History ReliablyUnreliableGuns / RealLife

** That problem is known as "limp-wristing", as noted on the main page's opening. Any autoloading pistol, if you don't resist the recoil enough and simply let it move backwards and upwards with your hand, will jam. The reason the Desert Eagle is getting this bad reputation is because it fires [[HandCannon big-ass rounds]], and big-ass rounds, generally, means huge recoil,[[note]]the .357 versions actually have relatively low recoil, at least for people who can handle holding the gun in the first place, precisely ''because'' it's such a heavy pistol, but .357, by virtue of being the smallest of the Desert Eagle's possible chamberings, is [[RuleOfCool the least cool of them,]] so you never see or hear about Deagles chambered in it[[/note]] which results in the gun being harder to handle properly than your usual 9mm, causing a jam. Many Desert Eagle owners who can get a good grip and resist the recoil usually say that it's a reliable enough weapon.

* 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, while discussing the rumor that writers like him received "cherry-picked" examples of guns to ensure glowing reviews, [[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 and a note on the box that it was personally checked by one of the design's head engineers... but was fitted with a .45 ACP barrel (which has a bore of 11.4mm), so the entire cartridge slid down the barrel and out the muzzle, cartoon-style.[[note]]Other horror stories detailed in the article include .22LR clones of the Walther P38 which either consistently pinch-fired in three- or four-shot bursts, or failed to load in the first place from a weak magazine spring; a Federal Ordnance 1911 he described as "one of the most economical pistols [he'd] ever tried to shoot" [[DamnedByFaintPraise because it wouldn't feed anything properly]]; and a situation regarding another gun writer who called off an attempted 10,000-round torture test of Colt's [=AA2000=] barely a fourth of the way through, because the gun constantly malfunctioned and he didn't want to be responsible for killing Colt through bad word-of-mouth (nevermind that, as Speir put it, Colt seemed to be dedicated to doing just that to themselves, as several other more recent instances noted on this page would indicate).[[/note]]

* 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 (inviting all sorts of outside debris onto the cartridges and into the chamber), the rather quirky 8x50mmR Lebel cartridge (with a heavily tapered casing making automatic feeding complicated) and the fact that Gladiator, a bicycle company with no prior firearms experience, was the one handling most of the production, its flaws are exaggerated and it did not jam after "less than 5 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, and quality commercially-made 8x50mmR Lebel is virtually non-existent (to say nothing about the weapon taking deliberate abuse from its detractors, as some firearms reviewers have expressed a desire to smash it against a tree to "prove" how bad it was, [[DoubleStandard something they would never even imagine doing]] to any other machine gun).

* The main reason why the alt-right [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halle_synagogue_shooting Halle synagogue shooter]] didn't kill more people was that his two weapons were home-made and jammed or misfired repeatedly. Reportedly, the livestream of his crimes that he uploaded to Twitch captured him complaining about their unreliability.

** These issues were fixable and would have been corrected after a proper "shake down" period where flaws are discovered and corrected in armories by trained gunsmiths -- but politics prevented this. Canadian Minister of Militia and Defence Sam Hughes, a personal friend of Sir Charles Ross, [[ObstructiveBureaucrat overstated the rifle's capabilities, covered up its defects, and obstructed efforts to correct its problems]] until, finally, he was forced out of office by the public scandal and the rifle was taken out of combat service.

** A unique [[DoubleSubverted double subversion]] occurred with 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 of its era, longer range (40 km), and it was fast (almost 40 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 it was 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.

** A unique [[DoubleSubverted double subversion]] occurs with 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, 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 it was 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 M16 assault rifle, early in its life, had this reputation as well no thanks to political meddling from the US Army Ordnance Corps. 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 [[NeverNeedsSharpening 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 Army Ordnance, 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. The Army's M16 also lacked chroming of the bore and chamber to save on costs (early testing models had these and were shown to still reliably function several years later). While quickly fixed (with the standardization of the Model 603, which had a forward assist and chrome-lined bore, as the [=M16A1=] by 1967, around two or three years after the first mass adoption) as the soldiers were trained in its proper maintenance with [[https://archive.org/details/M16a1ComicBookMaintenanceManual/mode/2up a graphic manual on the subject]] by comic book great Creator/WillEisner, the rifle has yet to shake off the reputation, and even modern versions that eliminate several of the earlier design issues are still saddled with the reputation for jamming at the drop of a hat. Many army veterans bitterly note that Army Ordnance never consulted ''them'' about how the M16 and/or its successors should have been designed and [[https://www.forgottenweapons.com/erquiaga-em-62-castros-ex-armorer-makes-an-m14/#comment-3387677 never tested the weapons in field conditions simulating those of the active front-line]]. It is worth noting that by the end of the war, the Vietcong had learned to dread the sound of what they called "[[TheDreaded The Black Rifle]]" and knew that when they were heard, ''major'' trouble was nearby. This could probably, however, be attributed as much to the elite forces who tended to wield said rifle as the rifle itself, if not moreso. It helped as well that a number of said elites had access to earlier versions of the rifle and the original ammunition it was designed for.

