I love it when companies subtly troll the ATF, gun grabbers, and the enemies of civil rights. Franklin Armory created a business that created weapons and accessories that rode the line between brilliant, crazy, and legal. They’re a company that created a lot of workarounds to existing laws. They weren’t the first company to do so. A company called Cobray made a business of creating controversial firearms that rode the line. One is the Cobray Terminator, which might be the world’s worst shotgun.
Cobray made lots and lots of weird stuff. I’m not sure if they were the first company to create .45 Colt/.410 handguns, but they were some of the early adopters. They famously created open-bolt MAC clones that could be easily converted to full auto. Cobray also produced a ton of full auto MACs for the transferable market before the Hughes Amendment.
They were not afraid to be controversial. In fact, they seemed to revel in controversy. This seemingly pushed them to produce controversial guns just for the sake of being controversial. This is why I think the Cobray Terminator exists. It’s a gun without a purpose other than to seemingly goad the ATF.
What’s The Cobray Terminator?
The Cobray Terminator is a single-shot 12-gauge built to be compact. It has all the markings of a ‘tactical’ shotgun from the 1990s. It’s short, has a collapsing stock, and a pistol grip. It’s far from traditional. Yet, it’s still a single shot shotgun. Single shots are mostly reserved for hunting. They are cheap, light, easy to handle, and effective for hunting.
Single-shot shotguns traditionally have long barrels, somewhere between 26 to 28 inches, and sometimes longer. They have wood, or maybe polymer, stocks, but they tend to be traditional. They don’t have collapsing stocks and pistol grips.
The Terminator certainly wasn’t a hunting shotgun. It also sucked as a tactical shotgun. Who wants a single-shot tactical shotgun? It made no sense. Factor in the groovy layout with the cutout Sten gun-like heat shield that gives it that 1980s look. It’s a gun without much of an identity.
It’s Also A Piece of Crap
Seriously, the Cobray Terminator is a piece of crap. It’s not just a weird single-shot shotgun. The Terminator is an open-bolt, slam-fire shotgun. It’s essentially not that much more complicated than a Zip gun. The barrel is a pipe inside of a pipe, and the only difference is a trigger releases the entire thing.
The Terminator uses an open bolt design, but the bolt isn’t slamming forward. Rather, it slams rearward around the shell, which allows the gun to fire. That’s kind of neat, but it’s not that handy for a shotgun. The rearward force of the bolt slamming rearward combines with the rearward recoil of the shotgun.
This means you get even more recoil than you’d expect from a lightweight, 12-gauge shotgun. Who wants more recoil? To make it even worse, once more, the stock is all metal, collapsing and uncomfortable. It creates even more pain when you deal with the 12-gauge recoil.
Open bolts suck in general and aren’t the safest design. Cobray uses the simplest safety possible. It’s just a notch that allows you to lock the bolt open, making it impossible to slam rearward. You’ll have to rotate the cocking handle to lock the bolt or to unlock the bolt.
The Terminator – A Rise and Fall
The Cobray Terminator was built from 1987 to 1990, and 1,452 Terminators were produced. The name Terminator works perfectly. Shotguns were big in the Terminator series, and the Cobray Terminator looks kind of like a Terminator from the 1980s films. It looks robotic and like it’s from a dystopian future.
John Foote designed the Terminator. Foote designed some interesting things. This includes a .22LR conversion for the M16, an automatic rifle, and a .22 pistol version of the Sterling SMG. He designed several submachine guns, a full auto shotgun, and several interesting designs. He was an interesting guy, but the Terminator wasn’t his finest moment.
The Cobray Terminator was a cheap gun at the time but has risen in value. It’s a bit collectible these days, and the notoriety of the gun has created a rising price point. It might be the worst shotgun ever created, but I won’t lie. I want one.
