Remington’s R51 pistol generated huge amounts of buzz among gun geeks when it was first publicly announced, and going into SHOT Show it was—perhaps even more than the Glock 42—primed to be “the belle of the ball” on Media Day at the Range.

But then she didn’t show.

While there were plenty of R51s in the Remington booth at SHOT, none made it to Media Day, hinting that the gun wasn’t quite ready for prime time. In the months following SHOT, the pistols have trickled into gun shops, and the quality assurance and range performance of early production guns seems to be disconcerting.

Remington sent me an R51 for review, and I was able to take it out to the range briefly today. What follows are my first impressions of this interesting new/old design.

Other than a skeletonized trigger that looks slightly out of place, the R51 is an attractive pistol that is obviously modern in design, while echoing it’s roots in the original R51 design that was introduced almost a century ago.

An aluminum-framed pistol, the R51 feels significant in the hand, unlike polymer-framed guns that somehow feel less… legitimate, for some reason. The pistol fit my hand very well, and pointed intuitively. Exterior fit and finish was well done for a pistol in this price range, though they might have used a bit less lubricant on it at the factory; oil constantly seeped from the slide-frame juncture the entire range session.

The 3-dot sights were contoured to prevent snagging and provided a nice sight picture with just a sliver of daylight on either side of the front post.

The only “problem” I had with the R51’s ergonomics was that I found it difficult to press the magazine release with my shooting hand without slightly changing my grip. This is actually a problem for me on most pistols, so perhaps it is more of an issue with me having short thumbs than it is a problem with the gun. There must be hobbit somewhere in my family tree.

The pistol came with 2 seven-round metal magazines, that fit flush in the butt of the pistol. Once on the firing line at my local range and facing off against a menacing head-and-torso steel plate ten yards away, I prepared each magazine from a 50-round box of 115 grain American Eagle 9mm.

I’d braced myself for the first shot, and slowly increased tension on the trigger.

Bang-Ding!

The first shot broke cleanly and hit where I’d aimed, and the death-grip that I had on the pistol anticipating substantial recoil (based upon some other reviews I read) turned out to be unnecessary. I relaxed back into my normal and more relaxed 60/40 isosceles (60% of the grip strength in the support hand over the 40% grip strength in the shooting hand) and fired the remaining six rounds of the first magazine without incident. I’m not entirely ashamed to admit that I had lousy trigger control and one of the shots went “splut” into the muddy berm behind the steel; I am not a pistolero by any stretch.

I dropped the empty magazine and inserted a fresh one, then hit the slide stop, allowing the slide to run forward, chambering a round. I aimed carefully at the target, slowly applied pressure to the trigger and… nothing.

A quick look at the pistol (shown above) showed that the pistol was just out of battery, with the slide perhaps 1/10th of an inch open. I slapped the back of the slide to seat the round, and fired the rest of the magazine without any hitches (other than my horrible tendency to get lazy and jerk the trigger). I did notice that there is no discernible reset in the R51’s trigger, but it didn’t seem to be a huge issue considering the relatively short trigger pull.

This failure to go into battery was something that I’ve encountered on a few pistols over the years and didn’t bother me terribly much; pulling the slide to the rear is the preferred method taught these days, and generally prevents this issue.

On the last round of the third magazine, the slide locked back with one round left in the chamber. I’m not willing to blame this on the R51—at least without a lot more rounds downrange—because I’m concerned that because of my high-thumb grip, I might have activated the slide stop (above).

The first six shots out of the R51 in this magazine, however, were a dream. I was quickly settling into the pistol, and for the first time in well, ever, I felt confident in my ability to make repeated head shots at 10 yards as long as I didn’t get over-excited and jerk the trigger. The R51’s fixed barrel seems to be quite accurate, when the shooter follows decent technique.

The fourth seven-round magazine ran through the R51 swimmingly, as did the first 6 shots of the fifth magazine, before I experienced another locked-back slide on the final round. This time, I was almost certain that “operator error” was to blame. I need to keep my thumbs down and off the slide-stop.

