For an unremarkable series of pistols like those made by the now defunct SCCY, or in this case SKYY (the company’s original name), their pistols take up a lot of space on my mental hard drive. I recently found an O.G. Gen 1 SKYY, which is a SCCY before the forced name change. That got me thinking about the entire gun industry as it’s gone through quite the slump in recent years.
When I say “slump,” I mean returning to normal after the great COVID boom. During the subsequent the slowdown, we’ve seen several companies fall, along with the decline of several others. One of those no longer with us is SCCY.
Joe Roebuck founded SKYY in 2003. He was a tool-and-die maker and a mechanical engineer. He decided to get into the gun business to produce a fairly simple and affordable semi-auto handgun. He initially named the company SKYY, but the SKYY Vodka people didn’t appreciate that and sent him a cease and desist letter.
The company then went from SKYY to SCCY. That makes my SKYY CPX-1 a fairly rare gun. Then again, no one collects SKYY pistols, so rare doesn’t equal valuable.
There was a rumor that Roebuck was a former KelTec employee who allegedly stole the design for the KelTec P11. That, however, wasn’t true. Joe Roebuck never worked for KelTec. The CPX-1 and the P11 might be very similar, but the P11 wasn’t anything particularly weird or different. Polymer frame, hammer-fired, DAO, double-stack pistols aren’t exactly revolutionary.
The rumor then shifted to claiming that SKYY SCCY poached employees from KelTec. It became such a persistent rumor that I heard it as gunstore gossip more than once. That’s never been confirmed and I doubt a company that was both new and smaller could offer enough to poach employees to design their first gun.
The Early Days of SCCY
SCCY, then SKYY, didn’t make a great first impression on KelTec fans, which likely is why the accusations and rumors spread so fast. It also didn’t help that the two companies were located only a short distance apart.
I spent a lot of time on gun forums as a teenager. With a dial-up connection, forums were about the only part of the internet that loaded up within my limited attention span. Don’t tell the forum moderators, but I was like 12 when I lied on the membership sign-up forms.
I think the statute of limitations on that has passed, but just to be safe, keep that between you and me. One of those early forums was KTOG, aka the KelTec forum. It was one of many I browsed back then. I wasn’t much of a poster, but I was a voracious reader.
I don’t remember seeing the post originally, but a user named SKYYgunuser showed up on the forum and ripped their beloved P-11 to pieces, touting the SKYY CPX-1 as a much better gun. The forum posters sniffed him out and discovered that SKYYgunuser was…a SKYY employee. That was later confirmed, and the employee was, in fact, the vice president of SKYY at the time.
Shaking off the Pain
SCCY might have had a rocky start with dedicated budget gun enthusiasts, but that didn’t stop them from getting off the ground. If you were buying guns at any time between 2003 and 2025, you likely saw a pile of SCCY pistols in your local gun store. They made several models in a range of different colors, some of which were quite eye-catching. (I don’t mean that in a good way.)
SCCY started with the CPX-1, but when you put a ‘1’ in the title, you kind of assume that there will be sequels. The original CPX-1 was a double-action-only, hammer-fired pistol with a ten-round magazine that fell into the subcompact size range. It featured a completely unnecessary ambidextrous manual safety.
While unnecessary, a lot of people who aren’t gun people still want a manual safety, and SCCY knew their audience.
They introduced a second generation pistol design that refined the grip texture. The Gen2 seems to be the most-produced generation. We then got the CPX-2, which was the same gun without the manual safety.
The CPX-3 was the CPX-2, but now in .380. The CPX-4 was the .380, but with an ambidextrous manual safety. Some of the Gen2 guns were also equipped with the Roebuck quad lock. This was a patented barrel-to-slide locking system that locked the barrel to the slide at four locations. The quad lock promised minimal barrel play and increased accuracy.
What made the SCCY pistols appealing wasn’t their design or even the colors, but the fact that they simply looked better than other cheap handguns at the time. In 2003, people associated Lorcins and Davis Industry guns as cheap guns — and they were — but they were also butt ugly.
Looks matter and the SCCY, especially the second generation guns, looked higher quality than the competition.
The Next Generation
SCCY would later introduce a Gen3, and all of them had the quadlock and eliminated the finger grooves on the grip. SCCY also swapped the sight profile to accommodate GLOCK 43-pattern sights. Oh, and they added a tiny rail for some reason. It seems that only the CPX-1 and CPX-2 models received the Gen3 treatment.
