coupled with an awkward, proprietary 25-round magazine instead of STANAG-compliant magazines (some genius thought it would be a great idea to go with cheap magazines designed to be thrown away after being emptied once... and then later some other genius decided it would be a great idea to save money by reusing the non-reusable magazines), this effectively killed the F1 as an effective, modern-day infantry rifle. Nearly all of those problems were fixed with the more modern variants, such as the FAMAS G2, which has a STANAG magwell and a barrel with the same twist rate as an M16/AR, allowing it to shoot 5.56 NATO proper. However, the G2 was never purchased in high numbers by the French military (only the Navy has officially adopted it), citing an ever-shrinking budget, and an administration unwilling to replace the some 300,000 F1s equipping the armories. The French military finally announced in September 2016 that they would be replacing the FAMAS with the [=HK416=] beginning in 2017.

* Pistol-grip forends on pump-action shotguns commonly show up as a cool looking accessory in film, television, and videogames, making a shotgun nearly resemble the old dual pistol-grip M1928 Tommy gun of 1920s gangland infamy. In real life, these nearly useless accessories jut out at a cumbersome angle from a critical operating part which can make cycling the weapon difficult, provide poor ergonomics for supporting the hefty forward weight of a shotgun (which carries its ammunition in a magazine tube right over the slide), and, worst of all, create a risk of twisting or bending the gun's action bars, preventing the bolt from seating in battery or damaging the weapon. Cheap aftermarket accessory makers sell them anyway to the uninformed.

** Most of these issues got worse with wear, so the gun tended to perform passably if recently refit, but degrade ''horribly'' over time; this was especially an issue for the [=M60E3=], which attempted to reduce the weight of the weapon, but succeeded at the cost of making it ''even less'' reliable. It's commonly said that an M60 would literally beat itself to death. So much so that even the ''receivers'' got labelled as replaceable parts[[note]]for context, a broken receiver on ''any other Army-issue weapon'' resulted in other working parts attached to it being stripped to replace the parts on other guns[[/note]] - only the trunnion was considered to be long lasting. Modern variants like the [=M60E4/E6=] and Mk. 43 have finally fixed the M60's issues for beating themselves to death, but save for the [=SEALs=] and the Coast Guard, almost every branch of the US military has abandoned it, either switching to the M240 and deciding reliability at the cost of ''even worse'' mobility than the already-cumbersome M60 is a fair trade, or looking towards the newer Mk. 48, a 7.62mm conversion of the M249 that still manages to be lighter ''and'' more reliable than modern M60 variants.

* The M16 assault rifle, early in its life, had this reputation as well. The direct impingement gas system introduced carbon fouling and propellant gases into the rifle's interior by directly blowing some of the gas from firing against the bolt, which would be bad enough on its own, but was exacerbated by the fact that it was discovered almost at the last minute that the stick powder the rifle was tested with and designed for could not be mass-produced to the testing specifications, and the replacement was a form of ball powder that achieved the same ballistics as in testing but burned far dirtier. It didn't help that the original models of the rifle lacked a forward assist (rendering it totally inoperable when it jammed and requiring full disassembly to clear it) and were issued without cleaning kits and/or cleaning instructions (due to false advertisement that the rifle was "self-cleaning" [[note]]When used with proper ammunition, the gas tube (and ''only'' the gas tube) is considered self cleaning like all direct gas impingement systems. Someone somewhere took this to mean that the entire rifle didn't need to be cleaned manually.[[/note]] when no weapon is or ''ever has been, even today''; part of this was intentional sabotage from the Army Ordnance Board, who wanted to go back to the 7.62mm M14 battle rifle) and lacked chroming of the bore and chamber to save on costs. While quickly fixed (with the standardization of the Model 603 as the [=M16A1=] by 1967, around two or three years after the first mass adoption) the rifle [[NeverLiveItDown has yet to shake off the reputation]]; even the direct-impingement system itself is regarded as a complete failure because of it, despite some other weapons with the system like French MAS-49 rifle being famous for their ruggedness and durability.
* The Colt Mk 12 autocannon used on the [[CoolPlane Vought F8 Crusader]] had a tendency to jam during hard maneuvers. Seeing as how dogfighting involves hard maneuvers, this was obviously bad for the plane and pilot. Consequently, the F8 became known as "The Last Gunfighter" because it was the last American aircraft of its era to be fitted with a gun, and even then despite the name the Crusader only scored four kills with its guns during UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, the rest being scored with missiles.

* The French Mas-49 has a tendency to unintentionally go full auto after being fired once when using commercial ammo unless an after market fire pin is installed. The Mas-49 uses a free floating fire pin (meaning there is no spring keeping it back when not being fired) and sometimes it has enough kinetic energy to strike the primer and set the round off after chambering. This tends to culminate in the rifle jamming as its not meant for fullauto fire. The military used ammo with a tougher primer to get around this problem.
** S.K.Ses also have a free floating firing pin and can do the same thing if the tip if the firing pin breaks and makes it sharp enough to strike the primer after chambering. Normally the firing pin has too wide of a head make a dent on the primer without he hammer forcing it to.

