Tag Archives: new pistol 2024

Paging Mr. Bond: The PPK in .32 is Back (and it finally works)

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Walther has reached into the vault to bring back one of its most classic designs, now refined and ready for a new century. Like a spy in from the Cold, the PPK in .32 ACP has returned unexpectedly, and we have the debrief.

The background of the gun is well established. In a nutshell, Fritz Walter, the heir to the famed Carl Walther rifle works, moved in the early 1900s to expand the company into handguns with a line of simple blowback pocket pistols to compete with models like the Colt Vest Pocket and Pieper Bayard. Moving to more advanced designs using a workable single-action/double-action trigger system by the 1920s, the Polizei Pistole, or PP series, soon became a smash hit, despite it being twice as much as the company’s earlier models.

While not the first DA/SA handgun on the market, the PP was much more successful, and soon an abbreviated version pitched as a detective’s gun, the Polizei Pistole Kriminal, hit the catalog in 1930. With a 3.25-inch barrel and offerings in not only .32 ACP (the original PP’s bread and butter) but also spicier .380 ACP, which was then and still is seen as big medicine for European LE types, the sleek, almost Art Deco, PPK soon filled holsters and desk drawers.

The Walther PP/PPK has some serious history to it. (All Photos: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

A huge driver for the gun came from pop culture. While the Walther PP series appeared on screen in films as early as 1938, it was the James Bond film franchise that kicked the pistol into the stratosphere. Sean Connery’s Agent 007 was first issued a Walther in 1962’s “Dr. No” to replace his favored .25 ACP Beretta.

It would continue as his standard through his six-film run and go on to be picked up off and on by successive generations of Bonds.

The pistol is iconic, and in many cases can be a work of art, as shown here at the Walther factory in Ulm, Germany.

By 2013, with the market demand for the .32 waning in favor of the .380, Walther put the models chambered in the smaller caliber to bed.

Now, with improvements in bullet and propellant design leading to the resurgence of 9mm over .40 caliber, and .380 seen as the new 9mm, and .32 seen as the new .380, the stubby little round is much more popular these days.

So, it should be no surprise that Walther is bringing the “old” caliber back for both the PPK and the PPK/S, in stainless and black variants. We have been testing one for the past couple of months.

More in my column at Guns.com.

The Factory P320 Legion Flux Raider Exists

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Utah-based Flux Defense came on the scene in 2018 and their Raider, then improved Raider X, chassis systems that turn a handgun into something very much in the PCC realm have been an “if you know, you know” kind of hit ever since. Case in point, when their promised P365 chassis hit the market a couple of weeks ago, it sold out in just eight minutes.

Now, SIG and Flux have partnered to create the P320 Flux Legion package which blends all the famed Legion features familiar to fans of that line with one of the most exciting chassis systems in the pistol space. The result gives the user a 60+1 capacity platform that compacts down to 10.9 inches and hits the scales right around the 3-pound mark (unloaded).

We got a sneak peek at the new platform at SIG’s Next event in New Hampshire this week.

Standard features include a standard P320 Fire Control Unit outfitted with a Legion series skeletonized trigger, a full-size Legion Gray slide with an integrated compensator/expansion chamber, and housed in a matching Legion Gray Flux Defense chassis with a rapid-deploying stabilizing brace. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

More in my column at Guns.com.

Return of the Arm Pistol

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Arguably the first large format AR-style pistol to hit the market is now set to make a return, no brace needed.

Firearms maverick Mack Gwinn Jr., a Vietnam-era Special Forces veteran, in the early 1970s acquired the rights to Colt-made IMP-221, a stockless, gas-operated bullpup pistol intended to provide aircrew with a compact survival gun chambered in .221 Fireball. While the Air Force had already scrapped the project, Gwinn made lemons into lemonade, adapting the design to use 5.56 NATO and accept standard AR mags, launching the Bushmaster Arm Pistol.

Bushmaster Armpistol ads started popping up in the early-1970s

The original Gwinn/Bushmaster Arm Pistol borrowed from both AR-15 and AK-47 designs, with its AR-style rotating bolt and AK-type long-stroke gas piston.

Based on the Colt IMP-221/ Air Force GUU-4/P air crew weapon originally designed at Eglin Air Force Base, the original Gwinn Firearms in Bangor, Maine produced the 5.56mm Bushmaster Arm Pistol “in limited quantities” for the USAF in the early 1970s before sending it to the consumer market. Just 20.63 inches long, the Arm Pistol had a lot of M16-style features in a very abbreviated bullpup format.

With the Arm Pistol long out of production and Bushmaster now in at least its third reincarnation since Gwinn sold the company in 1976, his son, Mack Gwinn III, has founded Maine-based Hydra Weaponry and returned a much-improved version of the design to production.

We caught up with the fine folks from Hydra at the recent 2024 NRA Annual Meetings in Dallas to “lay arm” on the new BMP-23.

Hydra feels the BMP-23 is the 5.56mm pistol that Gwinn Jr. would have built if he had access to today’s CNC machinery and technologically advanced materials.

