Pistol Caliber Carbine Connundrum

I love "pistol caliber carbines" (PCC), actually, that's a bit of a lie. More correctly stated, I love sub-machine guns, however, if a person doesn't want to get involve in NFA (national firearms act) restricted weapons, the modern PCC is as close as the average person's gonna get.

In reality, I'd really love to own a Swedish "K", but Uncle Sam frowns on such things, so I'm left with the a regular carbine with at least a 16" barrel. 

Where I originally started was one of these......

.....which I intended to turn into one of these. Now on the eve of Hightower Armory releasing it's bullpup stock for the 995, I'm having second thoughts. Why?

Let's look at the decision making matrix and dissect all the factors involved. 

• I'm looking for a easy handling pistol caliber carbine capable of using the same ammunition as my primary handgun (9mm). This one is easy since the 9mm is the most popular caliber on the planet.
• I don't want to spend more than $500 "all in". This one is a little tougher, but definitely doable.
• I really want it to be compact and easy to carry around unobtrusively. Definitely makes things harder.
•  Oh, yeah.... I like interesting....

So, there you go. Not too bad. It needs to a 9mm carbine, (16" barrel, 26" long), cheap, shoots the 9 x 19mm and interesting. Then, let's look at the candidates:

• 1st, there's the "Planet of the Apes" gun, or the original Hi Point 995, 'cus I own that. It's very handy, it's cheap, shoots the 9mm and the Hightower Armory stock is coming soon, .....and should correct the ugly gun syndrome! Issues? REALLY hate the 10 round magazine limit! 
• 2nd, is the AR variant. We'll go ahead and get the elephant out in the open. They're expensive. I might squeak a home-build in under $500..... maybe. And the cheap self-build using magazine adapters tend to be a little unreliable.
•  3rd, is the "new" option (for me at least). That would be the Kel-Tec Sub 2000 folding semi-auto. It's very unusual and kinda cool. More on this later. 

There are others such as the new Ruger PC9, but they are well out of my financial range. And some like the Beretta CX4 Storm is out of consideration due to ugliness. So, let's look at the folding gun,shall we....

In 2001, George Kellgren, aka Mr. Kel-Tec brought out the original Sub 2000 (image is Gen 2). At the time, it was (and still is) a revolutionary concept, where you can take a semi-automatic carbine and give it the ability to fold in half, giving it an overall length of 16" folded and 30" open! That's a size that's easily back-packable. On top of that, the design comes in flavors to take magazines from several major handgun manufacturers such as Glock, Smith & Wesson, Beretta and Sig Sauer. Why did this even become a thing?

Here's the deal. You might have heard that Walther magazines cost an arm and a leg. So, I've been looking into using mags from other manufacturer's guns. One such gun is the Beretta 9x series of pistols, one of which is the 92 that our military calls the M9. As a result, you can often find these mags for them cheap, including the excellent quality Beretta branded 30 round extended mag as depicted above. When modified (eg, cutting a new slot for the Walther mag release), it can be used in my P99! Which mean that I'd be able to take a Sub 2000 set up for Beretta mags and use modified ones as interchangeable between it and my Walther. To me, that's extremely attractive! 

So yeah; something along the lines of this Gen 1 Glock model, but you get the idea. Right now, I'm very tempted to sell my Planet of the Apes 995 and save up for one of these!