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Hook & Barrel
A Lifestyle Magazine for Modern Outdoorsmen

cylinder of a Colt Model 1855 rifle

Not Only Commercial Failures, These Guns Were Downright Dangerous

This content is sponsored by GunBroker.com

There have been countless firearm designs over the centuries, many of them important, pivotal, and influential for decades. Then, there are the others. Among them are the forgettable, the mediocre, and a special group of horrendous guns that were somehow produced and used, to some degree — history’s worst guns, essentially.

Even narrowing that expansive list down is difficult. So, the guns on this list weren’t just lousy or wildly unpopular, they’re all either incredibly dangerous to operate or they were designed so poorly that they never had a chance.


1. Winchester Model 1911 SL Shotgun

winchester model 1911 semi-auto shotgun
The Winchester Model 1911 got the nickname “The Widowmaker.” Enough said. That alone means it belongs on this list of worst guns.

John Moses Browning’s Auto-5 shotgun was the world’s first commercially available and successful semi-auto shotgun. More than a century after its introduction it remains one of the most popular and coveted guns on the used market.

That shotgun is actually what led to the demise of the Browning-Winchester relationship. The short of it was, after many years of designing guns that made Winchester a lot of money, Browning wanted a cut of the sales of his new shotgun. Winchester balked, and Browning went out on his own, finished the Auto-5, and licensed its production. Sales numbers for the shotgun, which was produced by several gun companies that weren’t Winchester, proved the gunmaker had screwed up big time. 

In an attempt to get in on the semi-auto shotgun market that it missed out on creating, Winchester introduced the Model 1911 SL, which stands for self-loading.

The Auto-5 and Model 1911 SL are visually similar at a glance. They both have half-stock magazine tubes and a humpback shape to the rear of the receiver, though it’s much more pronounced on the Auto-5. 

What you don’t see on the Model 1911 SL is a charging handle on the bolt. Normally the handle would allow the user to retract the bolt of a semi-auto shotgun for loading and to cycle it manually when necessary. It’s an essential part of an autoloader, even today. 

At the time, the charging handle was specifically protected by a patent Browning had filed in 1898. This meant that any new Winchester design for a semi-auto shotgun would have to come up with a different way to manually operate the bolt. 

The solution seemed simple: add a section of knurling to the barrel that allows the shooter to get a good grip and push the barrel and bolt to the rear by hand. The idea was that a shooter could prop the butt against their hip or thigh and cycle the action from there while grabbing the barrel. And yeah, it worked pretty well. 

The problem was that people who didn’t have arms long enough to pull this off comfortably started putting the butt against the ground and pushing down on the barrel. Is this bad gun safety? Sure. Did these people often get their head or torso right in front of the muzzle? Yep. However, the design of this shotgun spurred this behavior enough that the Model 1911 SL became known as “The Widowmaker.” 

Even if you operated the action safely, it’s not a lot of fun grabbing a barrel that has just run a mag tube of shells. 

Sales flagged and production ended after just 83,000 shotguns had been made. That might seem like a lot, but the Auto-5 has sold more than 3,000,000 since its production began. 


2. Colt Model 1855 Revolving Rifle

Colt Model 1855 one of history's worst guns
Three variants of the Colt Model 1855 revolving rifle at top and carbine models below.

In the 1850s, the concept of a repeating rifle was just that: a concept. No one had yet developed a rifle that could fire multiple times reliably. That was mostly because metallic cartridges were pretty new — the first rimfire was just a few years old at the time. That’s why Colt’s Model 1855 Revolving Rifle, which may seem strange to us today, was actually on the cutting edge of design and technology when it was introduced during Franklin Pierce’s presidency.

Sam Colt had created a successful line of revolvers with the cap-and-ball Colt Sidehammer Pocket Revolver, so it seemed only logical to beef up the cylinder to handle larger calibers, add a buttstock and a longer barrel, and create a revolving rifle that gave the shooter five or six shots (depending on caliber) before needing to be reloaded.

Unfortunately, Colt’s revolving rifle was susceptible to the same dangerous design flaw as most black powder revolvers. In rare instances, errant grains of gunpowder could get lodged in areas of the cylinder near the mouth of the chambers, or an imperfect seal could be created either by poorly fitting ammunition or percussion caps. This made it possible for the gun to suffer a chain fire when one or more of the other chambers were accidentally ignited out of battery. At best, this will cause projectiles to fly out of the cylinder uncontrolled — at worst, the gun blows up.

Better-sized ammunition (oversized is actually better because lead will be trimmed off when the projectile is rammed into the chamber ensuring a tight seal) and caps helped solve this problem, as did the practice of greasing projectiles, again to achieve a better seal. The grease also helped keep reduce the considerable fouling from black powder and keep that fouling soft and easier to remove.

The problem was this gun was given to soldiers who had only ever used a muzzleloading rifle, musket, or shotgun. Comparatively, the Colt was complicated, temperamental, dangerous, and fairly fragile. It was also intricate to produce and extremely expensive, even compared to Colt pistols of the day. It was a failure on the battlefield, and the metallic cartridge along with firearms like the Spencer rifle, the Henry 1860 rifle, and later the Winchester 1866 made it conceptually obsolete.

While dangerous in a revolver, a chain fire would most certainly be injurious and could be deadly in a rifle because of the way it is held in order to be fired. The shooter’s support hand and arm are located in front of and next to the cylinder. In the event of a chain fire on a Model 1855 Revolving Rifle, hot pieces of lead from sheared-off bullets – and, indeed, entire bullets themselves – as well as burning powder and sparks would be directed right at the shooter’s hand and arm.

Users soon learned to slap some grease or wax on the front of each chamber to prevent chain fires, but with the revolving rifle, the shooter’s support arm was exposed to hot gasses from the cylinder gap when held like a rifle, even if everything worked as it should. 