\\
Worse is that vastly superior options to the M1918 Chauchat existed at the time, but were ignored for completely petty and short-sighted reasons - the Lewis gun was passed over simply because the AEF's chief of ordnance, General William Crozier, [[InterserviceRivalry disliked the weapon's designer, Colonel Isaac Lewis]], while General John Pershing delayed adoption of the Browning Automatic Rifle as long as possible (it only seeing issue three months before the war ended) because of serious production issues with the weapon like incorrectly-tempered springs (and incorrectly dimensioned receiver units) on early batches and because, it being an indigenous American design, the AEF [[PatrioticFervor thought it a far better weapon than it actually was]] and were fearful the enemy would be tripping over themselves to capture and reverse-engineer it (or at the very least come up with a counter-strategy).

** Most sources mention the biggest issue with the Sten wasn't the mechanism, but rather the magazines (which were the same magazines used by the [=MP40=]). Indeed, the [=MP40=]'s magazines were prone to spring failure when fully-loaded with 32 rounds, though most soldiers got around that by only loading 28 or 30 instead; Wikipedia in particular notes that the magazines built for the Sten were ''exact'' copies of the [=MP38/MP40=] magazines, including all of its faults. Another problem is that the Sten fed from the side, rather than from beneath like the [=MP40=] (and by extension, like the magazines were actually designed for).
*** This was a case of win one, lose one, as the advantage of using the same magazines was that because of the weapon (and money) shortage, using the existing magazines as their enemy meant that ammunition was always easy to come by and proved very effective for espionage and resistance units (such as the SOE).

** The Type 14 Nambu, the official Japanese service pistol throughout the 1930s and [=WW2=], was itself an ''adequate'' enough weapon, though wholly unremarkable. The 8x22mm Nambu round it fired was barely adequate by modern military standards (though its lethality was somewhere between that of .380 ACP and 9mm Makarov); otherwise it would have been a decent weapon. Oh, and the firing pin was also somewhat fragile... and instead of implementing Colonel Nambu's rather simple fix to this one, they just ''issued spare firing pins'', with the expectation that when one broke the officer would ''disassemble his gun and replace the pin after the fight was over''. Even worse was that the primary striker spring tended to weaken over time, which nobody could quickly replace (in contrast, the aforementioned belittled Type 94 had an unusually reliable firing hammer spring-a bit too reliable for those foolish enough to abuse their weapons on purpose). No surprise that many chose to draw their sword when their Nambu jammed.

** The Japanese had also experimented with making a copy of the American M1 Garand, the Type 5. It would have been rechambered for Japan's own 7.7mm Arisaka cartridge, and rather than utilizing the unique but somewhat-temperamental en bloc clip it would be fed via a pair of regular stripper clips in the same manner as the British SMLE. It ultimately ended production at about 250 units, none of them seeing service, and many more of them not even being assembled, due to frequent jamming. Given the abysmal condition of Japanese industry in 1945, and the fact that the war ended before they had any real chance to work out the bugs in the design, this isn't surprising.

* The Chauchat light machine gun, at least the M1918 variant issued to the American Expeditionary Forces in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. While the original Chauchat did indeed have some problems, most of which had to do with its open-sided magazine and the fact that Gladiator, a bicycle company with no prior firearms experience, was the one handling most of the production, it did not jam after several shots as some pop-historians would have you believe - most instances of them doing so in the modern day are from the simple fact that the weapons are a century old at this point and simply haven't been maintained properly.\\

Worse is that vastly superior options to the M1918 Chauchat existed at the time, but were ignored for completely petty and short-sighted reasons - the Lewis gun was passed over simply because the AEF's chief of ordnance, General William Crozier, [[InterserviceRivalry disliked the weapon's designer, Colonel Isaac Lewis]], while General John Pershing delayed adoption of the Browning Automatic Rifle as long as possible (it only seeing issue three months before the war ended) not because of actual issues with the weapon like incorrectly-tempered springs on early batches, but because, it being an indigenous American design, the AEF [[PatrioticFervor thought it a far better weapon than it actually was]] and were fearful the enemy would be tripping over themselves to capture and reverse-engineer it.
* A less famous, but no less awful example of light machine gun design was the Italian [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda_30 Breda 30]] which saw service in World War 2. Its [[http://www.forgottenweapons.com/light-machine-guns/breda-model-30/ numerous design faults]] teamed up to make it an ''extremely'' unreliable weapon, especially in the desert conditions of North Africa. The gun attempted to use a blowback system of operation to reduce complexity, but using simple blowback for a high pressure rifle round required the rounds to be '''oiled''' to prevent them from being ripped apart during extraction. This didn't always work, leaving the front part of spent casings hopelessly jammed in the chamber, plus the oil attracted dirt into the working areas of the weapon, causing another type of jam. Furthermore, the gun used the same bad idea as the Chauchat with an open-sided magazine that invited even ''more'' dirt onto the oiled rounds and into the operating mechanism. On top of ''that'', the closed-bolt design reduced air circulation and also put rounds in the chamber at risk of cooking off, which could injure or ''kill'' the gunner. Oh, and the magazine was not meant to be detached and replaced under normal conditions, instead making use of 20 round stripper clips to reload it, which had the effect of drastically slowing the rate of fire. So even in perfect conditions where every round fired and extracted correctly, one would still wind up spending most of their time reloading it.
** The worst thing about the Breda 30 is that it was ''not the worst weapon of the Italian Army'' in the war. That would be the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat-Revelli_Modello_1914 Fiat-Revelli Modello 1914]] heavy machine gun: designed before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, it had ''the same problems as the Breda 30'' (unsurprisingly, the Breda 30 is based on the 1914), was water-cooled (increasing the weight), had an oil pump to grease the rounds (thus making it even more complex and heavier), and by 1940 it had been out of production for twenty years, thus adding the troubles of age and wear. The issues were ironed out with the later Modello 1935, an improved model with air cooling, no oil pump and, most importantly, ''belt-feeding''. Except it jammed ''worse'' with un-oiled rounds, so they had to put back the oiler.