* The Franchi SPAS-12's design as a dual-mode shotgun (able to be fired in both semi-auto and pump-action) created various issues in both modes, such as inconsistent cycling when fired in semi-auto. Particularly, movies will typically depict it as pump-action-only because it flatly refuses to cycle blank shells in semi-auto, even with a blank-fire adapter and the hottest 12-gauge blanks available. The weapon also made use of several cheap rubber parts that have disintegrated simply through age (what with production ending in 2000, and owing to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, ones in the US are invariably at least half a decade older than that), creating issues such as the magazine cutoff sticking, making the bolt lock back after every shell in semi-auto mode. Most damning are issues with the safety, which in its original lever-type design would not only fail to prevent the weapon from firing while on safe but will even ''[[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace cause]]'' the weapon to fire if the safety is toggled while it's loaded. A recall order was issued to replace these with a different cross-bolt safety, but it was only a marginal improvement - while toggling it doesn't fire the weapon, it ''also'' frequently fails to actually put the weapon on safe after aging, and was only installed on a small percentage of SPAS-12s to boot (although Franchi's other shotguns can exchange trigger groups and come standard with the improved safety, so swapping an old one out is easy).

*** Both the Mark 13 and 14 were actually quite advanced for the time and were believed to be the greatest ship killer in the USN's arsenal... and that right there is where the problems came from. The torpedoes were developed during the height of the Great Depression, and they cost about $10,000 each (about $171,000 today). The penny-pinchers in Washington were unwilling to let ships take practice shots and thus discover the flaws when they could be easily fixed, because theory stated there was nothing wrong with them. Let's say that again so it will sink in: ''there were no live fire tests run on these weapons.'' Thus, when war broke out and the US Navy actually began using them, mostly the submariners, it was the first time they had ever been fired, and that's when the problems began to be noticed. To make the situation even more of a headache, when the Navy took their complaints to the Bureau of Ordinance, they were met with a less than receptive audience. [=BuOrd=] ''refused'' to accept that something was wrong with their new wonder-weapon and [[NeverMyFault instead blamed the crews for not using them properly]]. They went as far as to threaten disciplinary action for anyone who tampered or tested the weapon, and when one Navy admiral ignored them and ran a test on the dive settings (discovering the above-mentioned depth problems), they threated to have him court-martialed. Luckily for the sailors, and unluckily for [=BuOrd=], Admiral King also heard about the test. Not only was King Chief of Naval Operations (basically, [[SummonBiggerFish the highest-ranking officer in the Navy]]), but he was also one mean son-of-a-bitch (his own words) with an explosive temper, a bad habit of holding grudges... and he'd crossed with [=BuOrd=] once before. After a few ''colorful'' meetings with King, and much kicking and screaming from [=BuOrd=], the problems were gradually identified and corrected. Finally, almost two years after the war started, the Mark 14 had been reworked enough that it was actually sinking ships it was fired at. Drachinifel [[https://youtu.be/eQ5Ru7Zu_1I takes an in-depth look]] at the failings and politics (with a focus on the Mark 14). Unfortunately, while the Mark 14 was an extreme case, it wouldn't be the last time the US military ran into this problem - real-world performance nowhere near matching theoretical performance would plague American weapon design and procurement for the rest of the 20th century.

* The M16 assault rifle, early in its life, had this reputation as well no thanks to political meddling from the US Army Ordnance Corps. 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 [[NeverNeedsSharpening 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 Army Ordnance, 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. The Army's M16 also lacked chroming of the bore and chamber to save on costs (early testing models had these and were shown to still reliably function several years later). While quickly fixed (with the standardization of the Model 603, which had a forward assist and chrome-lined bore, as the [=M16A1=] by 1967, around two or three years after the first mass adoption) as the soldiers were trained in its proper maintenance with [[https://archive.org/details/M16a1ComicBookMaintenanceManual/mode/2up a graphic manual on the subject]] by comic book great Creator/WillEisner, the rifle has yet to shake off the reputation, and even modern versions that eliminate several of the earlier design issues are still saddled with the reputation for jamming at the drop of a hat. Many army veterans bitterly note that Army Ordnance never consulted ''them'' about how the M16 and/or its successors should have been designed and [[https://www.forgottenweapons.com/erquiaga-em-62-castros-ex-armorer-makes-an-m14/#comment-3387677 never tested the weapons in field conditions simulating those of the active front-line]]. It is worth noting that by the end of the war, the Vietcong had learned to dread the sound of what they called "[[TheDreaded The Black Rifle]]" and knew that when they were heard, ''major'' trouble was nearby. This could probably, however, be attributed as much to the elite forces who tended to wield said rifle as the rifle itself, if not moreso.[[note]]It helped that a number of said elites had access to earlier versions of the rifle and were given the original ammunition, which was feasable due to not needing to mass produce it at the elites received the rifle, and took better care of their weapons[[/note]]

