Tag Archives: gun retail news

Yankee Kalash Updates

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While at CANCON 2023 in Savannah, Georgia a few weeks ago, I stopped by the Kalashnikov USA booth and ran into John Cason, KUSA’s director of sales. He told me that the company wouldn’t be in Vegas for the SHOT Show later this month, but he did have several sweet new models they had queued up for 2024.

Among them is the long-promised American-made 7.62x39mm AK101 sporter (KR101), a 5.56 NATO AK102 sporter (KR102), side folding wood-stocked (not a misprint) KR103s, and a tiny Vityaz.

KUSA’s “Micro 9” Vityaz, made for an Indonesian military contract but soon to come to the U.S. consumer market

Developed for an overseas military contract, KUSA had what is tentatively just called the “Micro 9” at the show. Now don’t confuse that term with a micro compact 9mm pistol such as a P365 or Hellcat. This is a 5-inch barreled semi-auto KP-9 Vityaz clone rather than the standard 9.25-incher that the company intends to market as both a pistol (that can either use a triangle brace or be Form 1’d later should the user want) and as a factory SBR.

PSA Krinkov (no, really, they say)

Palmetto State Armory has been teasing the public for years that they have an American-made Krink headed to market while not delivering.

Well, Cameron surfaced over the weekend on social media and said the company is in their final testing phase for the gun, expecting to launch it in February (yes, of 2024).

They intend to have five variants at launch– all in 5.56 with included side rails.

These will include a plum gloss, a Vudu version, a JMac railed option, a redwood version, and an SBR-ready variant. PSA says that they will work on 5.45, .300 BLK, and 7.62×39 variants after the 5.56s have been released. No pricing is available.

Color me excited.

A Rost What?

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If you have followed this blog for more than five minutes, you’ll get that I like new guns, which come around almost every day.

Something rarer are new gun companies, and I always take an interest in those and they can sometimes prove a bigger and more complex story.

The first new gun company of the year this year appears to be Texas-based Rost Martin, who has what at first appears to be a G19-sized vanilla striker-fired polymer-framed 9mm pistol, but at closer look seems to be a little better (and for a better price).

Their flagship RM1C pistol is a compact-sized double-stack 9mm, that sports a 4-inch hammer-forged barrel, 7.1-inch overall length, and a 21.1-ounce unloaded weight with a 15+1 round magazine. This puts it a hair smaller than the Glock 19 Gen 5. It is optics-ready on all models, shipping with an RMR footprint, while plates for “all other popular optic footprints” will be available.

Other features include aggressive front and rear slide serrations, ambidextrous surface controls including slide catch and mag release, and what is described as “a smooth, light 5-pound trigger pull with a clean break and a short reset.” Added to this are non-glare top slide serrations similar to what is seen on S&W and Walther pistols, an inherent low bore axis, and a Tenifer-treated nitrocarburized slide. It has interchangeable rear grip inserts.

The Texas-made RM1C will be offered in black, gray, and FDE, and has a very AREX Delta Gen 2 vibe.

Don’t worry about support, as it uses CZ P10 pattern mags that are free, and accept XD pattern sights.

Of note, it has a Glock-style takedown albeit with arguably better ergos.

All right, so enough of the windup – how about the pitch? The MSRP on the new Rost Martin RM1C is set at $459 across all models, a price that will probably be a little lower at retail. That puts it on par price-wise with an optics-ready Turkish-made Stoeger STR-9C or Canik TP9SF but about a hundo more than a PSA Dagger, but then again it has a feature set better than the basic Dagger.

The folks at Rost Martin are sending me one to test and I am meeting with them at SHOT next week to get some more background info, so watch this space.

Back Again: Inglis Hi-Powers

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The original John Inglis and Company dated to 1937 (and even further back to the 1850s as the Mair, Inglis, and Evatt concern) and was based in Toronto.

Primarily a maker of home appliances – the firm was bought in 1987 by Whirlpool, Canada, and still operates there under the old banner – during World War II they did their part to help win the war and produced Bren light machine guns and Hi-Power pistols, making over 100,000 of each for the Allied cause, largely for KMT China and the Commonwealth. 

The Canadian Browning-Inglis production was aided during WWII by FN’s exiled staff, with the BHP’s co-designer, Dieudonné Saive, helping with the technical package, making these guns unofficial clones. Ultimately, an agreement was reached to pay FN a royalty of 25 cents after the war for each gun produced. (Photos: Library and Archives Canada/City of Toronto Archives/Canadian Forces)

A WWII-era Canadian-made Browning-Inglis No. 2 Mk1* Hi-Power, as found in the Guns.com Vault. Note the internal extractor and “thumbprint” slide, hallmarks of 1940s BHPs. These were imported in the 1980s by Navy Arms for like $300

Browning-Inglis No. 2 Mk1* Hi-Powers that had been produced in Toronto during the conflict remain in service with the Canadian military and are set to be retired shortly by a variant of the SIG Sauer P320, which will be type classified as the C22 in Canadian service.    