** On a visit to Britain, the man who designed the Kalashnikov for the Russian Army was shown the SA-80 by its designers, who proudly asked him what he thought of it. The old man shook his head sadly, and explained to his British counterparts that he had designed a weapon for the Russian Army on the principles of simplicity of construction, use and maintainance. He had deliberately engineered a weapon with the fewest possible moving parts so that even the dumbest soldier could strip, reassemble and maintain it in ''any'' conditions. The stupider the soldier, the simpler the weapon: design to the lowest common denominator. He then took another disbelieving look at the SA-80 and remarked

* The Nambu Type 94 Japanese issue pistol was notorious for firing if touched wrong, due to an exposed sear bar that could drop the hammer if so much as lightly handled when the safety was off. While Japanese [=NCOs=] had their pistols issued to them by the military, Japanese officers purchased their own guns, and quite a few did not buy native.[[note]]The most popular choices by Japanese officers were the German Mauser Models 1910 and 1914, American Colt Model 1903 and Belgian FN Browning Model 1910. Once the war started, though, the supplies of new pistols were cut off: Belgium was quickly conquered by Gemany, the US and Belgian government in exile obviously weren't exporting pistols to their enemy, and Germany was too busy making weapons for its own military, not to mention that Allied naval superiority made continued imports from Germany a rather iffy proposition.[[/note]]
** It was only a substitute standard pistol taken into military service due to shortages of the standard Type Taisho 14 8mm automatic pistol, which replaced the older "Papa Nambu" in the 1920s. The Type 94 was apparently originally designed as an export item for commercial sale overseas; one can only assume that the designers anticipated selling them to fairly gullible customers. While there's no known instances of a Type 94 going off while the safety is engaged, it was probably a good idea to carry without a round in the chamber, just in case. The standard Type Taisho 14 pistol was perfectly safe (though rather underpowered compared to most other combat handguns of the war, much like the rest of Japan's arsenal at that time) -- as long as you remembered not to leave the locking piece out of the mechanism after field-stripping and reassembling it. It would fire without the locking block, exactly ''once''; the result would be the bolt immovably jammed in the full-recoil position (not very useful in a firefight). For cultural reasons, Japanese officers [[KatanasAreJustBetter tended to charge with a sword in hand anyway]].
** The Type 14 Nambu, the official Japanese service pistol throughout the 1930s and [=WW2=], was itself an ''adequate'' enough weapon, though wholly unremarkable. The 8x22mm Nambu round it fired was both underpowered and ill-suited to the weapon, causing some to hiccup and jam after more then a few shots; otherwise it would have been a decent weapon. Oh, and the firing pin was also somewhat fragile... and instead of implementing Colonel Nambu's rather simple fix to this one, they just ''issued spare firing pins'', with the expectation that when one broke the officer would ''disassemble his gun and replace the pin in the middle of combat''. No surprise that many chose to draw their sword when their Nambu jammed.
** Other weapons like the Type 26 revolver were just horrible in every way. Essentially a clone of a Smith & Wesson top-break revolver with all the good parts removed, it fired a 9mm round that lacked any punch at all and was a proprietary round (it was similar to the weakest loads you can find of .38 S&W and almost exactly the same size, yet just different enough to not be interchangeable), making it difficult to supply in the field. Other distinct merits was its horrendous trigger pull (made worse by not even having the option of firing in single-action mode; despite the hammer being exposed it had no spur and could not be manually cocked) and an unfortunate tendency to have its barrel and chamber misaligned, causing a catastrophic misfire when doing so. If that wasn't worrying enough, a special tear gas grenade attachment was developed for it as well.

