Salty’s Gun Fails: Ruger Mini-30

The Ruger Mini-30 might actually be a good gun, but if so, I’ve personally seen no evidence of it. My version and ownership experience of this firearm is best described as a fiasco.

The Ruger Mini-30 

Here at 3BY I am posting short gun reviews for “survival guns” that I own and use, from my own personal perspective. The views expressed are my own, and I will pull no punches… these are guns I own (or have owned and moved on from) and shoot (or shot), and I address them from a “prepping/survival perspective”.

Sometimes, the guns turn out to be a complete piece of junk, as I share in these reviews for the ISSC Glock clone, the Chiappa .22 1911 clone and the Chiappa Little Badger.

Today’s review is more a “trip down misery lane” than an actual review about MY Ruger Mini-30. I don’t claim that ALL Ruger Mini-30’s are like this, I am just reviewing the one I owned. 

Buckle up, this one’s gonna get rough.

The Ruger Mini-30 Ranch “Tacticool rifle”

I bought this gun about 3 years ago, it was kind of an impluse buy.

I was in my favorite local gun store trading in another gun, and I saw the Mini 30 “Tacticool” and thought to myself “you know, self, you’ve got a bazillion rounds of 7.62×39 in storage, and the only “normal’ looking rifles you have to shoot them with is your stock SKS… SO… self, why not get a “normal” looking quality American made rifle to saw through some of that ammo?”

So… I bought almost exactly what I thought I was getting…

I bought a “normal” looking American made rifle. It was great, as long as I didn’t do something crazy with it… like, say, load it with ammunition and try to shoot it.

Notice I left out the word “quality” in what I bought. Why? Because this thing is a piece of absolute garbage. I guess it does, technically, possess a quality level, and it’s somewhere below “very poor” and “you’ve got to be kidding me”.

When I first penned this article, I originally wrote it as a blog post years ago when I still owned the gun, so it’s written in the present tense. I think the disgust shines through in the writing so I am going to leave it and let’s just pretend I still own it, m’kay?

Let’s jump right to the bottom line then work back through the details

Bottom line, here’s what stinks about the gun.

1) It won’t reliably shoot steel case ammo.

2) It won’t reliably shoot ANY ammo.

3) The gun jams, a LOT. And by a LOT I mean multiple times per magazine, no matter WHAT ammo I put in it, from Tula to Golden Bear to Golden Tiger to Winchester White Box to Hornady Zombie SST to PPU Soft Points, doesn’t matter. Failure To Load, Failure to eject, stovepipers, you name it.

4) Even if the gun does fire , it’s likely to as not have the safety malfunction. 

I bought the gun, brand spanking new at my favorite gun shop. First I field stripped it, cleaned out all the packing grease as the manual directed, then I took it out to the range for a test run.

I didn’t get 10 rounds through it before the safety jammed on. That’s right, the safety literally jammed turning the trigger group into a brick.

The first trip back to the gun shop

I took it back to the gun shop, the gunsmith fiddled with it and it worked, for a while. It was still having jamming issues, so I took it out to see what, if any ammo, the thing would eat.

Jams. Failure to load. Failure to fire. Misfires. Failure to eject. Stovepipes. Not just occasionally, but every three or four rounds.

I started using good brass full metal jacketed bullets (FMJ) thinking since every other 7.62×39 I own loves them, that the Ruger Mini-30 would. On the third round, the safety malfunctioned again.

I am DONE with this thing. It’s going back to the LGS, and going back to Ruger for repair. The minute I get it back, it’s going onto the consignment rack. 

Back to the gun shop it went

This time, they sent the gun back to Ruger (at my expense, of course). It was gone a month and Ruger returned it to me after having made “adjustments” to it.

I disassembled it, cleaned it, took it out to the range and you know what? It was worse. The trigger group simply wouldn’t operate correctly.

Back to the gun shop again

Ruger wouldn’t just send a trigger group, they had to have the whole danged thing back, so we sent it back and the fixed gun didn’t make it through 10 shots before the trigger group simply fell out of it.

Not as in the latch came loose, but as in the trigger group fell out without being opened. There was something wrong with the latching mechanism that held it in; the trigger group fell out and the gun literally disassembled itself in my hand. I have never seen anything like it.