Other Inglis Hi-Powers went to the British military, who liked the pistol so much that it went on to adopt a slightly improved Belgian-made model in 1963, type classified as the L9A1, to finally kick the wheel gun habit the Brits had picked up back in the Crimean War with the Adams revolver. These Hi-Powers remained in service with the Brits until very recently when they were replaced by the Glock 17 while the Australians opted to go with a SIG-based replacement in 2022. 

The British (and Australian) L9A1 Hi-Power was generally more along the lines of the post-WWII Browning “T” series Hi-Power, typically with an external extractor and plastic grips. (Photos: Imperial War Museum/Australian War Memorial)

Now, SDS Imports, the Tennessee-based firm that includes the brands Tisas USA, Tokarev USA, Spandau, and Military Armament Corporation (MAC), has rebooted Inglis and intends to bring some period-correct Hi-Powers to the American consumer market.

The new company plans an L9A1-ish clone to include a black Chromate finish and plastic grips as well as three more commercial models: a black Inglis P-35B with walnut grips, the satin nickel Inglis P-35N with black G10 grips, and a color-case hardened Inglis GP-35. 

The planned Inglis L9A1 clone. Likely made by Tisas in Turkey but, if their past work is anything to judge, it is probably well-done

“The market demand has not been met for historically accurate Hi-Powers,” said Military Armament Corporation/SDS CEO Tim Mulverhill. “We’re planning for the L9A1 to influence the Hi-Power market the way the Tisas U.S. Army did in the 1911 market.”

Prices will range from $489 for the L9A1 to $649 for the GP-35. 

I’ll have the full details from SHOT Show later this month.

Ruger and Rabbits from Hats…

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You may not remember this, but FN coughed up the 5.7x28mm round in 1990 after nearly a decade of R&D. The Belgian gunmaker had a wrap on the cartridge and the guns– the Five-Seven pistol and P90 PDW– that used it for decades. This made it very niche and, by 2019, was close to falling out of production.

Then swooped in Ruger with their 57 pistol and it became a hit.

Soon, everyone was talking about 5.7 again.

In the past few years since, CMMG, Diamondback, KelTec, PSA, and S&W entered the 5.7 game while Ruger expanded their offerings to include carbines, forcing FN to release an updated Mk3 variant of the Five-Seven pistol. In the same period, ammo makers saw the writing on the wall and started making the rounds in quantity and variants never seen in the caliber, both increasing supply and halving the cost.

Amazing what can happen when someone takes an almost forgotten round and, through the introduction of a new gun, breathes life back into it.

Well, Ruger may be trying to do a repeat with a new chambering for an old revolver. Last week they announced a new variant of the vaunted double-action Ruger Super Redhawk in .22 Hornet.

I did not see this coming, at all

That’s an odd move for a wheel gun that was typically chambered in big hunting grade/counter bear calibers such as .44 Rem Mag and .454 Casull. Heck, Ruger created the .480 Ruger in 2003– then the largest-diameter production revolver cartridge– just for the Super Redhawk.

Further, it is the only new .22 Hornet handgun on the market anywhere. The last was the old bolt-action Savage Arms Striker bench gun that went out of production in 2005.

What’s so special about the .22 Hornet?

Developed by Townsend Whelen a full century ago, the .22 Hornet is not rimfire like the .22 Magnum and .22 LR but is instead a centerfire round that is about a half-inch shorter than a .223/5.56. The longer 35mm case of the .22 Hornet (the .22 Mag has a case length of 26mm) allows it to carry a heavier bullet at a faster speed, typically twice the velocity of a .22 Mag, while generating almost three times the energy downrange. In short, the .22 Hornet is a blistering fast little round (Hornady’s 35-grain VMax load has a released spec of 3,060 feet per second) and is ideal for use by varmint hunters and in survival guns– a use the military had for it for years.

The old M6 Aircrew survival weapon, which was a .22 Hornet over a 410 shotgun

However, today, the .22 Hornet is still around but should be listed as being on life support.

As far as I can tell, the only production guns in the .22 Hornet these days are bolt action rifles: the Savage 25 in several different finishes and barrel lengths, and the Ruger 77/22. Browning-owned Winchester still markets a Japanese-made Model 1885 Low Wall Hunter in the caliber, but production can’t be very brisk, and odds are they just pulling from a batch made years ago that is sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

Keeping these new guns and legacy models fed is likewise slim-picking but not impossible. The round is still in commercial production both in the U.S. by Federal, Hornady, and Winchester, and overseas by PPU and Sellier & Bellot.

Has Ruger been reading the tea leaves on this one and seen an opportunity to pull another rabbit out of the hat, caliber speaking, when it comes to the fading .22 Hornet? We’ll see.

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