Magazines six and seven ran through the R51 like champs and I was beginning to really enjoy myself with the R51, when I once again used the slide stop to release the slide and the pistol failed to go all the way into battery. A slap on the back of the slide, and I was back in business. As long as I followed technique and retracted the slide to chamber a round, the gun fed great.

Then, something bizarre happened on the fourth round of the eighth magazine. Previously, I was able to attribute the failures to feed and the failures to go into battery to my questionable technique, but this felt completely different… and it was, as the photo above (sort of) shows.

Despite apparently being oriented correctly, the cartridge hung up on the way to the chamber and stopped with the bullet in the chamber, but with the case rim itself hung up on something.

I tapped the back of the slide to see if it would go into battery, and when that failed, I pulled back and the gun felt as if it were locked up. A little concerned that there might be a real issue here, I dropped the magazine out of the pistol got a firm grip on the grip and the slide, and pulled hard. After some momentary resistance, the slide flew open and the round popped free.

Picking up the lodged round, I found something quite out of the ordinary.

The lip of the cartridge case had hung up hard on something inside the R51, and the brass case was actually torn.

Now, was there perhaps simply a small bulge in the case mouth that caused the cartridge to hang up? Did I create the tear when I tapped the slide to try to put the gun into battery?

Both are indeed possible, but I don’t think it is likely.

I’m reasonably sure that the cartridge mouth caught up on a protruding part within the R51, causing the gun to lock up tightly.

As you can see in the photo above, there is a “thingy” (that’s a highly technical gunsmithing term) that protrudes from the left side of the interior of the slide. It appears that the round caught against this part, causing the jam. I suspect that the slide itself cycled briskly enough to cause the tear in the cartridge brass, and the torn case jammed the action shut.

What I don’t know—and don’t pretend to know—is why this happened at all, and only once. After my range session was complete I policed up all my brass. I didn’t find any indication that any other round had brushed up against this part og the R51’s internals, much less impacted it with any force as the one failed cartridge did.

If you think you have a plausible explanation for what occurred, I’d love to hear it.

After photographing and tossing the damaged round, I ran through the rest of the FMJ  in the box without any issues at all. At the end of 50 rounds I’d had several stoppages, but all but the torn case could have been “operator error” to one degree or another, and perhaps addressed with better technique.

I then decided to see how the R51 would fair with some “old school” open tip JHPs from Hornady.

At today’s ammo prices I wasn’t going to burn through a lot of rounds, but I wanted to ensure that the pistol would cycle open-tip JHPs. I was also curious as to whether or not the recoil of the slightly heavier defensive ammunition would be noticeably different.

As it turned out, the difference in recoil impulse, if there was any, was very slight.

It did, however have an interesting failure to feed that I can’t explain.

Once again, on the last round, there was what I first thought was another instance of me perhaps hitting the slide stop, but when I looked closely, I noticed that something unusual had happened.

The slide had stopped, but the slide stop had not been engaged.

I pulled the slide to the rear and engaged the slide stop, and noticed that the cartridge had been pushed partially forward in the magazine (above), but that it hadn’t chambered. I was able to eject the magazine without altering the bullet’s orientation within the magazine.

This was a very unusual failure to feed that I can’t really explain. Unlike the torn case on the FMJ round, there were no markings on the case suggesting that it had been hung up on anything. I remain perplexed over precisely what occurred.

Conclusion

The Remington R51 is a nice-looking pistol that points well and that for me, shoots very accurately. While I encountered a number of brief stoppages in this first brief range session, the majority of them may have been shooter induced, and at least one of them certainly was.

The “hard stop” encountered with the torn case was the most disconcerting part of an otherwise pleasant experience. It is most likely that this was a problem with the firearm instead of the ammunition, but the later is possible. The failure to feed issue with the JHP might be related, but it is difficult to tell.

My overall first impression is that the Remington R51 is fun to shoot, accurate, attractive, and that it has a lot going for it. It may turn out to be a solid performer at it’s price point once it gets through the normal birthing pains that typically occur in the first year of the release of a new design.

Would I bet my life on it as my primary carry gun? No, not yet. But if the design becomes more reliable over time, I may very well have to consider the R51 as a good option for concealed carry.