The Lorcin L9: Garbage Pale Guns

If I walk into a pawn shop or gun store and see a used gun for less than a hundred bucks, I guarantee that I will buy it. I can’t help myself. I don’t care about the company, caliber, or design. As long as it works, it’s mine. That attitude has gotten several junk guns and some keepers. I got a Savage 311 for $30 once, and that’s fueled me ever since. My latest find was a Lorcin L9. I chatted up with the gun clerk and got it for $90 out the door with the purchase of another gun I was buying.

From the moment I laid eyes on the Lorcin, I knew exactly what I was dealing with. Cheap guns from the 1990s and early 2000s have a distinct appearance, and the Lorcin fits the bill perfectly. It had that unmistakable brick-like look with a shiny finish that’s hard to miss. The brushed chrome look is a trademark of these inexpensive firearms.

Most guns with that ‘look’ are .25 ACPs, maybe .22LRs or .380 ACPs. The L9, however, promised a 9mm, and it was more aesthetically pleasing than a Hi-Point. I was intrigued and thrilled about the potential learning experience and the fun it could provide for an article.

The Lorcin L9 And the Ring Of Fire

I’ve written many articles, and one of my all-time favorites was a long, expansive, and painfully researched article on the Ring of Fire and Saturday Night Special craze. While I loved writing it, it remains a dud in terms of views. Still, I learned a lot about the so-called Ring of Fire manufacturers and the cheap guns they pumped out year after year.

Lorcin was a Ring of Fire company. These companies are named as such due to their close proximity and the fact they made a circle when you traced a line from one to the other. The Ring of Fire companies included Davis Industries, Raven, Lorcin, and Sundance, and they often included Arcadia Machine and Tool simply due to their proximity. AMT made nice guns and shouldn’t be considered part of the ring of fire.

It’s a web of cheaply made handguns, lawsuits, and controversy. At one point, Lorcin produced almost half of all .380s in the country. Lorcin itself was sued out of existence. When the company filed for bankruptcy in 1996, it had 18 pending lawsuits. Lorcin faced troubles throughout its existence, including employees stealing guns, critical reviews, and media scrutiny.

The L9 In Hand

The L9 is a great big gun, and that separates it from most Ring of Fire guns. Most of these cheap guns were pocket-sized .25s and .22LRs, with some subcompact-sized .380s. The L9 is a full-sized handgun with a 4.5-inch barrel. It’s a straight blowback gun, which means it uses an unlocked breech that’s only held closed by the weight of the slide.

This is a very simple means of production used on cheap firearms. The L9’s slide is massive and quite bulky. It’s made from Zamak, a very soft metal commonly called pot metal. The L9 is a brick and weighs what feels like it weighs close to three pounds. The grip is an absolute brick. It’s crazy thick and quite a pain to hold onto.

The L9 comes with a double stack of magazines. Mine holds 10 rounds of ammo, but 13-round magazines also exist. The magazine release is an interesting design. It’s placed at the bottom of the grip, much like a Beretta tip-up gun magazine release. It’s a very small and inconvenient button design.

The magazine must be made of more rigid steel than the pot metal magazine release because the magazine release inside the gun has been worn away, and the magazine barely locks into the gun. The magazine will not lock into the gun when fully loaded, so I have to sacrifice one round to make it work.

Lorcin installed two safety features on the gun. We have the world’s smallest sliding safety on the grip. It slides up to make the gun safe and down to prepare it for fire. We also have a grip safety that requires you to actively press the safety inward against a very awkward grip angle.

Hitting the Range

I always wear eyes and ears when I shoot, but this was one of the few times I really needed to wear my eyes. Part of me looked at the L9 and thought, this is the kind of gun that will explode on you. I even made sure to use the tamest 9mm FMJs I had. As I write this, I still have both hands and eyes, so the gun didn’t explode.

As mentioned, the grip is a real pain. Why is it so wide? Is it because the cheap pot metal is weak, so you need a ton of it to ensure the gun’s strong enough to deal with 9mm power? It’s uncomfortable, but the overhang allows you to tuck your hand up high without getting any slide bite.

The sights are the same brush chrome as the gun but feature red dots on the sights to provide some contrast. The red dots work well enough to see the sights. Of course, that requires proper lighting. The brushed chrome finish reflects brightly if you find yourself at the right angle to any bright light, including the sun. It’s annoying but admittedly doesn’t make the gun impossible to use.

Ringing Steel

The trigger is weird. It’s gritty, heavy, and annoying; it’s just bad. The trigger seems to get heavier as it’s pulled, and the wall isn’t very detectable. It just pulls, gets heavier, and eventually fires. The result of that fire is a massive slide rocketing back toward you. This creates excessive recoil and muzzle rise, but it’s not painful or snappy. As the massive slide goes forward, it pushes the gun down and off target.

The gun just chugs rearward and then forward again. Both forward and rearward movements are distinct, affecting your ability to get back on target. I wasn’t even going to try to shoot a Bill Drill. Obviously, the gun doesn’t handle as well as a Glock or Sig Sauer handgun. However, it does shoot accurately enough to hit a 10-inch gong at 25 yards as long as I go slow.

The gun isn’t the most reliable weapon. The last round of every magazine would fail to eject. Remember, I could only load nine rounds for the magazine to seat correctly. If you were on a tight budget and needed a gun to protect yourself and your family, the L9 would work. I wouldn’t shoot it a ton because it’s likely to break, and you’ll likely be out of a few bucks. If it’s an option, I’d pick a Hi-Point over a L9.

The Age of the Saturday Night Special

The reason why American-made guns like the L9 sold so well is that gun prices used to be higher relative to everyday pay. These days, companies like Taurus are producing solid little guns at price points. The imports from Turkey aren’t fantastic, but they function better than pot metal guns. Sometimes, it’s nice to see how far the firearm industry has come, and the L9 is a great reminder of that.