* Guns on aircraft came back into use after, based on experience with the F-8 Crusader (which used the Mk 12 above and was nicknamed "The Last of the Gunfighters" for being the last US plane to have guns as its primary weapon), the Air Force tried to make later aircraft like the F-4 Phantom II use only missiles. The missile of choice, earlier variants of 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. Later variants of the Sidewinder were more reliable to the point of being ''the'' heat-seeking air-to-air missile of choice for Western fighter planes.
** The AIM-4 Falcon, available at the same time period with the aforementioned early Sidewinders, was even worse; it 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 warhead (thus less damage even if it ''did'' hit) and nitrogen bottle to cool the seeker (giving it a much shorter useful time window; if you didn't acquire a lock on the first attempt, already difficult considering it took seven seconds to do so, the missile was basically a dud) - only five kills ''in total'' were ever recorded with the Falcon.

* SIG strikes ''again'' with the Cross bolt-action rifle: a review video by the gun [=YouTubr=] Nutnfancy showed that the trigger was unreliable and that the rifle could also fire [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM0eq_FfDNs&t=29m0s simply by working the bolt without touching the trigger.]] The same week that video was released, [[https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2020/11/25/sig-cross-recall/ SIG recalled all Cross rifles]].

* 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, while discussing the rumor that writers like him received "cherry-picked" examples of guns to ensure glowing reviews, [[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 and a note on the box that it was personally checked by one of the design's head engineers... but was fitted with a .45 ACP barrel. .45 ACP has a bore of 11.4, so the entire cartridge slid down the barrel and out the muzzle, cartoon-style.[[note]]Other horror stories detailed in the article include .22LR clones of the Walther P38 which either consistently pinch-fired in three- or four-shot bursts, or failed to load in the first place from a weak magazine spring; a Federal Ordnance 1911 he described as "one of the most economical pistols [he'd] ever tried to shoot" [[DamnedByFaintPraise because it wouldn't feed anything properly]]; and a situation regarding another gun writer who called off an attempted 10,000-round torture test of Colt's [=AA2000=] barely a fourth of the way through, because the gun constantly malfunctioned and he didn't want to be responsible for killing Colt through bad word-of-mouth (nevermind that, in Speir's words, Colt seemed to be dedicated to doing just that to themselves, as several other more recent instances noted on this page would indicate).[[/note]]

* The [[CoolGuns/MachineGuns 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 (inviting all sorts of outside debris onto the cartridges and into the chamber), the rather quirky 8x50mmR Lebel cartridge (with a heavily tapered casing making automatic feeding complicated) and the fact that Gladiator, a bicycle company with no prior firearms experience, was the one handling most of the production, its flaws are exaggerated and it did not jam after "less than 5 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, and quality commercially-made 8x50mmR Lebel is virtually non-existent (to say nothing about the weapon taking deliberate abuse from its detractors, as some firearms reviewers have expressed a desire to smash it against a tree to "prove" how bad it was, [[DoubleStandard something they would never even imagine doing]] to any other machine gun).

* 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 weren't enough--no, they needed to copy the design wholesale and scale it up to take 9mm instead (since none of Česká zbrojovka's attempts to make Skorpions in anything other than .32 ACP entered mass-production). 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 through one magazine without having ''multiple'' issues is not an understatement. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KunQNYDsNEs Just watch]] as Ian [=McCollum=] struggles to maintain his goodwill as the gun continues to give him grief.

* World War 2 era Japanese small arms tended to be barely tolerable by Western standards, with a few exceptions, most notably the Arisaka rifle, which at worst suffered greater recoil impulse in "last-ditch" rifles due to lighter and simpler stock designs. Most of their machine guns in particular were awkward to use owing to their outdated design philosophy. R. Lee Ermey test-fired a [[RareGuns Type 92]] in both ''Lock N'Load'' and ''Mail Call'' where he addresses the gun's really heavy weight, low rate of fire, and horrible tendency to jam if any mistakes were 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. As it turns out, a heavy static-defense machine gun more suited to the stalemate of World War 1 tends to have problems keeping up with combat that doesn't suit its intended battle doctrine.

