r/canadaguns • u/NemrahG • Apr 24 '26

Misc What’s the worst gun you’ve ever owned?

Curious what’s everyone else’s experiences with terrible or poorly made guns.

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u/prosper_0 Apr 24 '26

Yup. For the price of an M305, plus tuning, plus aftermarket parts, you could just get a GOOD M14 derivative or Garand. And they won't be as ugly, either.

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u/CalibreMag Apr 24 '26

Not when they were $400 and a Springfield was $2k+.

They were pretty good for guns assembled by kids in high school shop class!

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u/prosper_0 Apr 24 '26

Doesn't matter how cheap it is, if it's terrible. There comes a point where it's more expensive to by crap because then you have to re-buy it, or pour a ton of effort and money into it just to make it passable. And, in the end, a fully-worked 305 with $1k+ in parts and labour is still just a 305 and much less desirable.

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u/CalibreMag Apr 24 '26

Except they weren't crap. They were actually very good, and in the world of M14s, quite desirable because they were built off the original USGI TDP (with the exception of a single thread) and had forged receivers, as opposed to the vast majority of M1as on the market that were milled from bar stock.

Canada just happened to be in the lucky circumstance to be one of the few places where Norinco could sell them, so they were cheap and plentiful, but they were better than rifles costing significantly more.

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u/ONTZ28 Apr 24 '26

Better is a stretch. The only redeeming quality they had was affordability. It was pretty widely known that they were hit and miss and the later production rifles were even worse.

Mine the sights fell apart almost immediately and I had to chase issues with it not passing a function check. A brand new gun that is at risk of an out of battery detonation is not the mark of quality.

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u/Gnarwhal_YYC Apr 25 '26

I had an out of battery detonation. Chunk of the bolt nearly took my hat off my head.

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u/CalibreMag Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

But they weren't known as hit or miss. They were generally considered quite good. And as a base for building from, they were considered excellent. I've built multiple M305s that would shoot into 1-2 MOA with reloads approximating US match ammo.

I'm not sure where this revisionist history is coming from, but having handled a hell of a lot of M305s, they were generally fine. Sure, the later batches weren't as well assembled as the early ones, but even they were hardly garbage rods.

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u/ONTZ28 Apr 25 '26

They were known as hit or miss and that became more pronounced throughout the production cycle. Browse the way back threads on CGN. It's not revisionist history at all.

I've owned and handled a lot of different guns. I've owned good guns, I've owned bad guns. I've only ever owned one dangerously bad gun. OP asked what's the worst gun people have owned, I didn't even need to think about it. Yours were great, that's awesome. Mine was a dangerous pile of hot garbage. I desperately wanted to love it, but it had other plans.

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u/CalibreMag Apr 25 '26

I mean - I was there when those threads were made in the golden age of the M305, when M14doc and Hungry were putting on clinics across the country. That's when I was building them. I'm in most of those threads.

If you scroll the old battery rifle section, you'll find most of the experiences were very positive; that's why they sold so well.

Were they perfect? No. But nothing is. Bummer yours sucked, regardless. Sounds like you were robbed of one of the better "uniquely Canadian gun" experiences.