‘Accidental’ Machine Guns Recalled by Pistol Maker

Thousands of .22-caliber semiautomatic pistols called Scorpions, which may switch without warning to an automatic function, are being recalled by the manufacturer under an agreement reached with federal authorities, the government announced Thursday.

“A flawed part used in the manufacture of the Scorpion .22 semiautomatic pistol may cause the gun to malfunction, including turning the semiautomatic into an automatic,” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Director Stephen E. Higgins said in a statement.

In a semiautomatic weapon, a separate pull of the trigger is required for each shot. In an automatic weapon, one pull of the trigger can dispatch numerous shots. Congress in 1986 banned sales of automatic weapons made on or after May 15, 1986, to all purchasers except the armed services and law enforcement agencies.

The Scorpion is manufactured by Intertech U.S.A., a Miami-based firearms firm, according to ATF spokesman Jack Killorin.

The company says it has sold about 20,000 of the guns and has an additional 27,000 in a warehouse. The ATF will supervise the recall and repair to make sure the guns are working properly before they are allowed back on the market, ATF spokeswoman Dot Koester said.

The bureau became aware of the problem several weeks ago, when consumers began to complain, Koester said, adding that she did not believe the malfunction had caused any injuries.

“A guy takes it out into the back yard to shoot a can and all of a sudden his garage door falls apart,” she said, giving an example of the type of complaint the ATF received on the gun which generally sells for about $200.

After the complaints started coming in, the ATF “sent some of our agents out to buy them off the shelves to test them, and we found the same thing,” Koester said. “Some of them may be all right, but nobody knows for sure.”

“ATF has obtained an agreement from Intertech to recall the Scorpions and to repair them,” the bureau said in a statement. Dealers and owners were advised to contact the manufacturer concerning the recall.

The malfunction in the gun stems from “not using enough heat when they tempered one part of the firearm,” Koester said. “According to our firearms technology people, this can be easily remedied.”

Intertech had given blueprints of the gun to ATF before it began producing them in April, 1988, she said, adding that such an action went beyond government regulations and was not required.

“Unfortunately their blueprint did not take into account this flaw of the heat,” she said.

Negotiations with the firm that resulted in the recall took two days, Wednesday and Thursday, she said.

Asked if the gun’s occasional automatic firepower might make it attractive to criminals who would try to buy it, Koester said: “We hope not.

“The gun really is a danger because it does malfunction,” she said. “It’s not dependable that it will shift into automatic. It really is a broken gun, so it would be really stupid of them to do that.”

The same company manufactures the Tech 9, another semiautomatic pistol that is equipped with a threaded barrel for silencers.