** World War 2 era Japanese weapons tended to be horrible, with a few exceptions, most notably the Arisaka rifle. Most of their machine guns in particular were overweight, underpowered and unreliable. R. Lee Ermey test-fired a [[RareGuns Type 92]] in both ''Lock N'Load'' and ''Mail Call'' where he addresses the gun's unnecessarily heavy weight, low rate of fire, and horrible tendency to jam. In fact, in ''Lock N'Load'', an improperly-loaded ammo strip caused a fragmented case to cut his knuckle, also jamming the gun in the process.

** The Type 11 light machine gun had similar issues stemming from its magazine design. The weapon used a unique hopper design to feed ammo from six of the same five-round clips used by the famed Arisaka rifle. This allowed users to top off their ammo without having to remove the magazine, but it also gave it a tendency to jam with the slightest amount of dirt, an undesirable characteristic in the mud and grime of the Pacific Theater. Additionally, the side-mounted magazine made the weapon unbalanced and difficult to use when fully loaded (also a problem with the British Sten).

* The German [=StG=]-44 is widely considered the purveyor of the assault rifle concept which dominates military infantry standard-issue today. However, due to the war going on at the time, the materials used to make the gun were often of poor quality and production was necessarily rushed; tests done by the British around the end of the war revealed that the bolt could be immobilized by simply pinching the sides of the receiver, and that the entire gun could be rendered totally inoperable by simply propping the gun up and then pushing it over. It was deemed too heavy a rifle with too fragile a bolt and receiver to change the war by Allied Intelligence, but it was well liked within the German military, even with the shortcomings.

* The Colt Double Eagle handgun was essentially a multi-caliber modernization of the classic M1911, but overall failed to find a market, and part of the reason very well could have been a lack of proper quality control. Gun writer Dean Speir [[https://web.archive.org/web/20150916024643/http://www.thegunzone.com/gunwriter.html chronicled]] a pair of shoddily-made 10mm Auto Double Eagles he'd tested around December 1990 and January 1991 - in the first, a round ''exploded'' upon firing, showering his face in burned propellant and brass shards, due to a chamber which he described as looking "like it had been assaulted by a Dremel-wielding dope fiend three days into withdrawal"; and then he couldn't even load the second one, since it was marked on the box as 10mm Auto, had 10mm Auto stamped on the receiver, and came with a 10mm Auto magazine... but was fitted with a .45 ACP barrel.

** It also suffered from inadequate engineering and poor manufacturing quality. Bolts made from a batch of poor-quality steel would deform in normal use; the chambers were being "pinched" out of specification by the clamp used to screw them into the reciever. Worst of all, the bolt could be re-installed after field-stripping with the bolt head rotated halfway-round (180 degrees) in its sleeve from its correct position. Done this way, the bolt would not engage the camming surfaces in the bolt sleeve. It looked correct, and it would close, but it would not lock -- but the rifle would still fire with an unlocked bolt, ejecting it backwards with great force. While testing has shown that the bolt wouldn't actually be ejected from the rifle, given where a shooter's eye will normally be that wouldn't have saved them from [[EyeScream getting a large piece of metal in a very bad place at a very high speed]]. This was a fault in the design that was never entirely corrected (one version was altered by pinning the bolt in place, but that meant that the very dirt-sensitive rifle's bolt ''[[DidntThinkThisThrough could not be disassembled for cleaning]]''), and one of the major reasons the Ross had a ''very'' short tenure as the standard service rifle of the Canadian Army.

* The Colt Double Eagle handgun was essentially a multi-caliber modernization of the classic M1911, but overall failed to find a market. Part of the reason very well could have been a lack of proper quality control - [[https://web.archive.org/web/20150916024643/http://www.thegunzone.com/gunwriter.html this story]] details a pair of shoddily-made 10mm Auto Double Eagles, one in which a round ''exploded'' upon firing due to an improperly-cut chamber, and then another that was marked as 10mm on the box and receiver, but somehow had a factory-installed .45 ACP barrel.

** It should be noted that, despite the memes, [=AKs=] are actually rather prone to jamming while covered in mud. The AK's scheme for preventing jams when dirty is to have high tolerances - that is, spaces between parts inside the gun - so the grime has a place for moving parts to just push it out of the way. While this works phenomenally well against grease and burnt gunpowder, it can only be pushed so far with external dirt before it causes a jam. Some of the AK's children, such as the Israeli Galil, are sealed like more modern military rifles to prevent this.