* Guns on aircraft came back into use after, based on experience with the F-8 Crusader (which used the Mk 12 above and was nicknamed "The Last of the Gunfighters" for being the last US plane to have guns as its primary weapon), 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 warhead (thus less damage even if it hit) and nitrogen bottle to cool the seeker (giving it a much shorter useful time window; if you didn't acquire a lock on the first attempt, already difficult considering it took seven seconds to do so, the missile was basically a dud) - only five kills ''in total'' were ever recorded with the Falcon. 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).

** On the other hand, British and Italian torpedoes and their detonators usually worked, and Japanese submarine and aircraft-launched torpedoes, which used compressed air instead of pure oxygen, were fairly reliable. That said, they still had some duds, particularly in one engagement where the HMS ''Sheffield'' was saved from sinking to [[FriendOrFoe friendly fire]] when torpedo bombers launched from the ''Ark Royal'', hunting for the ''Bismarck'', mistook ''Sheffield'' for her and dropped torpedoes with magnetic detonators that failed and caused the vast majority to detonate prematurely. ''Sheffield'' went on to contact ''Ark Royal'' to inform them that their aircraft had torpedoed them by mistake, [[StiffUpperLip and also that the torpedoes didn't work]]. This ended up being a good thing, as it caused the torpedo bombers to switch to using the back up contact detonators, meaning that they actually worked during their next sortie, when they found and hit the ''Bismarck'', damaging her steering and leaving her a sitting duck for the Royal Navy's battleships.

** On the other hand, British and Italian torpedoes and their detonators usually worked, and Japanese submarine and aircraft-launched torpedoes, which used compressed air instead of pure oxygen, were fairly reliable. That said, they still had some duds, particularly in one engagement where the HMS ''Sheffield'' was saved from sinking to [[FriendOrFoe friendly fire]] when torpedo bombers launched from the ''Ark Royal'', hunting for the ''Bismarck'', mistook ''Sheffield'' for her and dropped torpedoes with magnetic detonators that failed and caused the vast majority to detonate prematurely. ''Sheffield'' went on to contact ''Ark Royal'' to inform them that their aircraft had torpedoed them by mistake, [[StiffUpperLip and also that the torpedoes didn't work]].

* The M16 assault rifle, early in its life, had this reputation as well no thanks to political meddling from the US Army Ordnance Corps. 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 [[NeverNeedsSharpening 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 Army Ordnance, 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. The Army's M16 also lacked chroming of the bore and chamber to save on costs (early testing models had these and were shown to still reliably function several years later). While quickly fixed (with the standardization of the Model 603, which had a forward assist and chrome-lined bore, as the [=M16A1=] by 1967, around two or three years after the first mass adoption) as the soldiers were trained in its proper maintenance with [[https://archive.org/details/M16a1ComicBookMaintenanceManual/mode/2up a graphic manual on the subject]] by comic book great Creator/WillEisner, the rifle has yet to shake off the reputation, and even modern versions that eliminate several of the earlier design issues are still saddled with the reputation for jamming at the drop of a hat. Many army veterans bitterly note that Army Ordnance never consulted ''them'' about how the M16 and/or its successors should have been designed and [[https://www.forgottenweapons.com/erquiaga-em-62-castros-ex-armorer-makes-an-m14/#comment-3387677 never tested the weapons in field conditions simulating those of the active front-line]]. It is worth noting that by the end of the war, the Vietcong had learned to dread the sound of what they called "[[TheDreaded The Black Rifle]]" and knew that when they were heard, ''major'' trouble was nearby. This could probably, however, be attributed as much to the elite forces who tended to wield said rifle as the rifle itself, if not moreso.

* Any guns made by the infamous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94vs56NAtU4 "Ring of Fire"]] manufacturers. Named such because it consisted of around a dozen companies based in a rough "ring" radius around Los Angeles County, these guns are the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to factory-made guns. Names such as Raven, Lorcin, Bryco, and Jennings have been immortalized in the firearms community for just how ''bad'' they were. By 2020, all of these companies are out of business, with the sole exception of Phoenix Arms which remains based in Ontario, California, and continues to produce cheap pocket pistols that typically sell for around $100-150.

* Any guns made by the infamous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94vs56NAtU4 "Ring of Fire"]] manufacturers. Named such because it consisted of around a dozen companies based in a rough "ring" radius around Los Angeles County, these guns are the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to factory-made guns. Names such as Raven, Lorcin, Bryco, and Jennings have been immortalized in the firearms community for just how ''bad'' they were. Most of these companies have gone out of business by now, but two of them still live on: Phoenix Arms and Cobra Firearms. Both of them produce cheap pocket pistols that typically sell for around $100-150.