Approximately 5,000 were purchased by the U.S. Government for use during the Civil War, but the design never took off and production ceased in 1864.


3. Remington Model 700 EtronX

remington model 700 etronx rifle one of history's worst guns
The Remington Model 700 EtronX rifle used an innovative system that fired special cartridges with an electric charge from a battery instead of firing pin striking a primer.

Remington introduced their new EtronX technology in 2000, calling it “the most significant advancement in rifle and ammunition performance since smokeless powder.” It was not. But it was certainly interesting.

Designed for their Model 700 rifles, the rifle’s bolt made a circuit between the special firing pin and primer in the cartridge when it was closed. When the trigger was pulled, the circuit was completed and an electrical pulse was sent through the firing pin and into the primer, which was specially designed to ignite by electrical pulse.

Why was this better than using a firing pin and ammo with a conventional primer? Since ignition happened electronically, there were no moving parts other than the trigger, which was reported to have 36% less travel than a traditional trigger. This all combined to create an almost instantaneous ignition: 0.0000027 seconds, to be exact. The lack of moving parts, Remington promised, would result in a more accurate shot.

The entire electronic primer ignition system was controlled by one nine-volt battery in the butt stock behind the buttplate. A removable key in the butt cap was used to turn the system on; the rifle could not be fired if the key was not used to turn it on first. An LED display on the top of the grip indicated if the system was on or off if a cartridge had been chambered, and if the battery was low and needed to be replaced.

This was essentially the same technology that was used in experimental guns that fired caseless ammunition. In those designs, the projectile was typically buried in a block of propellant, which would then be fired by electric pulse with no primer needed. The EtronX design was sort of a halfway point between traditional firearms and ammo and caseless ammunition. And the wild thing is, it actually worked pretty well. 

remington etronx ammo
Remington’s proprietary EtronX ammunition used a special electrically activated primer.

When introduced, the EtronX-equipped Model 700 rifles had an MSRP of $1,999 – double the price of a traditional Model 700. Plus, the rifle only worked with Remington’s proprietary EtronX ammunition. 

The new technology and jump in price proved too much for the venerable Model 700, which had developed a solid reputation over its 32 years of production by 2000. As a result, Remington’s EtronX technology was gone within just a handful of years.

The fact that no one has brought anything similar to the market in the following quarter-century is proof positive that some ideas are better left undeveloped. If you’re curious about exactly how the EtronX 700 system worked, you can check out the rifle’s full manual here. 


4. ZiP 22 Pistol

zip 22 pistol one of history's worst guns
The ZiP 22 pistol was all but dead on arrival and anyone who has ever seen or shot it would agree it’s one of the worst guns ever made.

The United States Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, or USFA, made some of the finest Single Action Army clones the market has ever seen. They even made them at the old Colt factory. So, one might expect that their foray into a semi-auto .22 pistol would have gone great. But it’s on this list, so you already know it didn’t.

In the 2010s, USFA went all-in on the ZiP 22 to the extent that they even stopped making revolvers, sold off the machinery, and directed all of their energy into this extremely unconventional bullpup pistol that took Ruger 10/22 magazines. 

The potential was truly there. USFA promised a robust accessory market, including an optional optics rail, a stock to make it into an SBR, and even the ability to mount it to another gun for, you know, reasons.

The ZiP 22 failed miserably during its first outing at the 2013 SHOT Show Range Day — it barely functioned — and production models were just as bad. Customers experienced numerous failures to feed, failures to eject, double feeds, and more. Plus, the two charging handles are located dangerously close to the muzzle. In the rare event that the gun actually fired and the user had their hands on or near the charging handles, it could spell disaster.

Sales tanked and by 2017, USFA was no more. Today, the ZiP 22 remains only as an inexpensive novelty paperweight and a punchline.


5. Treeby Chain Rifle

Treeby chain rifle, one of history's worst guns
The Treeby chain rifle used what were essentially primitive refillable cartridges linked together to create a multi-shot rifle. Despite being innovative, it’s one of history’s worst guns.

The Treeby Chain Rifle, patented in England in 1855, sought to solve the repeating rifle conundrum by chaining extra shots together – literally. The Treeby had a 14-round chain magazine, which made a loop around the gun’s action. Each chamber in the chain was loaded from the muzzle and equipped with a percussion cap at the breech. In that sense, each chamber was exactly the same as a traditional single-shot muzzleloading rifle — or you could call each one a reusable cartridge.

While it was certainly advantageous over a standard single-shot firearm to have 14 shots at your disposal, it was still slow to operate. The chain did not cycle automatically; the operator had to manually rotate the barrel off of each chain chamber and then cock the hammer, which engaged a set of gears in the chain that rotated it after each shot.

What’s most remarkable is this contraption actually worked, kind of. Treeby approached the British military with his design, hoping it would become their next standard-issue firearm. It went through trials at the Hythe School of Musketry with a 30-round chain and discharged all 30 shots in less than a minute. Unfortunately, the gun did not fire a charge substantial enough to be used in the military and it was never officially adopted.

One of the other drawbacks to Treeby’s design was that the chain was not restrained at the bottom and could swing freely, potentially causing jamming or other issues. To fix this problem, Treeby sought another patent in 1858 for a second sprocket at the bottom of the chain, held in place by straps on the frame, to prevent the chain from swinging. Still, it wasn’t enough to allow the rifle to gain any commercial traction, and no more than five are known to exist.

While the execution was a bit off and the idea came far too early in gun history, Treeby’s design was essentially a proto-linked ammunition belt and the first “chain gun.” Ammo belts are used today in most military machine guns of all sizes.  

Meet The Five Most Expensive Guns Ever Sold

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