Adventures in .22 Magnum land with AMT, Winchester, Kel-Tec et c.

We've had a scant few of the new Kel-Tec PMR-30 .22 Magnum pistols in stock at the gun shop where I work, but they disappeared so quickly I hardly got a peek of one. It's supposed to be at long last that elusive unicorn of a semi-auto pistol, a .22 Magnum that won't jam.

I had a brief fling with an AMT AutoMag II .22WMR, the compact 4.5"-barrel version, and found out why they have a reputation as a Jam-A-Matic. That's it at the bottom of the next photo.

The other two handguns are also now departed from my fold, at left is a Steyr M357-A1 that also had a slight case of jam-itis. I have zero tolerance for pistols that are not 100% reliable. This is my life we're talking about here when it comes to carry handguns.

At right is my former S&W 1076 10mm, which I traded away for a much more carry-friendly Glock 29 10mm subcompact, which has been 100% reliable so far. The big Smith was just too ... big.

I also had a Winchester 94 lever-action .22 Magnum that I foolishly traded away years ago. It was a great shooter but alas, I was young and oh, so foolish.

Now Oleg Volk give us a peek of the Kel-Tec RMR-30, a carbine based on the PMR-30 pistol.

It's still under development, so be patient. This is going be even hotter than the PMR-30 or the RFB-18 .308 semi-auto rifle. Speaking of the latter, we've finally been able to get a few of those and keep it in stock at the gun shop. Oops, spoke too soon, out of stock again.

And I've already picked out my next carry pistol after my long-awaited Sig P239 .357 Sig compact arrives from Exeter, Mass., where it's been on special order for about a month.

It will be a .22 Magnum single-action mini-revolver from North American Arms they call the Black Widow.

Mark Walters at Guns & Patriots recently rated a NAA .22 Magnum mini at the top of his list of Top 10 Carry Pistols. And I've decided he's right.

I had a 4"-barrel NAA model called The Earl on layaway at the shop briefly before I had second thoughts. It's a neat pistol, but just a shade too long of snout for easy pocket carry.

So I took another look at the NAA models and chose the Black Widow. This will have to be a special order also as we currently have no Black Widow models in stock at the gun shop.

I want the conversion model with adjustable sights which comes with two cylinders, .22LR and .22WMR.

We've got several NAA mini-revolvers in stock at the shop but they all have either 1" barrels or 4" barrels.

As Goldlilocks said, the 2" barrel on the Black Widow is "just right," not too short, not too long. It fits in the pocket of any garment I might ever wear. Please don't even try to imagine my large posterior wearing a speedo. It would not be a pretty sight. Shudder!

A mouse gun that's pretty cool, but it's still only a .25 ACP

See if you can spot the error in this fictional prose.

"(He) fired the Glock at all six targets, clicked the safety back on and laid it down."

So writes Jack Higgins in his latest novel, The Wolf At The Door. Higgins usually knows better.

Unless there's a special Higgins model produced at the Glock custom shop, Glocks have no safety to click either on or off.

But then Higgins also favors Colt .25 ACP pistols for just about every single character in this new novel, which also is a strong indicator that one of my favorite authors is not a handgun expert.

My daughter was working as a nurse at the local ER when a guy comes riding up on a bike, walks in and says "I been shot." They thought he was joking until he pulled up his shirt in the back and showed them. Sure enough, he had a small hole in his back and a lump under the skin.

The ER doc pulled out a .25 ACP hunk of lead. It hit a rib and stopped dead right there.

Friends don't let friends carry mouse guns, particularly .25 ACP pistols, which are generally not even as effective as .22LR pistols.

As for me, I don't even pack .380 ACP pistols. My Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm is as small as I'm going.

But if I was gonna get tempted by a .25, this little Ortiges .25 ACP Vest Pocket Automatic squeeze-cocking pistol made way back in the '20s is pretty darn cool, if I do say so.

Kel-Tec promises delivery of a .22 Magnum semi-auto pistol that works

I've long had a weakness for .22 Magnums or to be more technically specific, .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire.

Many years ago I had the good sense to buy a Winchester Model 94 .22 Magnum lever-action rifle which is now long out of production. Then I had the stupidity to trade it for a shotgun which I needed for hunting. I quit hunting long ago and converted the Ithaca Model 37 12 Ga. pump I got for the Winchester 94 into a home-defense gun by shortening the barrel to 18.25". But like the few other guns I've sold or traded, with few exceptions I wish I had held onto them.

One of those few exceptions was an AMT AutoMag II .22WMR semi-auto pistol, a rare model with 4" barrel. I found out the hard way why the AMTs have a reputation as a "jam-a-matic."

I tried every .22WMR load I could find and none of them would feed at all in that AMT so I took it back to the dealer and traded it in on something else. So far as I know to this point, no manufacturer has built a .22WMR semi-auto pistol that will reliably work, which is to most of us gun nutz sort of a basic requirement for a pistol. If it won't shoot reliably, it ain't worth squat.

But now Kel-Tec, a Florida manufacturer of small semi-auto pistols from .32 ACP to 9mm, has announced they have solved the engineering problems and will soon offer a .22 WMR pistol that will reliably work with a wide variety of different velocity ammo.

I've got a Kel-Tec PF-9 which is quite reliable and I carry it often as a pocket pistol and even occasionally as a backup pistol. If the new Kel-Tec PMR-30 proves to be what they promise, then I shall certainly get one when it becomes available.

It sounds like a great pistol, fiber-optic sights front and rear for these aging eyes, 30 rounds of .22WMR in the magazine, what's not to like? If it works, I'm going to be all over.

Fun with a pair of .357 Sigs and a 9mm pocket pistol

Had some more fun at the range Saturday with my new Sig P229 SAS Gen2 and my almost-new S&W M&P Compact, both .357 Sig pistols.

I had four new mags for the P229 to test plus the M&P Compact still needs breaking in with only about 200-300 rounds through it.

The M&P Compact trigger is not nearly as user friendly as the trigger in my M&P full-size .357 Sig, so I'm hoping that as I shoot it, it will break in and get as smooth and slick at its big brother was and is right out of the box.

I ran one 12-rd. mag full of hollow points and four mags of FMJs and Speer CF Frangible through the Sig P229 standing at 10 yards, one at the head and the rest at the body of the 11x17" small red-man target shown at right.

And then I followed that with one 10-rd. mag and two 15-rd. mags with the M&P Compact, one at the head and the rest at the body.

All rounds with both pistols were rapid fire as quickly as I could get the sights back on the target after each shot.

A few rounds landed off the paper but the vast majority were in the "kill zone."

Then I fired one 8-rd. magazine from my Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm back-up pistol to try out a new carry load, Hornady Critical Defense 115-gr. FTX.

I was aiming at the thumbnail-size little redman in the top-left corner of the 11x17" target, standing at 10 yards.

Six of the 8 landed in the region of the thumbnail, with one in the red and one in the rectangle.

Total spread of those six is about 4-5", which isn't bad with a 3"-barrel pocket pistol.

I use the PF-9 for my "church gun" as a sole carry and backup the rest of the time and for an inexpensive pocket pistol, it has surprisingly good accuracy. If you take your time and squeeze off rounds, you can put 'em where you want 'em.