SayUncle admits to some of his past derpitude. This is a good exercise I think, because when we all first got into this, we probably did a lot of derpy things. I am no exception. Let me admit to mine:
- I first got my License to Carry in 2002. At the time, I was looking to buy a Walther PPK/S. I let a gun store clerk talk me into a Bersa Thunder .380.
- The first time I carried the Bersa outside the house, it was in an Uncle Mike’s sausage sack in the small of the back, loaded with Hydra-shoks. That’s just what I had. A few months later, I bought a Glock 19 (same one I still carry today) and a decent holster and stopped carrying the Bersa, which later broke.
- When I first started buying guns, my criteria was basically whether it looked like something the politicians would like to ban soon. Among my early purchases were a Hi-Point 9mm carbine (which I do still occasionally shoot, but they are basically made from pot metal and noticeably destroy themselves as you shoot them), and a CM-11 carbine (which never reliably fired more than 40 shots).
- Like Uncle, I also had an AR with a scope mounted on the carry handle.
- I own an AR-15 in 6.8 Remington SPC.
These days I’m not really buying guns, both for lack of time and money. I’m more interested in historical collecting these days anyway. On my current WANT list is a decent Krag-Jorgensen, and a Trap Door Springfield. I try to avoid gun shows these days, because I will occasionally see a decent specimen of these and get very tempted to spend money I shouldn’t. The Derp has not completely left me, however. I still have an irrational desire for a Kriss Vector.
I built my first AR on a Del-Ton kit :(
I have an AR in 6.8 but I do hog hunt with it, a purpose for which it is well suited.
I bought a .32H&R revolver at one point. Not sure why
My current lust list is topped by a Sig MPX….
Mine is built on a DelTon Kit. And I’ll put it against anything – it’s a tack driver. 1/7 chrome.
Not a thing wrong with ’em. Does it go bang every time? Yup. Does it hit what I aim at? Absolutely. There ya go.
My real lust is old military shooters. My current favorite shooter is a 1943 IBM-made M1 carbine. Jumps to the shoulder like a levergun. Beautiful. I’d rather shoot it than my Garrand.
Like Sebastian, I’m looking a new toy. I really want a wartime P-38 – anyone want to trade a lovely Yugo SKS for one? It’s a really nice rifle . . . .
Mine was built on a Ko-tonics upper. One of the ones they over-chromed. I never got it replaced, because I don’t shoot it really, because it’s too bloody expensive to shoot, even with reloading.
After learning a little bit about their materials specifications (or lack thereof) and QC, yeah, no, not again. I’ll stick with known quantities in materials, processes and QC for rifles I bet my life on….
I have an AR in 6.8 but I do hog hunt with it, a purpose for which it is well suited.
Indeed. Perhaps one good use of an AR in that caliber.
I had a .32 H&R SP101. Kinda pointless (for adults with ordinary recoil tolerance), but accurate and, after trigger job, just peach-pie levels of fun to plink with.
If that’s derp, I don’t want to be tier one.
I would not consider that derp. The case against the 6.8 specifically is pretty well laid out here.
This probably *would* make me a little derpy, but I’m oddly attracted to the idea of a 6.5mm Grendel AR. I’m not exactly sure why (beyond the fact that it’s bigger than 5.56 and it has a cute name)…
Having said that, one reason I find the AR-15 platform attractive is that I think it’s possible to own one lower, and get uppers of different round types to swap out at my convenience…
I rented a Vector on my last range outing. That sucker is HEAVY.
My gun safe is full of derp, because I didn’t know better then and haven’t bought anything new since. But if I do, I irrationally lust after a sub2K. If not that, then a level action and a revolver in .357 because I can.
Eventually, I’ll finish my AR in 6.8…
+1 on the Kris Vector. A buddy has one (SB!). The only problem is that it’s TOO good and not that fun to shoot after a while. Those 45s feel like 22s. Cool for the first mag, but then you want to play with something with a little… “tactile feedback” after a while.
