SCCY CPX 2 Problems [& Solutions]

Today, we’re going to be talking about the SCCY CPX 2. This affordable, striker-fired pistol is an appealing option to a lot of people who want to be able to carry a firearm but are on a relatively low budget. To help decide if that’s a good option for you, we’ll start with a little bit about the company as well as the firearm itself.

From there, we’ll go through three of the major issues that we’ve heard about, and offer solutions to each. Once that’s done, we’ll end things with our overall take on the SCCY CPX2 in terms of whether or not we would consider carrying one.

All firearms have their own issues people typically run into. This list is not meant to necessarily be an indictment against the CPX-2 but instead an informational article to help gun owners know how to fix anything they may encounter in normal usage.

About the Company and the Gun

SCCY is a Florida-based firearms manufacturer aimed at making affordable handguns in the USA: all of their parts, labor, and assembly are from the US as well. The CPX series comes with a lifetime warranty. For most folks, this means that you’ll be shipping the gun back in for service, but if you happen to be within driving distance, you can also simply walk in.

The SCCY does not reinvent the wheel: it’s a compact, hammer-fired pistol that’s meant for concealed carry. It has a heavy double-action trigger that acts as the safety, holds a total of 11 rounds, and comes with a polymer frame. In a word, it’s a basic gun design that’s meant to work well for a wide variety of people who want a concealed carry firearm.

We always support Made in USA products, and this is especially true of affordable firearms. The fact that there is customer service based right here in the US, as opposed to dealing with importers and a string of other problems is something worth considering heavily when considering using a firearm over the long term as a concealed carry weapon.

1. Failure to Extract

A failure to extract is when the gun fires and cycles, but the spent casing does not eject, making the gun incapable of firing until the gun is cleared. These can come from a variety of causes, including dud ammunition, low-powered rounds such as subsonic, or some kind of metallurgy or geometry error in the extractor claw and spring of the firearm.

In the case of the SCCY, based on what we’ve read, we think that the main issue here is with the extractor being tuned poorly or installed out of specification.

Solution

Fixing this will require that you send the firearm back to SCCY. This will mean that you’ll be without your firearm for several weeks, but, luckily, everything we’ve read about SCCY’s customer service has been positive, so they’ll likely do everything they can to make sure that you’re taken care of.

To see if it is an issue with the extractor and not ammunition, we do recommend testing your CPX 2 with several brands and types of ammunition to see if the issue is with ammo rather than with the firearm itself. Hopefully, that is the case, and you’ll be back up and running in no time.

2. Magazine-Induced Slide Issues

Some CPX 2 shooters have reported that their guns either fail to lock open when the last round is fired or stay open when the slide lock is used. Others have the opposite problem and find the gun has been locked tightly shut after a magazine is inserted.

Both of these seem to share a common cause: the springs in the factory magazines are sometimes put in backward. This leads to the feed lips on the magazine being spread too wide and thus making it nearly impossible for the gun to function normally.

Solution

To remedy this issue, some people have simply taken apart the magazines themselves and reversed the springs, which resolved the issue for them. We might take a different approach if we were planning on using those magazines to concealed carry, and might instead insist that SCCY send us replacement magazines, which we would then test with several hundred rounds before deeming them safe for use. Magazines are often a failure point for handguns generally, so it’s concerning that it’s an assembly flaw that might be relatively common among CPX 2 magazines from the factory. 

3. Failure to Feed

Some people also experience failures to feed with their CPX 2. This is when the rounds from the magazine do not, for whatever reason, feed into the chamber. A failure to feed can come from several sources, including ammunition that does not work well with the feed ramp, bad feed ramp geometry, or weak magazine springs.

Solution

Check your grip and ensure your hand does not contact the slide when it comes back.

If your CPX is already having slide issues, we would suspect the magazines to be the general issue with the gun, and some replacements are in order. Before you do that, however, it might be a good idea to try ball ammunition first. Some firearms do not feed well with hollow-point ammunition because the edge of the round catches on the feed ramp.

No matter if this is an issue or not, the general advice here is to test a lot of the ammunition that you plan to carry, with the magazines that you plan on carrying. A backup magazine is also a good idea in case your first magazine has an issue that you can’t predict. Overall, this issue is a common enough one with many handguns that it’s not surprising to see here, though it is still a concern.

Conclusion

The three issues that we outline here, if we’re being very frank with you, make us deeply concerned about using the SCCY CPX 2 as a daily carry firearm. The price on these is affordable, but if the firearms have a tendency to have failures at several points in the firing cycle, and all of them are well documented, we might well look elsewhere.

If you’re looking for a relatively affordable concealed carry option, we would suggest looking for a used, especially police trade-in Glock. They often have some finish wear, but have very few rounds through them, meaning that you can get a great gun for less money.