* The German Gewehr 41 semi-automatic rifle used what was known as a gas-trap system. One of the requirements in its design was that no gas tube was allowed to be drilled into the barrel for fear of premature wear and tear (and it was a legitimate concern back then). There was a gas trap at the muzzle end which would force some of the gas against an exterior piston which would cycle the action like normal. The problem was that carbon buildup was greater at the muzzle, and the piston would be covered with it to the point that the gas could not overcome the friction of the carbon buildup, keeping the piston in place. The improved Gewehr 43 switched to a more conventional short-stroke gas piston system based on that of the Soviets' SVT-40, but still suffered issues - wartime shortages as the end of the war approached forced the use of cheap parts that broke easily (even in the modern day, ''several'' gunsmiths specialize in G43 parts for the purposes of keeping surplus examples firing), and constant cleaning was required thanks to an exposed extractor spring. Also, it had a rather nasty reputation of exploding if it was over-gassed.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_Copy Kyber Pass Copies]] are of varying quality depending on their maker and on what materials happened to be available[[note]]Stolen railroad tracks are a favorite source of steel in the Kyber Pass region, but any and all scrap metal on hand will be used to make guns.[[/note]], and copies of black powder rifles like the Martini-Henry (copied in the region for almost as long as it existed) are generally deemed safer because the ammo produces less pressure to being with, but even the best one are fragile enough that, when fed with commercially-available ammunition, there's a good chance they'll ''explode'' (collectors who fire them use handloaded ammo much weaker than commercial one, and even then there's a chance they'll blow up).

* The Czech-made Skorpion is a rather distinctive little CoolGuns/{{machine pistol|s}} and is by all accounts perfectly serviceable. Enter Armitage International, a South Carolina gun manufacturing company that decided that the original's 20 rounds of .32 ACP just wasn't enough--no, they needed to copy the design wholesale and scale it up to take 9mm instead (never mind that the original Skorpion's manufacturer, Česká zbrojovka, already did that). The end result is the Armitage International Scarab Skorpion, a titan of a machine pistol that takes modified MAC-10 magazines, meaning that it edges into being a small SMG. Where the Skorpion's toolings and functions work just fine, the Scarab is a mess. It loads poorly, feeds even worse, and manages to have almost every kind of problem one can imagine thanks to its rather primitive construction. To say that the damned thing can't even go one magazine without having multiple issues is not an understatement. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KunQNYDsNEs Just watch]] as Ian [=McCollum=], a RareGuns commentator, struggles to maintain his goodwill as the gun continues to give him grief.

** German G7e torpedoes [[http://www.uboataces.com/articles-wooden-torpedoes.shtml had notorious problems]] with magnetic detonators. The torpedoes tended to either ignore the magnetic field of the target completely, or be too sensitive and explode prematurely. The problem was so dire the German U-boat captains prefered to use their deck guns when feasible or lay mines. Famed U-Boat Captain Günther Prien compared them to trying to shoot with a wooden rifle. A study ordered by Admiral Karl Donitz concluded that poor-quality torpedoes had cost U-boats one battleship, seven cruisers, seven destroyers, and five transports.