Shooting the Kriss full-auto submachine gun I think relieved me of most of the irrational desire for one. It’s true what they say about it being easy to control on full cyclic rate, but it also helps that it’s damned heavy. I’d rather have an MP-40, to be honest, which I found to be a dream to shoot.
Cool. I just did semi.
Ian,
“a lever action and a revolver in .357 because you should”
FIFY.
That’s a reason that they are on my short list. But I haven’t been to the range in pushing 2 years now, so my short list is gathering dust
I have an irrational desire for pistol caliber carbines in general. I own a .40 Hi-Point carbine. I would love the Kriss, an MP-5, Thompson, and every other pistol carbine I come across.
I’m generally not giggy with them. I’d rather hold out and save for the submachine guns they were meant to be. Though, there aren’t any transferrable Krisses out there.
My first CCW (and my first handgun in general) was a Bersa .380, but for its time I don’t feel it was a particularly derpy choice, and given the lack of good .380 loads in the early ’90s, Federal HS wasn’t too bad either. What *was* derpy was the Kramer undershirt holster which was ridiculously slow to draw from and didn’t conceal all that well, all things considered. I shortly switched to a 3913LS and a good Bianchi holster, and never looked back.
I can’t decide whether peak derp was the NAA Mini in .22LR (1 1/8″ barrel, fun to shoot but hopelessly anemic and slow to deploy/reload) or putting the wire sidefolder on the SAR-1, but I re-evaluated both of those choices pretty quickly. The SAR was a great all-around carbine with the standard stock, but the wire sidefolder was just a funny looking way to make you shoot slower.
My AR has matured over the years, too, going from a Tapco red dot on the completely unnecessary RRA riser (and no light), to an Eotech and then a 2-6x scope directly on the rail and a Surefire light at 10:00. I want a quality 1-6x illuminated scope at some point, but that will come in time.
I mentioned the Uncle Mike’s sausage sack, but I do have some more derp in the dead holster drawer. There’s a holster I bought for my S&W 629 that does not adequately cover the trigger. I carried that on a few hikes, where an errant branch could have ruined my day. I’m better now, however.
For a year or so I EDC’ed a Nazi-marked Mauser HsC in .32 ACP. Sure, it was the mathematically perfect wrong caliber, but damn, does it get some cool points or what?
Shot my first 3-Gun match with a Mini-14 and one of those pencil tube Aimponts…I was tactical, me!
Don’t feel any tingling up my leg for the Kriss..shot both semi and full auto and bleh. Cross between a cereal box and a paint sprayer, with the ergonomics of a Pringles box. Now the IWI X95…THAT is a submachine gun!
BTW, re: 6.8…there are numbers and there are numbers, but I’ve seen the 120s on hogs…Lasers of Death!
Michael B
I bought my first rifle out-the-door at the DelMar Gun Show just 45 minutes north of San Diego. It was a 91/30, and I had about a month before I was discharged out of the Navy and was going back to Philadelphia. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to wait until you get home and buy a decent .22 LR rifle.
My second gun was a M1917 rifle in .30-06. The bore was so worn down it was damn near smoothbore. I paid $500. I passed over 59/66 SKS rifles stuck in cosmoline for far cheaper with cheaper ammo.
I have had 3 AR’s in the past and swore them off early this year. But now I want one since I’m on a black rifle kick. Especially since I recently traded and sold various guns to buy a Mini-14 and a C93 rifle.
I have a beautiful Krag-Jorgenson, but there is no way I’d ever sell it.
Nothing derpy there.
I should’ve checked the bore on the M1917 instead of buying it without checking it.
My first gun purchase was a S&W 4516, loved that gun. I carried it in and uncle mikes cheapie IWB. I never should have sold that gun.
Ok, what’s a derp?
Basically succumbing to beginner mistakes and slick marketing.
A bit of conventional wisdom that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny too.
Here ya go.
Though it looks like the first link when I try the search (the one to Urban Dictionary) is for a completely different, political meaning… but the wiki ones and the rest are ok.