* [=YouTube=] channel In-Range TV has [[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj9u4Ts2NpEv4Fnwx2_ig4wVqiONfH1me a series]] on investigating how much getting your guns dirty really impacts their performance. This includes their infamous mud test where they shovel gobs of soupy mud onto the receiver of a gun and test to see if it can fire reliably afterwards. What they've found most of the time is that two things make a gun less reliable in adverse conditions: the more exposed holes the gun has in its receiver, and the speed of its mechanism.
** The AK, for instance, is famous for being reliable in the sense that it's not sensitive to an average conscript not taking care of his rifle, but the moment you throw something more substantial than dirt or sand into the receiver - which is easy to do because of the loose tolerances and the large opening for the bolt's charging handle to move - it stops being reliable, as the parts easily get gunked up and unable to move with all the mud. The AR-15 family of rifles, in contrast, are practically sealed from the elements, including a dust cover to keep anything from touching the bolt, and because the gas escapes from the side of the bolt out the ejection port, the rifle does "self-clean" that portion should there be mud there.[[labelnote:*]]A later test of the SIG MCX SPEAR, after it was accepted into the US military as the [=XM5=], saw that it performed similarly well when the dust cover was closed before dumping mud on the gun, but when it was left open all bets were off - its gas piston design meant the vent holes are at the front in the gas block rather than the side of the bolt, and its addition of a side-mounted charging handle also adds another path of ingress for mud to get into the working parts.[[/labelnote]]
** Short-stroke gas pistons are all the rage for their combination of reliable performance in normal conditions and low recoil, but they're generally incredibly sensitive to mud contamination. A test on the FAL, with its large ejection port and sand cuts in the bolt carrier to give loose debris like sand a place to be pushed out of the way, turned out to invite mud in where it can interfere with the weapon's operation: the rifle jammed after two shots, with the bolt refusing to go into battery with a live round in the chamber, and after the mud had time to dry it ''completely'' locked up. Two separate tests of the AUG saw it fail similarly, the first time jamming after a few shots and the second, where they set its gas system to the "adverse" setting by Steyr USA's behest, failing to extract on the first round, before the charging handle locked up completely both times. Roller-delayed blowback, conversely, is one of the most violently fast cycling actions ever devised, having almost no way for gas to escape until it's pushed the bolt back and paired with a suitably strong recoil spring at the back, meaning that unless the bolt is completely immobilized it is basically guaranteed that it will fire and cycle properly. A test on the G3 saw it failing to eject after every shot, requiring the stock to be smashed against the ground while pushing down on the charging handle from above, but the bolt still consistently went into battery when it was manually operated in this fashion, and after giving the mud time to dry the gun went back to working properly. A test of the CETME Model L performed even better, only even starting to give them minor problems once they dumped mud into the charging handle's travel path and then manually cycled it, which came out to a single time where the bolt failed to go into battery before another yank of the handle got it working again.
** Handguns generally perform the same, though the speed of the action tends to matter more. The sealed toggle-lock of the Luger P08 saw it perform flawlessly, in part because the toggle-lock action outright requires high-pressure ammo to reliably function, while the M1911 with its external hammer jammed after a few shots, though eventually got back to mostly-working order after brute-forcing the slide open again, and the FK BRNO failed to fire even ''one'' round because of mud blocking the hammer from either dropping with enough speed to fire or pulling back far enough to re-engage the sear. Both the Glock 19 and Hi-Point C9 jammed early despite their more closed-in mechanisms, but the straight-blowback Hi-Point got off more shots and was brought back to life by a quick rinse of water, while the short-recoil Glock only got off one shot before jamming to the point where even dousing it with water couldn't get it working again, which Karl concluded was likely because of mud getting into the locking lugs on the barrel and preventing it from fully seating into battery.

