Editorial

Can I Endure the Remington R51? [AF 2026]

The Remington R51 is a fascinating, bad gun. It was a commercial flop, and is generally seen as a neat, but awful gun. They have a reputation of being unreliable, and generally just not fun to shoot. Well, I wanted to give myself a challenge.

Could I endure a single range trip with my worst handgun?

Setting The Stage

My plan was simple. I’m out to the range every week, generally shooting some flavor of Glock, 1911, or revolver. I wanted to run the R51 through those same drills, and see if the gun would do well, and how well I’d do with it. Additionally, I ONLY packed the R51 to shoot. I did carry my normal handgun on the way to and from the shooting spot, but the only handgun I intended to shoot was the R51.

For my testing I’m using my personal Remington R51. This is a 2016 release gun, so it’s the Generation 2 of the R51s. I have two OEM mags for it, and a leather Glock 19 holster to use with the gun. It’s not the best fit, but it works surprisingly well. Ammo was standard 124gr Speer Lawman TMJ, which is generally quite good range ammo.

I set out to shoot the gun on a nice Spring day. The conditions were favorable, so I got right into the drills.

DRILL #1 – Rangemaster Baseline Assessment Drill

The first drill I chose to run the R51 through was the Rangemaster Baseline Assessment Drill. I’ve got an article and a video discussing how to shoot the BAD, and why I like it. The long and the short is that the drill covers a lot of practical bases, and isn’t super high round count.

ATTEMPT 1

Well, the R51 choked immediately. A failure to feed on round #3. I decided to give the gun a second chance, and run the drill back right from the start.

ATTEMPT 2

Well, I had more malfunctions, including an odd one where a live round stovepiped in the slide.

I did not set this up for a photo, this actually happened.

Ok, so it’s going to have problems. Well, for the next run, I’ll just deal with fixing those problems as they come up.

ATTEMPT 3

I managed to mostly run the drill. I only got 19 rounds completed on this run, as round #20 flopped out of the magazine while clearing a malfunction.

Well, my score was crap, and the gun was really unfun to shoot. However, I wanted to give it a fourth attempt, as I thought I could squeeze out a little better score.

ATTEMPT 4

4th time’s the charm? This run was my best, but it was still far from perfect. The gun choked a bunch, and my score wasn’t what I’d like to see.

The gun has a pretty bad trigger, very large sights, and fairly uncomfortable recoil that sends hot fouling and sharp edges into your primary hand. At this point, I was ready to throw in the towel, but decided to finish up with a simple drill.

Drill #2 – Mozambique Failure To Stop

For drill #2, I decided to do some classic Mozambique Failure to Stop drills. Simply put, two the chest, one to the head. I did three runs of this before I threw in the towel.

At this point, I was done. The R51 had defeated me.

R51 – Rounds 53, Malfunctions ?

For the shooting I did with the R51, I fired 53 rounds. With those rounds, I had 10 malfunctions. Needless to say, this sucks. The gun was unreliable, unfun, and just generally unpleasant. This is absolutely the worst gun that I’ve owned, and this range day really reinforced my feelings about it.

Irritation on the webbing of my primary hand after my range day with the R51.

So did I endure the R51? No. The gun defeated me. I’d normally do a range trip from about 150 to 300 rounds across a few guns each week. For my recent Glock 43x shooting, I’ve had a few 300 round days with just that gun. There is not a world where I’d do that for the R51, unless someone was paying me a lot of money to do it.

Was the trip without use? No, not really. I think this may have been the thing to make me want to toss the R51 into the garbage.

The Verdict

For my annual April Fool’s video and article, I try to have some fun with it, but still keep it grounded in reality. For many folks, they may only own a single handgun. Well, what if that handgun was an R51? If you are that person, I’m pleading with you to get anything else.

The R51 is an interesting oddity, but it really is not a shocker as to why it flopped. It was a poorly designed and poorly made gun, and was released at the wrong time. An 8 round 9mm handgun this size made for carry to be released in 2014 was sure to flop, and it being a bad gun really put all of the nails in that coffin. If you like weird guns, at least find one that doesn’t suck to shoot, like the HK VP70.

Video Works

If you’ve noticed that my output here on Primer Peak has been a little light, it’s due to my increased output of videos. If you want to see my anguish with the R51 in video form, check out the video below!

Additional Reading & Patreon Link

Below are some related articles from past April Fool’s, or articles related to the guns mentioned here:

If you’d like to support me on Patreon, I’ve got the link for that here. Nearly everything that I do on Primer Peak is paid for out of my own pocket, and my content is not shilled or driven by manufacturers or companies. If you decide to donate, I’d really appreciate it, as it would allow for me to continue to bring you quality work.

Paul Whaley

Paul Whaley is a guy with an interest in practical and defensive pistol shooting techniques with an eye for quality gear. He has received training from Holistic Solutions Group, John Johnston of Citizens Defense Research, Darryl Bolke, Cecil Birch, and Chuck Haggard. When not trying to become a better shooter, he can be found enjoying a Resident Evil game or listening to Warren Zevon.