With the Assault Weapons Ban five years in the grave, George Kellgren's Grendel P30 is back for a return engagement as the Kel-Tec PMR-30. It's still hideously ugly, but now it's hideously ugly in a different and modern way.
Of all the 30-shot .22WMR semiautomatic pistols on the market, it's by far the best.
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Aimed squarely at the FN FiveseveN pistol?
I think Cossack nailed it. 10 more rounds of capacity, easier to find and cheaper to buy ammo. Every bit as ugly.
But, but, it's tacticool - with a rail 'n everything...
nauseating!
And so new Kel Tec has yet to add it to their web site.
I just want to find a Kel-Tec P9. Hen's teeth around here.
More capacity, cheaper ammo, commoner ammo, and no Ft. Hood association. I expect it to sell decently.
Hell, I might go for one depending on what they want for it. Thing gives me the giggles just looking at it.
Oh, I want one. With a laser.
And, when this does well, I want a .22lr version to be released (although I also want a .22lr upper for my P-3AT, too...).
So, with the mag release on the heel, I suppose they're figuring nobody will ever need a 2nd mag?
How long before the 17HMR conversion is available?
Given the track record of .17HMR in self-loaders, I'd be surprised if there was one.
Actually, given the number of problems with .22WMR autos lately, I find Kel-Tec's timing a little surprising. .22WMR is not the same as .22LR; an out-of-battery incident in the latter sprays bits of case, in the former it sprays bits of gun.
Dang. 30 rounds of anything in a pistol is pretty wild stuff.
I'm curious to see their solution to getting that many rimmed cartridges to feed reliably from a pistol mag. There's a reason everyone's not doing it already with .22 WMR or .22LR. It's hard.
Bill Ruger went to the trouble of designing a rotary magazine in the 10/22 rifle to solve the problem of getting a lot of rimmed cartridge capacity in a short vertical space and avoiding rimlock. That works for a rifle, but requires too much horizontal space for a pistol butt.
Want. Even with the spotty quality of the original Grendel P30
I was trying to figure out why, if the weight was important, was the thing in mag instead of long rifle. I mean 22LR itself takes a tremendous hit in velocity from a short barrel, I'm sure WMR does the same. Now I see why when looking at your link of the Grendel. 22WMR is quite a bit longer and probably works better in the magazine
Oleg on his eljay page ( I don't do LJ) says the magazines he has were made on a 3D printer. It would be neat to have them upload the plans to thingiverse.com Probably would totally freak out the MAKEbot people.
3D extruding printers, talk about your personal disruptive technology....
It caught my attention for a few minutes when I was in a bizarre-high-velocity-autoloader-that-shoots-cheap-nonreloadable-ammo state of mind.
Then I came to my senses and started thinking about a CZ 52.
Then I came to my senses and started thinking about a CZ 52 with lots of firing pins.
There, fixed it for you. :)
Les,
"I'm curious to see their solution to getting that many rimmed cartridges to feed reliably from a pistol mag."
Its magazine is surprisingly conventional. You'll see the old Grendel ones at gun shows sometimes; they were bringing as much as $500 on auction sites, no matter what the Blue Book says, thanks to their extreme cultiness. Bad timing killed them: They had barely hit store shelves when the AWB came along...
Of course, .22WMR loses quite a bit of oomph in the short pistol barrel, and makes a pretty impressive flash-bang.
I wonder if the PMR30 might be good as a "granny gun." Something with this many rounds of low-recoil ammunition in a full-sized gun, especially one that can take a laser, seems like it has some potential.
Guess I'll stick to my wheel guns. The Colt AR 22 rifle is great.
I had one of the original P30’s. Loved it, mine was 100% reliable and decently accurate.
I traded it for a car many years ago, wish I still had it.
Boy, that sure do put the "Ug" in "Ugly", don't it?
Yeesh, you'd think Kel-tec would, at some point, hire (or at least intern) an industrial designer capable of drawing a non-hideous firearm.
They are the Buell of the firearm world.
The funniest thing about this odd-looking pistol is that is has an extremely good trigger, on par with a good 1911. The gun itself is extremely light and has decent sights. I have little use for 22WMR but the actual firearm is very appealing. It's designer Tobias (who also designed the RFB trigger) really got it right. Pretty much the only down side is the long (front to back) grip due to the long cartridge.
Oleg,
Can you give the trigger's takeup and overtravel, in mm? That was one of the things that bothered me about the original.
Also, you say "designer"; could you enumerate some of the mechanical differences between this and Kellgren's original P-30? At a glance, they appear to be largely cosmetic.
Of course, .22WMR loses quite a bit of oomph in the short pistol barrel, and makes a pretty impressive flash-bang.
This is the main reason I wouldn't get one.
It strikes me as having two roles: range toy (for which no justification is required, but I have enough of those) and lower-recoiling pistol for those who can't handle even a .38 and want something with more oomph than a .22lr.
But hey, good luck Kel Tec, I'm always glad to see more toys on the market.
Cute, and a weapon I knew nothing about. I must have been busy playing rifle tweaker while it made it's limited run.
A lot there to like. The split mag for rimmed cartriges isn't new, as the Italians were doing that quite a while ago.
It's about the only way to go while maintaining double stack magazines, but he seems to have gotten the geometry right in the "meld" area where it transitions into a more or less straight line feed.
Is that an Astra 400 type disassembly knob up front? Cool. A really worthwhile system.
And he has the line of bore as low as seems humanly possible, to reduce muzzle flip.
One thing I wonder about is why nobody's combined something like this with a version of the Mars pistol.
The Mars feed system routed a cartridge around the trigger to a pick-up point behind the hand, allowing a nice Borschart-y overhang to counterbalance a longer barrel.
In a narrow little cartridge like .22rfmag you could make a very slender, Buck Rodgers looking zapper that would have Nancy Pelosi filling her britches.
If anybody's interested, I have a bulletproof (sorry) magazine design for said hypothetical weapon which I would cheerfully give away to somebody who actually had the time to develop it.
Throw in a MAT-49 type folding mag well for holsterability if you wanted to go with a forward position for the ammo feed, and you would end up with something that was too large and ungainly for a duty pistol, and too small for a practical submachine gun/semi-auto pistol caliber carbine.
But cool looking as hell, and every would-be Gangsta and cellar dwelling Momma's boy in the country would have to own one. You'd need a crawler loader to get your money to the bank.
I was thinking about buying one and dropping it into my camping back pack. replace the single six in there.
Can a Sub-22M carbine be far behind? 30 round reliable mags and enough barrel to really wring out the cartridge.
If anyone makes .22 Mag blanks, I'd bet that Sy-Fy would buy the entire run to use as props. Still, a 30 round magazine makes Sarah Brady cry, and is therefore a Good Thing. That said, I gotta say that the original was a better looking gun.
I'll measure takeup, but it has NO over-travel at all. The designer is Tobias, not George K.
I want one. This has nothing to do with my weird love of .22 Magnum, or the 3 other guns I have chambered for it.
>Of all the 30-shot .22WMR semiautomatic pistols on the market, it's by far the best.
Yup, I think you nailed it there.
Oleg,
"The designer is Tobias, not George K."
Wait, he designed the Grendel P-30?
George designed Grendel P-30. Tobias designed PMR-30, though I am sure with substantial input from George.
Awesome. Though, I'd still love a .22 Magnum on the P32 platform, with longer barrel and adjustable sights...
Oleg,
Everybody seems to be telling me that my 15-y.o. memories of the P-30 trigger are full of crap anyway. Maybe I'm confusing it with the trigger on the Ram-Line Exactor/Mountain Eagle? I dunno.
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