I took the gun back to the gun shop, and the shop owner field stripped the gun down and looked it over. He shook his head, saying it looked good to him, couldn’t understand the jamming, then he reassembled it correctly. He pulled back the charging handle and the trigger group fell out of the gun and broke the top of his glass counter. The whole trigger group simply fell out of the gun (and YES, it was in place properly, just as I had it before when at the range). 

Back to the factory it went (this time on HIS nickle).

In the end, Ruger replaced just about everything but the stock on the gun. New receiver (I had to do the paperwork all over again), new barrel, new trigger group, the whole shebang.

SO… I took it to the range… and… 

The nearly completely new gun would run a 20 round magazine of high quality brass ammo through it with only the occasional jam.

Steel case? Nope. 

I had one friend say to me “well, if you didn’t shoot that steel case Russian junk…” but that’s a stupid argument… the entire POINT of making a gun in 7.62×39 is to shoot cheap Russian junk ammo. There’s no other reason to make a gun in this chambering… it has no advantages over standard American sizing other than you can get cheap imported ammo in the caliber. 

I’m not even going to write a full review on this thing like normal, it’s just junk and I will leave it at that. I am sure I got a bad copy yadda yadda don’t care, it stinks, a $700 rifle should go bang out of the box. It should not have MULTIPLE, UNRELATED firing issues. I’ve been waiting on doing a review on it until I found some way to get this thing to work, but I’m done with it.

It’s junk. 

Here are pictures if you care. I don’t, it stinks.

It looks really cool, which is why I bought it. Then again, my psycho hose-beast former girlfriend looked really cool when I first saw her.
I regret laying my eyes on both of them.

Flash suppressor! Best functioning thing on the gun, since when I took this the safety had already malfunctioned.
No matter what, until the gun is disassembled and the part is put back into place, there will be NO muzzle flash!

This is where the magazine goes. If it functioned correctly, this would allow the bullets to get loaded into the chamber.
In reality, this is where the magazine goes, right before it jams.

This is an “M1” styled action only in looks. M1’s generally function. This one just LOOKS like a gun that works.

Here is the trigger. It’s not supposed to be jammed back like that. That is a malfunction. Again. 

The funky Ruger scope mount thingy. The gun comes with scope rings. 

Here’s my “review” stuff, if you care:

Tale Of The Tape:

Here’s the specs on my Ruger Mini 30 Range Cow Pie

Stock: Synthetic
Capacity: 20+1 (not that it will actually fire them without jamming or malfunctioning)
Finish: Blued
Barrel Length: 18.5″
Overall Length: 36.75 Inches
Front Sight: Blade
Rear Sight: Peep
Scope Rails: Sorta: has that weird Ruger mount thing.
Weight: 6.75 LBS
Ammunition: Never found any that would actually shoot out of the dumb thing without jamming it or breaking it, or like today, BOTH.

Shooting:

See above

My momma taught me not to swear

I can’t tell you what I REALLY think of this gun, since this is a G-rated website. 

I no longer own the gun. Since Ruger’s warranty is non-transferable, I shot the gun enough to know that all of the multiple serious manufacturing defects were taken care of. I didn’t want to pass junk onto somebody else, so other than the fact that it woudn’t reliably shoot steel cased ammo, it did function more or less.

I traded it in on a Sig Sauer 556IX 7.62×39 (plus some cash) at my local gun store. They knew all of the troubles I had with it (I shipped it back through them) and they basically gave me 100 percent credit on the gun towards the purchase of the Sig (there’s a reason they are my gun shop… and you probably won’t get that kind of deal from them until you’ve purchased 30 or more guns as I have from them), plus a discount on the Sig.

What really drove me nuts

The problem I was having that drove me nuts wasn’t the misfires (OK, truth is they did drive me to distraction but that wasn’t the worst thing), it was the fact that every 3 or 4 shots the trigger would simply lock up. I had to disassemble the gun and reseat the safety, there was too much play in it.

I put it back together, reseated the trigger group, took it into the store to tell them about it, showed them that it was properly assembled, racked the bolt to show them that it was empty and the trigger group fell out again and landed with a crack on the the glass counter (lucky the counter didn’t break), and the gun barrel/receiver popped lose. THAT was my real concern… first time it was the safety jamming up inside the trigger group, then it was just complete chaos.

When I got it back they had replaced much of the gun. It worked. I sold it.