** The American [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_13_torpedo Bliss-Leavitt Mk. XIII Aerial Torpedo]], used on airplanes, was the epitome of a reliably unreliable ordnance. It has been estimated that only 1 in 12 actually worked as designed with every failure imaginable being reported, from sinking straight to the bottom upon launch to running itself in circles. It was so unreliable that pilots eventually simply ''refused'' to carry it into battle and insisted on bombs instead. The problems of the Mk. XIII wouldn't be fully resolved until 1944. As an anecdote, three Japanese sailors from the aircraft carrier ''Kaga'' were rescued at Midway ''riding a dud Mk. XIII'' - its warhead had broken on contact and sunk. The rest of the torpedo had surfaced, becoming effectively a life preserver.
** The submarine-launched US [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo Mark 14 torpedo]] had problems similar to the German torpedoes: both the magnetic and contact detonator versions had high failure rates. The worst problem was that the torpedo tended to run too deep - it simply passed under the enemy ship. This occurred because the test torpedoes were launched from normal atmospheric conditions. But since atmospheric pressure inside a submarine varied greatly, especially after prolonged submerged activity, the pressure inside the submarine would tamper with the sensitive instrumentation, effectively recalibrating the depth sensor. The detonator mechanism was a legacy from older models, and it worked for low-speed torpedoes, but for the high-speed Mark 14 torpedo, the same impact deceleration that caused the firing ring to move [[DidntThinkThisThrough was also large enough to cause the firing pin stem to bind and fail to detonate the booster]]. Then there's also the problem of circular runs, where torpedo being launched and programmed to turn doesn't stop turning and end up hitting the launching submarines. The surface version, Mark 15, were fitted with collars to prevent this, but not the submarine version. Worse, the problem with magnetic detonator is that the Rear Admiral who helped develop the thing keeps obstructing with the orders to deactivate its usage.
** DoubleSubverted by the Japanese "Long Lance" [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo ship-launched Type 93 Sanso Gyorai]]. It was basically a device MadeOfExplodium. It had a larger warhead than any other torpedo, and longer range, almost 40 km, and it was fast (50 kn). All this was gained by using [[ExplosiveOverclocking pure oxygen as propellant instead of compressed air]]. Whilst it was a formidable weapon, it was as dangerous to the user as to the enemy. Many Japanese warships were lost due to a hit on the torpedo tubes, [[HoistByHisOwnPetard detonating the ship's torpedo battery]]. During the Battle off Samar (in the eastern Philippines) a five-inch (127 mm) shell from escort carrier ''USS White Plains'' struck the heavy cruiser ''Chokai''. While in most circumstances a shell of this size would not seriously damage a heavy cruiser, this shell detonated the cruiser's torpedoes, disabling her rudder and engines; she was scuttled the next day. Unfortunately, the Type 93 wasn't immune from duds either; a failure rate of 20% was estimated.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_R51 Remington R51]] fiasco, a redesigned and modernized version of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Model_51 Remington Model 51]] pistol which was developed almost a century earlier. Anticipation for the gun was sky-high: it looked beautiful and was a revival of a design by legendary gunsmith John Pedersen. Early advance reviews of the R51 from gun magazines and industry experts were glowing and full of praise. However, when the gun became commercially available in February/March 2014, ''actual'' buyers and new media reviewers[[note]]Youtube channels (most notably the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTzS4sQfn4U Military Arms Channel's review]]), bloggers, social media discussions, and independent gun websites[[/note]] '''savaged''' the R51. The problems included things such as a gritty and sticky slide, badly designed magazines that frequently caused rounds to not chamber right (which could lead to case ruptures, an ''extremely'' dangerous malfunction), poor trigger reset, a [[EpicFail steel slide riding on an aluminum frame that would wear down the receiver rapidly]], and [[SomeDexterityRequired a hideously complicated takedown and reassembly procedure.]] The last one is very significant considering that Remington had marketed the gun as [[BlatantLies something that could be easily used and handled by the elderly, handicapped, women, and in general, people with weak hands]]. While firing the gun is one thing, cleaning it is an exercise in frustration and it is very easy to reassemble the slide incorrectly, causing the slide to lock back after every shot which could mean death in a real-life combat situation [[note]]'''especially''' dangerous considering this gun was designed as a concealed-carry/self-defense firearm[[/note]]. Remington eventually recalled the gun in July 2014 and spent over two years trying to fix the problems, but the Gen 2 release in August 2016 still saw plenty of issues with it. All told, the fiasco has heavily damaged the reputation of Remington as well as the entire gun review industry.
* The M16 assault rifle, early in its life, had this reputation as well. The direct impingement gas system introduced carbon fouling and propellant gases into the rifle's interior by directly blowing some of the gas from firing against the bolt, and to make things worse, the powder used at the time was dirtier-burning than the rifle had been designed for, worsening the problem. It didn't help that the rifle, back then, lacked a forward assist (rendering it totally inoperable when it jammed and requiring full disassembly to clear it) and were issued without cleaning kits and/or cleaning instructions (due to false advertisement that the rifle was "self-cleaning" [[note]]When used with proper ammunition, the gas tube (and ''only'' the gas tube) is considered self cleaning like all direct gas impingement systems. Someone somewhere took this to mean that the entire rifle didn't need to be cleaned manually.[[/note]] when no weapon is or ''ever has been, even today''; part of this was intentional sabotage from the Army Ordnance Board, who wanted to go back to the 7.62mm M14 battle rifle) and lacked chroming of the bore and chamber to save on costs. While quickly fixed (by 1968, around two years after the first adoption) the rifle [[NeverLiveItDown has yet to shake off the reputation]]; even the direct-impingement system is regarded as a complete failure because of it, despite other weapons with the system being famous for their ruggedness and durability.

* Guns on aircraft came back into use after, based on experience with the Crusader, the Air Force tried to make later aircraft like the F-4 Phantom II use only missiles. The missile of choice, the heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder, ended up being an incredibly finicky and temperamental weapon, which would often fail to launch entirely, would launch but fail to actually track the target in question, or would switch from tracking the heat of the target's jet exhaust to either tracking the heat from the jungle canopy below and hit the ground or the heat of the sun and make an ill-fated attempt to leave the Earth entirely, leaving plane and pilot totally at the mercy of Vietnamese [=MiGs=], which still had cannons. Other missiles available at the time were even worse: the AIM-4 Falcon had a field of view wide enough that it often couldn't actually maneuver to hit the locked target, no proximity fuse (requiring direct hits to detonate, rather than the Sidewinder being able to blow up when it was close enough that it would still damage the target), and a smaller nitrogen bottle to cool the seeker (giving it a much shorter useful time window). The AIM-7 Sparrow fixed issues with heat-seekers by being radar-guided, but lead to its own slew of problems: the pilot had to look down into the cockpit (thus away from his surroundings) to aim the missile properly, he had to keep his plane pointed towards the target for the radar to continue tracking the target, and its significantly longer range was wasted at extremes because it was impossible, in the days before IFF systems, to determine if a target beyond visual range was actually the enemy. The Sparrow lives on, but only in naval use as the surface-to-air RIM-7 Sea Sparrow; for airborne usage it was replaced by the AIM-120 AMRAAM (which utilizes its own internal radar to guide it, rather than relying on the aircraft's radar), while the Falcon was abandoned entirely in favor of the Sidewinder, which saw multiple revisions and upgrades to make it more than serviceable, and is now essentially ''the'' standard short-range heat-seeking air-to-air missile (with not only most Western air forces using it, but even various Eastern ones using a Soviet copy, the K-13 or AA-2 Atoll, as well).

