***a minority of them are highly unsafe ***
On the rifle I saw, all the tool marks were still there. The rear sight was a small piece of angle iron with a hole drilled through it and spot welded tot he top of the barrel.
I still would not fire it.
Yep, that describes the last-ditch Type 99. Most of them had a 10mm hole drilled through the buttstock to take a cord. This was knotted off on one side, and the other end was tied to the foreend to make a "sling". It's not the crudeness that kills, though. It's the metallurgy. Most last-ditches were made with "wartime" steel, which meant that the steel melt was "stretched" with silica or some other inert material. This makes a more brittle final product, but it is still satisfactory-to a point. Some lots of steel contained far too high a proportion of filler. Guns made from this stuff can fail rather spectacularly as it has a tendency to break like glass. There wasn't much quality checking in 44/45, so some of these bombs got issued to the troops, and some of them ended up as bringbacks. My dad knew a fellow who was blinded by one. The lugs sheared right off of the bolt when he fired it.
Just to be honest, I wouldn't shoot one, either. There is really no way to know for 100% sure if you have a "bad" gun.