Along the way, they introduced the RD optic-ready models. The RD guns often come with a mounted Crimson Trace red dot, but some just had a Shield RMSc cut. There were both Gen3 and Gen2 RD models.
SCCY later introduced the DVG-1, a very similar design that was striker-fired rather than hammer-fired. These would get the red dot treatment as well as a flat trigger. They appear to be a Gen2-style grip, but also featured the Roebuck quadlock.
Was SCCY Any Good?
Oh boy, just asking that stirs up a hornet’s nest. No, I don’t think the SKYY I have is any good. The trigger is horrendous and the safety isn’t only unnecessary but is also a downside. At least once a magazine, the gun will recoil enough that my hand will accidentally engage the the lever, rendering the gun incapable of firing.
The pistol has the recoil you’d expect from a subcompact 9mm, so it’s snappy. The grip is a bit on the thick side, so it fills the hand nicely, helping to keep recoil-induced pain down. The sights and accuracy are fine, but nothing stellar. That long, heavy trigger pull makes the gun unenjoyable to shoot.
It’s tough to go fast and accurately beyond bad-breath distance. The grip feels like recycled soda bottles, but hey, the slide’s stainless! The finger grooves weren’t designed for my hands and feel unnatural.
Some of that is a bit of a skill issue. I have a hard time maintaining constant grip pressure while working the DAO trigger with such a small grip. Some guns just don’t work well for some people.
Trying to score anything close to an acceptable Bill Drill is nearly impossible for me. If it’s just slow fire, I can put rounds on target, but the second I have to go fast…well, it doesn’t always work.
The SCCY or SKYY will go bang, but that’s about it. Sometimes, when you’re cash-strapped, that’s plenty good enough.
These guns were cheap, which was a benefit in itself. However, they also seemed to break fairly often. You can find lots and lots of photos out there of SCCY pistols with cracked frames, exploded slides, and more. When they broke, they tended to break quite dramatically.
SCCY and Success
SCCY appeared to be pretty successful for over the two decades they were around. With a price point starting at $200 to $250, they carved out a nice niche for themselves. They were able to keep their prices low by doing the vast majority of their metalwork in-house. The guns also didn’t look bad. They were certainly better looking than a Hi-Point.
It was easy for gun stores to move them given the low price point. With decent visual appeal, they sold themselves pretty well in the budget market. Plus, they were fairly small and easy to carry and SCCY came around right about the time concealed carry really began exploding in popularity.
While I don’t care for the Robin’s Egg Blue, the Leopard print, or pink grips, they did appeal to a wider majority of people. Expanding frame colors made them eye-catching, and if you caught a customer’s eye, they might look at the price tag, and when they saw it was a fairly cheap gun, the sale certainly seemed easy.
SCCY did back every gun with a transferable lifetime warranty. It followed the gun, not the buyer. Until 2016, SCCY even offered replacement for stolen firearms as long as there was a valid police report.
The company kept up with a changing market. The DVG-1 introduced a striker-fired option, which to me was a lot more appealing than that hefty DAO trigger. Plus, they were quick to accommodate red dots, making them one of the few budget options to do so.
In 2017, SCCY announced a Tennessee expansion that eventually fell through. That was likely an expensive failure for them.
SCCY Falls
As we entered the 2020s, the market exploded thanks to COVID. That benefitted just about all gunmakers and I’m sure SCCY saw rising sales. They also saw rising competition. New guns from Taurus and Ruger were always in competition and others became even more aggressive. Palmetto State Armory introduced the Dagger series, which offered a low-priced GLOCK Gen 3 clone.
The budget market expanded rapidly, and the post-COVID market collapsed pretty hard after 2021. That seems to be where SCCY began its downfall. In 2024, the company laid off its staff and suspended production. In the spring of 2025, the Volusia County Tax Collector posted a formal seizure notice for over a quarter million dollars.
By June, 2025, the firm’s machinery and raw materials were liquidated at a public auction. In August 2025, SCCY filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy listing millions in liabilities. With that, SCCY was no more.
The good news is that there are still so many SCCYs out there that it will be quite some time before they disappear…if ever. They’re still cheap on the used market, and of the last five gun stores I’ve been to, a few still had new old SCCY pistols in stock. So if you want one — and you probably don’t — you can still get one.