Many shooters love the little .22 caliber round. It’s a quiet, cheap (usually) and lacks any recoil. It’s a very accurate little round as well. A .22 pistol can provide hours upon hours of plinking pleasure. Many also love little odd ball guns… they don’t have to have a purpose, they just have to work and be fun to shoot.

The USAF ZIP is definitely an odd ball pistol. It’s a bullpup configuration, meaning the magazine and action is behind the trigger. The charging handle is beside the barrel, and it features a secondary handle for a restrike capability without ejection. The Zip uses the plentiful 10/22 magazines, and works best with the Ruger factory mags.

It’s a cool idea, and unusual appearance, but does it work? The short answer is, unfortunately, barely. Of all the rounds fired in a recent test, it never worked consistently for one full mag. In fact, it couldn’t function properly for five rounds in a row. The weapon is a mess of failure to ejects, failure to fires, and stovepipes. The restrike capability was also a mess – many times it actually just ejects the round about half way and then the bolt picks up the other round and causes a double feed.

The weapon looks cool, and seems like an awesome idea, but it fails when the trigger is pulled. Unfortunately we can’t recommend this oddball as “best” in any category.