Equipment Change Proposal

This one is fresh from this weekend.

The Walther P22.

What a jammamatic piece of craptastic goat shit. The gun is a joint venture between Walther and Smith and Wesson. I have a strong belief that when these two firearm manufacturers decided to start building guns together, they first decided to fire everyone in their employ that had ever done Quality Control. Just fired their asses and sent them home.

I bought my P22 like five years ago or more, and it's a very fun little gun to shoot - when it doesn't suck. I have several friends and family members who have this gun as well, and theirs sucks too; although they still enjoy shooting it. I cannot.

Now, there are a number of threads on how to make it not suck. I have read them. My problem is that for every problem fixed, another problem pops up. One would think that in the almost ten years that this POS has been in production, that the good folks at S&W would have all the problems ironed out, and that they would offer to fix their older guns retroactively considering the pathetic warranty that comes with them. This is not the case from the overwhelming number of problems that others have posted.

The first complaints were about the magazines - I know someone who has shitty magazines - but mine came with the better ones. Even with that, the gun will only shoot CCI Mini-Mags with any reliability, as any other ammunition will jam the gun. Mine stovepipes with just about every magazine. Also, I bought the 5" barrel for mine which comes with this fake compensator. The accuracy with this barrel is great, but the compensator would walk its way down the barrel when I shot it, making me have to pound it back down. Yeah, not very safe. I found out it was because of a missing screw - a worm screw as S&W calls it - that screws down through the compensator and into a notch in the barrel sleeve. Mine didn't come with it, so I ordered one from S&W, and installed it, and now the compensator doesn't walk down any more. I took the gun out for a spin this weekend to make sure that fixed the problems, and for my troubles I was rewarded with a gun that won't fire in double action. The hammer catches on the safety notch.

Hey Smith and Wesson, if I wanted a single action .22 pistol, I would have bought a Ruger Single Six. At least that gun will fire any ammunition that you stuff down in the cylinder. Do y'all care to build a .22 caliber pistol that doesn't suck?

Thinking back now, the first pistol my wife bought was a Walther PPK in .380 acp, also a joint Walther/S&W deal, and that gun was returned to the store within the hour. It didn't even get a full box of rounds fired through it. I fired the first magazine, and after the third or fourth round the rear sight fell off and wouldn't go back on. It just slid right through the sight cut in the slide with no resistance.

But back to my P22: my problem now is that I have to either take my Dremel to the gun in one of the many user fixes listed in the above linked forums, or I can send it to S&W for repair which will cost me money since it's no longer under warranty. Or I could do as several ARFCOM posters have suggested and toss the piece of shit into a lake, but only after I stuff a dollar into the grip so that I can say I threw something of value away.

Why, oh why can't people these days make stuff that works? This week I'm sending my new T.A.D. Gear jacket that I got three months ago in for repairs; I have a two year old JVC camcorder that I need to send back because it keeps telling me it can't find the battery (while it's on); I still haven't figured out how to fix the nightmare in the bottom of my gun safe; and the list goes on and on. I have a ton of stuff to either fix or send back, and I'm pretty tired of it.

If you build stuff for a living, and you're reading my rants, please please please with ammo on top start making things that don't suck!!!! Go that extra mile and make sure it's not going to fall apart the moment John Q. Public tries to use it.