** Given all the above, this was surprisingly {{subverted|Trope}} by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta_Model_38 Beretta Model 38]] and the [[https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitra_Variara Variara]] submachine guns. The Model 38 was widely acclaimed as ''the best'' submachine gun of World War II, especially since it was capable of firing both the standard 9mm Parabellum of the era and the more powerful "Cartuccia Modello 38" version, as well as having an astonishing maximum range of 250 meters (most other submachine guns could only reach up to 100 meters, while the Thompson could reach up to 150), to the point where Allied and German soldiers both would drop their own submachine guns in a hurry if they could get their hands on an MAB [=38A=]. While less well-known, the Variara holds special mention for having been made exclusively in clandestine backyard workshops to arm the [[LaResistance Italian partisans]], as well as, ironically enough, using the same bolt and firing mechanism as the troubled Sten gun.
*** Also subverted by the [[http://www.forgottenweapons.com/medium-machine-guns/perino/ Perino Modello 1908 machine gun]], a contemporary of the Fiat-Revelli prototype that was as reliable as the famous Vickers machine gun (kept in service until 1968 because it was just that good) and having a variant of the clip mechanism arguably superior to the ammo belt[[note]]The clips were in an open box that obtained similar results to the belt, but a soldier would be able to place new clips on its top to keep continuous fire while the belt would have to be changed once spent. The belt could be reloaded faster once empty, but in the Perino the spent cases would be replaced in the clip and ejected with it, avoiding the spent clips getting underfoot or hitting troops and allowing easier recovery of the clips for reloading. It was also heavier[[/note]], with the only issue, excessive weight, being solved by the inventor himself. Unfortunately, [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem Engineer Revelli, inventor of the other machine gun, was on commission to decide if the Perino would continue being produced]], and [[MegaCorp the Fiat company]] [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections possessed massive political power]] [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney and wealth]], so no one dared to say no to them, resulting in the Perino stopping production at 150 units initially commissioned.

* The Colt Double Eagle handgun was essentially a multi-caliber modernization of the classic M1911, but overall failed to find a market. Part of the reason very well could have been a lack of proper quality control - [[http://www.thegunzone.com/gunwriter.html this story]] details a pair of shoddily-made 10mm Auto Double Eagles, one of which ''exploded'' upon firing due to an improperly-cut chamber, and then another that somehow had a factory-installed .45 ACP barrel.

* The [[https://stateofguns.com/usfa-zip-potential-improvement-2052/ USFA ZiP Gun]] is a unique polymer .22 LR pistol with a lot of issues caused by its uniqueness. It is made largely out of polymer parts (even the bolt is plastic) and is compact to the extreme. There are no grips, no slides, and no external bolt parts. To cock the weapon, two external charging rods placed on top of the muzzle, one of which charges the weapon when pressed (this should raise some alarms for any people with basic firearm safety knowledge). The result of this compact design is that the gun has malfunctions ''constantly'', ''even under ideal conditions''. It has consistent issues with ejection, in some cases resulting in the casing being stuck ''sideways''. It has issues with using 25-round .22 LR magazines because they feed too slowly thus causing feed failures. It has problems with some powerful cartridges, in the worst case causing every fourth shot to jam and ''cracking the gun'' after 26 shots. The trigger force needed is too heavy, the ergonomics are ridiculous, its small size meant that escaping hot gases rushed right into the shooter's hands causing injuries. Finally, how do you clear jams with this gun? You reach over the muzzle (remember that safety thing mentioned earlier?) and press the other charging rod which resets the striker. To top it all off, sometimes it ''doesn't work'' and only works when it is pushed to the point where the next round in the magazine is stripped, causing a double feed. It is so unreliable that almost all users reported that it can barely get through one 10-round magazine without jamming, with cases where all 10 rounds are fired without jamming being an ''anomaly'' instead of the norm. In one particuarly egregious example of this, [[WebVideo/ForgottenWeapons Ian McCollum]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3fd4goVs-4 took it down the range to get some shots off]] and literally never managed ''[[UpToEleven more than one]]'' before the gun would jam or misfeed. You can see him tear into its shoddy design [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9bULArrKs4 here]].
* The WWII era Soviet Kirov-class cruiser had a reputation for exceptionally poor accuracy, to the point it was said you were safest if you were in on of the ships a Kirov was attempting to shoot. While the cannons were perfectly fine in and of themselves, the turrets they were mounted in were far too small to fit three guns in them. The result was that the guns were so close together that their muzzle blast blew each others shells off course. It didn't help that the Kirov's also had an abysmally slow reload speed for a cruiser because of the same problems with the turret.
* The ČZ vz. 38 hits a solid two-fer of mediocrity by having a poor overall operating history and the firearms equivalent of a face for radio. Its flaws were primarily related to its choice of round--.380 ACP, itself a breathtakingly mediocre cartridge--and simply being poorly designed around such a stubby cartridge. Its trigger pull is abominably heavy, made worse by the fact that it is double action only with no external hammer for single-fire options. The end result is a gun that is difficult to fire in the first place, needlessly heavy and bulky, tends to fire in only the approximate direction of the intended target you finally pull the trigger, and has no manual safety and thus no guarantee that a sharp blow of some kind wouldn't drop the internal hammer. 10,000 were made for a military contract that never materialized, and it is a safe bet that the police and security departments who bought the gun were only too happy to be rid of it once something better inevitably showed up.

