When is the last time that you saw a new top-fed pistol?
One of the biggest engineering problems of early semi-automatic “self-loading” handguns was the magazine and how to load it rapidly.
While the detachable box magazine today is a staple, in the 1890s it was commonly only seen in rifles such as the Lee-Metford. Hugo Borchardt’s C93 was one of the first commercial detachable magazine-fed pistols and, while Georg Luger picked up Borchardt’s design for his own Parabellum pistol series a few years later, another take on semi-auto pistol loading and reloading was the Feederle brothers’ wildly popular Mauser C96 which used a 10-round internal magazine fed through the top of the action via a stripper clip, much like the Mauser bolt-action rifles of the age.
With Luger’s and Browning’s turn-of-the-century designs taking over the market after 1900, the way forward was clear and the C96 eventually faded into history.
Well, KelTec announced Wednesday it is blending tradition with innovation in its newest carry pistol, the top-fed internal magazine PR57.
The KelTec PR57 is fed via 10-round stripper clips or one round at a time in a pinch. The internal magazine holds 20 rounds. The company argues the minimalistic approach reduces room for error while deleting the detachable magazine trims parts and streamlines the design.
Chambered in 5.7 NATO, the “R” in the PR57 comes from its use of a rotary barrel design. Ditching a detachable box magazine in favor of a clip-fed top-loading design similar to the old C96 Broomhandle Mauser and KelTec founder George Kellgren’s circa 1988 Grendel P10, the company says the PR57 is the lightest pistol in its caliber on the market, with the full-sized handgun hitting the scales at just 13.86 ounces, unloaded.
More in my column at Guns.com.