* The infamous North Hollywood Shootout had one example: Two bank robbers did a job armed to the teeth with modified Type 56 assault rifles and full kevlar suits to protect them. One of them, Larry Phillips Jr., was cornered into a one on one with an officer when his Type 56 jammed due to a stovepiped cartridge. Ordinarily, this would have taken only a moment to fix, but he had earlier been shot in the wrist, rendering him incapable of clearing the jam [[note]]not that he couldn't have used his wrist or arm to do it, or held the rifle up with that arm to use his good hand for the job; it's likely he was too preoccupied with the pain from having been shot to think clearly[[/note]]. After his attempt to clear the jam failed, he threw the assault rifle to the side and pulled out a Beretta 92 he had as a sidearm to continue shooting; when [[BlastingItOutOfTheirHands he took another round to his good hand]], he picked the pistol back up, placed it to his chin, and shot himself.
* A mildly famous incident with a marked TruthInTelevision of a horrific jam that literally disabled the gun occurred at IPSC Nationals within the past few decade or so. At one stage, a fired case ejected from the pistol, bounced off the edge of a quarter-inch sheet of plywood the shooter was standing next to, and as the next round fired and ejected, the first case fell into the open ejection port – backwards – and was pushed forward into the chamber, while the next round attempted to feed. The weapon was completely locked up and required significant work to be cleared, with no small amount of trepidation as there was still a live round crammed halfway into the action even with the magazine removed.
* As it happens, this trope is OlderThanSteam: Every firearm made up until the advent of percussion ignition would often misfire in normal conditions, or fail to work at all in bad weather. And it goes the other way too: they could also accidentally fire on their own if their lock-work was badly forged or would only fire several seconds after pulling the trigger (hang-firing was guaranteed if a gunman dumped too much powder into the gun's priming pan).

** The specific model of gun hasn't been included in the press reports, but at least one San Antonio, TX security guard is carrying a not-drop-safe firearm on duty. In July 2019, while he was pushing carts back into the grocery store he was working at, his gun fell out of his belt[[note]]It is hoped [[PantsPositiveSafety the reporter meant]] "belt ''holster''"[[/note]] and discharged. [[https://www.ksat.com/news/shooting-reported-at-southwest-side-business Two shoppers were injured by either the ricocheting bullet or shrapnel from that ricochet.]]
* The Franchi SPAS-12's design as a dual-mode shotgun (able to be fired in both semi-auto and pump-action) set upon it various issues in both modes, such as inconsistent cycling when fired in semi-auto. Particularly, movies will typically depict it as pump-action-only because it flatly refuses to cycle blank shells in semi-auto, even with a blank-fire adapter and the hottest 12-gauge blanks available. The weapon also made use of several cheap rubber parts that have disintegrated simply through age (what with production ending in 2000, and owing to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, ones in the US are invariably at least half a decade older than that), creating issues such as the magazine cutoff sticking, making the bolt lock back after every shell in semi-auto mode. Most damning are issues with the safety, which in its original lever-type design would not only fail to prevent the weapon from firing while on safe, but will even ''[[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace cause]]'' the weapon to fire if the safety is toggled while it's loaded. A recall order was issued to replace these with a different cross-bolt safety, but it was only a marginal improvement - while toggling it doesn't fire the weapon, it ''also'' frequently fails to actually put the weapon on safe after aging, and was only installed on a small percentage of SPAS-12s to boot (although Franchi's other shotguns can exchange trigger groups and come standard with the improved safety, so swapping an old one out is easy).

** The Remington Model 700 rifle has a reputation (pre-dating the Cerberus acquisition) for having a highly questionable safety mechanism, which is infamous for either causing the gun to randomly fire, or for not doing anything to keep the gun from firing while it's engaged. The trigger mechanism used on the rifle from its original design to about 2007 also had gained a bit of a reputation for causing the weapon to discharge on its own, though Remington has dismissed these claims, instead blaming negligent users for not properly maintaining their weapons and pointing them directly at other people for extreme lengths of time, even pointing out that some of the claimants admitted to police that they "may have accidentally" pulled the trigger themselves. Noteworthy in regard to this is that military rifles based on the Model 700's action continue to use the original trigger mechanism, and it is also still available for custom orders, which, if there were dangerous reliability issues inherent in its design, would only be the case if Remington ''wanted'' to go out of business. In which capacity it has duly succeeded, as previously mentioned.
** The Bushmaster Advanced Combat Rifle, which was their entry into the US Army Individual Carbine competition to replace the M4 in 2010/2011, was eventually offered for civilian sale; it had to be recalled when it emerged that the rifle could slam-fire uncontrollably on single trigger pulls. Apparently, the design team had failed to fix the trigger sear so that it was set to semi-automatic only.

** The Type 14 Nambu, the official Japanese full-sized service pistol throughout the 1930s and WWII, was itself an ''adequate'' enough weapon for the era, 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 defect, the Army's logistics units just ''issued spare firing pins'', with the expectation that when a pin broke the officer would ''disassemble his gun and replace the pin after the fight was over'', assuming he survived whatever happened when his Type 14 jammed. 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 [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace those foolish enough to abuse their weapons on purpose]]). No surprise that many officers chose to draw their swords when their Nambu pistols jammed. Other officers wound up buying the compact Type 94, if only because it was guaranteed to fire when the trigger was pulled.