21st Century Survival Gun

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A simple new platform that will be headed to shelves this summer is from North Carolina’s Veteran-owned Dark Mountain Arms.

The Stowaway system is a single-shot bolt-action, take-down firearm that is initially being offered in 5.7 NATO but, as it is multi-caliber via an easy swap out of a bolt face and barrel, future options on the table include 9mm, 4.6×30, .22 LR, .22 WMR, .17 Mach2, and .17 HMR.

A packable design with a weight of less than 3 pounds (2.8 pounds for the 16-inch threaded barreled rifle and 2 pounds flat for the 5-inch barreled pistol), the gun can be stowed in two primary pieces and then easily reassembled.

More in my column a Guns.com.

Calling Mr. Roscoe

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One interesting new (well, rebooted) gun design that I am looking forward to testing this summer is the Heritage Roscoe.

A salute to the old-school pocket revolvers from the days of Mike Hammer and Philip Marlowe, the cigar-box-worthy .38SPL +P Roscoe looks right out of the mid-20th Century, clad in a deep glossy finish, classic round butt wood grips, fixed sights, and a 5-shot cylinder. Plus, it is available in both 2- and 3-inch models.

Best yet, it has an ask of $350, which should translate to $299-ish at retail.

Heritage, the Taurus subsidiary best known for its affordable single-action rimfire pistols and carbines, has launched the Roscoe line. This comes almost a decade after Taurus sunset its popular Model 85 5-shot small-frame revolver line– upgrading it to the larger 6-shot Model 856– and recalls the company’s history during the old Bangor Punta days (1962-72ish) when it was a sister to S&W and they shared tech.

More in my column at Guns.com.

The Glong gets a (much-needed) Update

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One of the models that has been around since almost the beginning, the first Glock 17L, or “Glong” pistols – so named because they have an extended 6-inch barrel and corresponding 8.9-inch slide rather than the standard model’s 4.5/7.3-inch barrel/slide – was introduced as a first-generation gun back in 1988.

Moving up to Gen 2 in 1990 and Gen 3 in 1998, the pistol has been stuck in a world where Boyz II Men and Chumbawamba were still in the Top 40, largely replaced by the similar but more practical/tactical G34.

Well, that is until last week, when the G17L leaped over the Gen 4 standard and went right to Gen 5, complete with a Glock MOS optics plate cut at the 2024 NRA Annual Meetings in Dallas.

Yup, it’s back.

Other updates include the new-style Glock Marksman Barrel (GMB), a better trigger, and the deletion of the oft-detested finger grooves on the grip, replaced by the company’s more modular grip frame that accommodates a series of interchangeable backstraps.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Colt Fills the Stable with a New Grizzly, Kodiak, and Vipers

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While everyone knows such long-legged wheelguns as the Peacemaker, Python, and Navy ’51/Army ’60 Series guns, Colt has seen dozens of short-lived revolvers in its company history. Handguns that just slipped in and slipped out just as fast.

For instance, in 1993, the Colt Kodiak, a limited-run of no more than 2,000 .44 Magnum that was built by the Colt Custom Shop in 1993 on the Anaconda series frame, hit the shelves and was never seen again.

In 1994 the Colt Custom Shop made a short run of just 999 Colt Grizzly models in .357 Magnum using a King Cobra frame with a Magna-Ported 6-inch Python series barrel.

Even before that, in 1977, the company made an aluminum-framed version of its 4th Model Police Positive– a revolver that itself was headed for cancelation. Using the small D (Detective) frame, it was light and rated for just .38 Special. Dubbed the Viper, it is one of the hardest of Colt’s “snake guns” to capture.

A circa 1977 nickel Viper

Well, for what it is worth, Colt just dropped new versions of all three of these guns on the market.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Q Approved: The 7.65 PPK Returns

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When the Walther PPK was introduced in 1931, billed as a smaller version of the company’s PP series meant for use by plain-clothed detectives (the PPK stands for Polizei Pistole Kriminal), it was in chambered in 7.65x17mm Browning Short, which we know over here on this side of the Atlantic as John Browning’s .32 ACP.
This was soon augmented with variants offered in .380 ACP and, by 2013, Walther discontinued the .32 version of both the PPK and PPK/S.

Some 31 years after the PPK was introduced, MI6 armorer Major Boothroyd, or Q, would famously issue CDR James Bond, RN, one in lieu of his .25 ACP Beretta, describing it as: “Walther PPK. 7.65mm with a delivery like a brick through a plate-glass window.”

Now, with improvements in bullet and propellant design leading to the resurgence of 9mm over .40 caliber, and .380 seen as the new 9mm, and .32 seen as the new .380, the stubby little round is much more popular these days.
And so, it should be no surprise that Walther is bringing the “old” caliber back for both the PPK and the PPK/S, in both stainless and black variants. All models have the classic Walther styling coupled with a hammer drop decocking safety, fixed sights, and a wave cut atop the slide to reduce glare.

The standard PPK, which is shorter at a pocketable 3.8 inches high, has a 7+1 shot capacity while the taller (4.3 inches high) PPK/S has an 8+1 capacity. All models share the same 3.3-inch barrel length and 6.1-inch overall length.