* The [[https://stateofguns.com/usfa-zip-potential-improvement-2052/ USFA ZiP Gun]] is a unique polymer .22 LR pistol with a lot of issues caused by its uniqueness. It is made largely out of polymer parts (even the bolt is plastic) and is compact to the extreme. There are no grips, no slides, and no external bolt parts. To cock the weapon, two external charging rods placed on top of the muzzle, one of which charges the weapon when pressed (this should raise some alarms for any people with basic firearm safety knowledge). The result of this compact design is that the gun has malfunctions ''constantly'', ''even under ideal conditions''. It has consistent issues with ejection, in some cases resulting in the casing being stuck ''sideways''. It has issues with using 25-round .22 LR magazines because they feed too slowly thus causing feed failures. It has problems with some powerful cartridges, in the worst case causing every fourth shot to jam and ''cracking the gun'' after 26 shots. The trigger force needed is too heavy, the ergonomics are ridiculous, its small size meant that escaping hot gases rushed right into the shooter's hands causing injuries. Finally, how do you clear jams with this gun? You reach over the muzzle (remember that safety thing mentioned earlier?) and press the other charging rod which resets the striker. To top it all off, sometimes it ''doesn't work'' and only works when it is pushed to the point where the next round in the magazine is stripped, causing a double feed. It is so unreliable that almost all users reported that it can barely get through one 10-round magazine without jamming, with cases where all 10 rounds are fired without jamming being an ''anomaly'' instead of the norm.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%8CZ_vz._38 ČZ vz. 38]] hits a solid two-fer of mediocrity by having a poor overall operating history and the firearms equivalent of a face for radio. Its flaws were primarily related to its choice of round--.380 ACP, itself a breathtakingly mediocre cartridge--and simply being poorly designed around such a stubby cartridge. Its trigger pull is abominably heavy, made worse by the fact that it is double action only with no external hammer for single-fire options. The end result is a gun that is difficult to fire in the first place, needlessly heavy and bulky, tends to fire in only the approximate direction of the intended target you finally pull the trigger, and has no manual safety and thus no guarantee that a sharp blow of some kind wouldn't drop the internal hammer. 10,000 were made for a military contract that never materialized, and it is a safe bet that the police and security departments who bought the gun were only too happy to be rid of it once something better inevitably showed up.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%8CZ_vz._38 ČZ vz. 38]] hits a solid two-fer of mediocrity by having a poor overall operating history and the firearms equivalent of a face for radio. Its flaws were primarily related to its choice of round--.380 ACP, itself a breathtakingly mediocre round--and simply being poorly designed around such a stubby cartridge. Its trigger pull is abominably heavy, made worse by the fact that it is double action. The end result is a gun that is difficult to fire in the first place, needlessly heavy and bulky, tends to fire in only the approximate direction of the intended target you finally pull the trigger, and has no manual safety and thus no guarantee that a sharp blow of some kind wouldn't drop the internal hammer. 10,000 were made for a military contract that never materialized, and it is a safe bet that the police and security departments who bought the gun were only too happy to be rid of it once something better inevitably showed up.

** The PIAT, a handheld spigot mortar designed in WWII to eliminate the telltale and lethal backblast from other anti-armor launchers suffered from this. Whilst the mechanism was incredibly simple and almost never jammed, it was a bastard to cock, requiring over a hundred pounds of force to do so. To help with this, in combat, only the first round needed to be cocked -- subsequent firings would use the propellant to blow the firing pin backwards, cocking the weapon. In theory. However, unless the weapon was held very tightly, the pin wouldn't be pulled back, and the firer (who in this situation would have been knocked off his feet by the immense recoil) would have to re-cock it himself, which was not fun or safe even without enemies shooting at him.

* The WWII era Soviet Kirov-class cruiser had a reputation for exceptionally poor accuracy, to the point it was said you were safest if you were in on of the ships a Kirov was attempting to shoot. While the cannons were perfectly fine in and of themselves, the turrets they were mounted in were far too small to fit three guns in them. The result was that the guns were so close together that their muzzle blast blew each others shells off course. It didn't help that the Kirov's also had an abysmally slow reload speed for a cruiser because of the same problems with the turret.