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While Kel Tec owners across the world love and enjoy their gun, few know the full story of the forward thinking engineer who started the company and still helms it today. George Kellgren.

George Lars Kellgren (sometimes spelled with just one ‘L’ as Kelgren) was born in Boras Sweden on born May 23, 1943. Kellgren cut his teeth as a firearms designer for Husqvarna and Swedish Interdynamics AB in his native country. It was while working at Interdynamics that the inventor tried his hand at a straight blowback operated submachine gun that fired at a blistering 1000-rounds per minute from a closed bolt. Labeled the MP9 by the company, some 25 prototypes were made and shopped around to various countries including South Africa without success.

Made of inexpensive molded polymers and stamped steel parts it was cheap to manufacture but nobody was buying. In the 1980s, Kellgren immigrated to the United States with some thoughts on his mind about new firearms and some initial backing from Interdynamic.

Read the rest in my column at the Kel Tec Owners Group

The KG99, later known as the Tec9 came from the same mind as the Grendel and today the Kel Tec