Some solid derp there… but really? 6.8 SPC is derp? What happened there?
I linked to an analysis by TFB above. I’d relink, but I’m on mobile right now. Basically, it’s not materially better than 5.56.
The main problem I’d suggest with TFB’s analysis is they don’t consider momentum, and momentum is important for penetration.
They also neglect that 6.8 can safely be loaded to significantly higher velocity than what they analyze. My hog rounds are 85gr Barnes TSX that push a little over 3100fps out of a 16″ barrel with no pressure signs on the brass. Some guys have taken that to north of 3200fps.
The Bersa Thunder is NOT DERP!
The pistol has inherent flaws. It’s reliable when it runs, but mine didn’t make it more than 1000 rounds before it stopped running. The biggest problem is a delicate magazine safety mechanism. There’s a pin that’s prone to break on it. If it breaks, the gun won’t run. The solution would be to remove the magazine safety entirely. If they did that, I would actually recommend it to people that didn’t have a lot of coin to spend on a gun.
This.
Mine broke, too, though since I got it used I don’t really know how many rounds it had through it.
In my case, it wasn’t a pin, but rather a spring related to the mag-safety mechanism. Making matters worse for a home replacement, the spring goes into a groove in the frame around the mag well (i.e. the thinnest part) and is held in place by…
…
…
staking it into place!
Yikes. Needless to say, I was unwilling to hammer on the thin bits of the frame to do so; so I got a friend with a machine shop to mill me a block of steel the right size to fill the mag well there, so there was no chance of me bending that part of the frame while staking the spring down.
Oy.
Oh, and I would have gladly taken the mag-safety mechanism out, but couldn’t see any easy way to do that. Is it possible that in current generations of the gun, it’s integrated into the design in such a way that you can’t really disable it?
You can disable it, but if you do, you shouldn’t really carry it. If you have to use it in self-defense, you don’t want a prosecutor arguing in front of a jury that you’re a reckless fellow, because you decide to disable important safety features on the gun you carry.
Not that hard to swap a barrel either to or from 6.8.
Jennings 22LR pistol, need I say more?
I still own one. Shoot it occasionally. It jams every time.
Years ago, I bought it to be a tackle box gun.
Now, since my Glock 19 fits so nice and tight in its Concealed Solutions Black Mamba IWB holster, I don’t worry about dropping it out of the boat.
Since we’re play derp and tell:
G17L. Nothing inherently derpy about it, I suppose; except for the AWB-compliant mags that I’m forced to use; when a G19 could use factory mags for more pills per.
Walther P22. With both barrels and the shroud. I could say that this is my wife’s gun (and in fact I’m not legally allowed to touch it when not on the range), but I still know better now.
Marlin 980s. The derp here is that I cannot see the front sight (neon orange plastic post with dot on top) when I’m actually shooting the silly thing, and I bought it instead of a 10/22.
And a couple thousand rounds of .22lr plated hollowpoint, bought well before the drought. So I overpaid for them to take some lead OUT, and then I bought myself a legal/logistical headache to boot.
RobArms XCR in 7.62.
Worst purchase, ever. I won’t even sell it because I don’t want to +1 Derp some other guy. Consider its continued retention in my safe as heroic contribution to the cause of community-wide de-derpification.
The XCR was on my want list for a while. I’m glad now I didn’t jump on it, because once it was out in the wild, hopes were dashed.
The gun is not so bad other than the barrel attachment mechanism (a screw) is too weak. But in my opinion the real issue was (is?) Alex Robinson’s horrible view of customer relationship management, and his horrible management style.
It’s a fun gun to shoot and under the helm of someone with actual management skills it would probably have done better. I think A. Robinson is the number one impediment to the XCR. I wish it had been different, because I wanted the product to do well. Still do.
I have not shot mine in three years (at least). Maybe I’ll dust it off next month and have some fun with it.
My first pistol was an FIE Targa GT-27. True fact.