** The quick-change barrels all include bipods, non-adjustable front sights, and non-adjustable gas systems. On top of all this unnecessary extra weight from gunners effectively carrying half the gun on every spare barrel, this also meant that gunners can't keep the weapon on target during barrel changes, consistently hold zero between barrels, or adjust the gas system to account for differences in ammunition or fouling. And, despite all the other stuff they threw onto the spare barrels, the one thing they ''didn't'' put on them was a carrying handle, necessitating the issuing of easily-misplaced asbestos gloves to gun crews or, apparently, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtu_NItvP2w using the bipods as a handle]], which simply exacerbated the problem of keeping the weapon on-target between barrel changes in any situation other than a tripod mounting.

* This is why the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting wasn't even deadlier than it was. The [[SpreeKiller shooter]] brought a semi-automatic rifle with a [[MoreDakka 100-round drum magazine]] that, fortunately for the people he was trying to kill, jammed during the shooting, forcing him to switch to a less powerful pistol. This malfunction bought some people time to escape. Police [[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/07/23/157218350/if-not-for-jammed-gun-officers-sharp-eyes-more-might-have-died-in-aurora stated]] that, had his rifle not jammed, the body count likely would've been much higher than twelve dead and fifty-eight wounded.

** Short-stroke gas pistons are all the rage for their combination of reliable performance in normal conditions and low recoil, but they're generally incredibly sensitive to mud contamination. A test on the FAL, with its large ejection port and sand cuts in the bolt carrier to give loose debris like sand a place to be pushed out of the way, turned out to invite mud in where it can interfere with the weapon's operation: the rifle jammed after two shots, with the bolt refusing to go into battery with a live round in the chamber, and after the mud had time to dry it ''completely'' locked up. Two separate tests of the AUG saw it fail similarly, the first time jamming after a few shots and the second, where they set its gas system to the "adverse" setting by Steyr USA's behest, failing to extract on the first round, before the charging handle locked up completely both times. Roller-delayed blowback, conversely, is one of the most violently-fast cycling actions ever devised, having almost no way for gas to escape until it's pushed the bolt back and paired with a suitably-strong recoil spring at the back, meaning that unless the bolt is completely immobilized it is basically guaranteed that it will fire and cycle properly. A test on the G3 saw it failing to eject after every shot, requiring the stock to be smashed against the ground while pushing down on the charging handle from above, but the bolt still consistently went into battery when it was manually operated in this fashion, and after giving the mud time to dry the gun went back to working properly. A test of the CETME Model L performed even better, only even starting to give them minor problems once they dumped mud into the charging handle's travel path and then manually cycled it, which came out to a single time where the bolt failed to go into battery before another yank of the handle got it working again.

** To sum up how bad the L85 made soldiers suffer in real combat areas like Iraq, here's some useful input from a guy [[https://www.forgottenweapons.com/british-l85a1-at-the-range-will-it-work/#comment-3613993 who actually had to show British soldiers what was wrong with their primary weapon and close quarters fighting style]]:
-->British troops don’t know what they don’t know. The “skill-at-arms” thing is predicated on what they do know, the L85, so they don’t “get” that you should be able to do a magazine change without shifting focus from maintaining situational awareness of the battlefield to compensating for the horrendous ergonomics of the weapon your military has saddled you with. Even the trainers don’t know any better, and that goes back to the earliest days of the L85.\\
I did joint training with the Brits back in the early 1990s. There were still some residual “learned to shoot on the SLR” types around as senior [=NCOs=], but the vast majority of the troops were “L85 only” sorts. When we did cross-training on our individual weapons, and I handed off what I’d been taught in terms of skill-at-arms with the M16-series weapons, most of them were left entirely befuddled by my insistence that you were supposed to keep your eyes up and downrange on the threat while changing magazines, and that you should be able to perform immediate action doing the same. As well, they were amazed to watch me shuck through seven mag changes, at speeds that meant I was done before they’d gotten to two or three with the L85. There was a lot of “gunfighting” that they just had no idea about, but which the Vietnam-era trainers I’d had spent hours beating into my head.\\
The L85 is not a tool for taking into a fight, period. In any of its iterations–Widely separated controls, shitty magazine changes, and a general lack of attention paid to human engineering all militate towards that–Just like most bullpups.\\
As an exercise to demonstrate why, without a weapon? Take a felt-tip pen and draw a magazine-sized rectangle on the inside of your upper right arm; then, take something about magazine-sized and at least 25cm in length and try to consistently place the end of that rectangular thing into that drawn rectangle. Now, imagine doing it under the influence of adrenaline, when someone is trying very hard to kill you… Oh, and you can’t take your eyes off that guy down the street you’re watching, either. That’s changing the mag in an L85.\\
Now, take your right forefinger and extend it out, as you would be able to do when indexing for an M16 mag change, trying to hit your right forefinger tip with the end of our improvised magazine stand-in. Note how easy that is, and oh-by-the-way, that’s happening literally right in front of your nose; you can shift attention to that task ever so slightly, and still maintain situational awareness.\\
Go look up the British Army combatives and CQB videos that have been posted on [=YouTube=]; you’ll note, in officially-approved training, that the victims of said training are shown not only pausing to reload but removing their attention from their surroundings when doing so–Right in front of their trainers. This is the standard British Army practice and has been since I last trained with them back when. It’s a system designed to teach an individual how to get himself killed dead in close combat, and the weapon they’ve saddled their troops with is a sad joke of a combat rifle.\\
There’s a hell of a lot more to rifle and weapon design in general than most appreciate. The L85 got just about everything wrong, in terms of combat skills for the individual soldier trying to survive by himself in a gunfight.\\
I could go on for quite a bit more, in other respects, but that gives you an idea of why this is such a crappy weapon to have inflicted on British soldiers. You’ll note that the SAS, who get to choose what they take into battle, do not carry the L85. There are reasons for that, and they stem from just this very point about ergonomics.
** And to rub salt in the wound, it is '''still''' being used, even after every single pointed out flaw. It even has an upgraded A3 model, which is basically the same with an ugly handguard rail. And even after three revisions...there's no support for left-handed use. No changable ejection port or controls. Use it right-handed, or get hot brass and a fast-moving bolt handle in your face.

* The main page image is from Youtuber [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1449kJKxlMQ KentuckyBallistics]] (Scott), who suffered a ''horrific'' near-fatal explosion of his .50 BMG Serbu RN-50 rifle when he fired a round that turned out to be massively overpressure - as in "about four times standard chamber pressure". The resulting explosion sent the end cap into his safety glasses, breaking multiple bones and blinding his right eye temporarily. The more serious injury came when a smaller bit of flying metal ''nicked his jugular artery'' and then punctured his right lung. Seriously injured, Scott managed to stem the flow of blood by jamming his t-shirt into the wound and applying pressure with his thumb while his father, serving as cameraman, drove for the hospital.
** Scott's use of a thumb to stem the bleeding became a minor meme, and he soon came out with [[https://www.kentuckyballistics.com/products/kentucky-ballistics-put-a-thumb-on-it-t-shirt "Just Put A Thumb In it"]] t-shirts to capitalize on the meme.
** A highly plausible hypothesis as to why the rifle failed catastrophically was offered by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ardw09S7GfE TiborasaurusRex]]. The short of it is the video's presenter explained that sabot rounds (where the cartridge has a bullet with a smaller diameter than the barrel, but is supported by so-called 'sabots') were explicitly called out in several publications on .50 BMG firearms to not be used in any rifle with a muzzle device, such as a compensator, unless it's confirmed to be compatible with sabot rounds. The Serbu RN-50 has a compensator and Scott fired sabot rounds. And the reason why is because the muzzle device may shave off some of the sabot onto itself. With enough build up, it's effectively a dangerous barrel obstruction.

** Handguns generally perform the same, though the speed of the action tends to matter more. The sealed toggle-lock of the Luger P08 saw it perform flawlessly, in part because the toggle-lock action outright requires high-pressure ammo to reliably function, while the M1911 with its external hammer jammed after a few shots, though eventually got back to mostly-working order after brute-forcing the slide open again, and the FK BRNO failed to fire even ''one'' round because of mud blocking the hammer from either dropping with enough speed to fire or pulling back far enough to re-engage the sear. Both the Glock 19 and Hi-Point C9 jammed early despite their more closed-in mechanisms, but the straight-blowback Hi-Point got off more shots and was brought back to life by a quick rinse of water, while the short-recoil Glock only got off one shot before jamming to the point where even dousing it with water couldn't get it working again.

** A highly plausible hypothesis as to why the rifle failed catastrophically was offered by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ardw09S7GfE TiborasaurusRex]]. The short of it is the video's presenter explained that sabot rounds (where the cartridge has a smaller diameter than the barrel, but is supported by so-called 'sabots') were explicitly called out in several publications on .50 BMG firearms to not be used in any rifle with a muzzle device, such as a compensator, unless it's confirmed to be compatible with sabot rounds. The Serbu RN-50 has a compensator. And the reason why is because the muzzle device may shave off some of the sabot onto itself. With enough build up, it's effectively a dangerous barrel obstruction.