"The Rifleman" Remake

Appropriately, the early 60's was a time for TV Westerns featuring a rifle toting lawman or bounty hunter. 1963 gave us "The Rifleman" starring Chuck Connors.....

And earlier, 1961 had given us "Wanted: Dead or Alive" with a young Steve McQueen. Of course, in reality, those shows didn't feature "rifles" per se, "The Rifleman" probably should have been called "The Carbine-man", but I'll have to say that it does lack the ring of the official title. And in the case of the McQueen show, that heavily modified Winchester can barely even be called a carbine. 

The "Mare's Legs" as guns of that type has come to be called have more in common with today's AR "pistols".  I was born in 1960 (and in Hong Kong), and not having moved to the United States until I was 7, in 1968. Never-the-less, like most boys of the era, loved Westerns and all things associated there-of. 

So, appropriately, and probably to no one's surprise, I've fallen hard for the Kel-Tec Sub 2000! Previously, I talked about how it was the missing "pistol-caliber carbine" that I'd been searching for, but that was on a conceptual basis.... Now that I've shot it, well.... I'd have to say that I'm completely smitten! Let me go through the reasons:

• ITts small, light, AND it even folds up to be even smaller. Really, 16" is ridiculous!
• It shoots like a dream! I put about 200 rounds through it without a hiccup. This included 4 different types of ammo, 2 of which were my own hand-loads.
• It was dead accurate out to 25 yards (the max  at the indoor range), and that was with the hard-on-old-eyes peep sights which I'm going to replace with a notch sight. When a red dot was mounted on it....., it was "too easy". 
• The previous owner had already upgraded the charge handle, trigger and trigger guard among other things and it felt awesome. 
• It was dead reliable while using 4 different types of magazines, including Beretta OEM, Mec-Gar (pretty much OEM), Beretta 35 round extended, and USGI M9 mags.

 

 

The previous owner had also put on the very common upgrade of the Magpul AFG on the lower rail. I ended up removing it because it felt awkward and I felt like it made the gun feel bulky which was contrary to the spirit of the design. 

In it's place, I put on the Magpul XTM hand-stop, which I love! It does the same thing, but is much smaller and lighter! 

And on the inch and a half of rail left, I mounted a Truglo MicroTac laser. It's the perfect size and weight for this carbine's intended purpose of a ready for anything carry-carbine.

The Case of the Non-Existent Gun

Sounds like some kind of Hardy Boys Mystery doesn't it? No, it's actually not. This is really about my desire to have a gun that isn't manufactured. Now, you'd think that in today's world, with CNCs in everyone's start-up business, that somebody would be producing something that fits every niche, but that's just not the case. Here's my issue.

I shoot the 9mm, or more correctly, the 9 x 19mm Parabellum, often known as the "Luger". It's my favorite cartridge, I reload for it and shoot it way more often than anything else. As a matter of fact, I currently own 2 guns chambered for it and a third which is a 12 gauge shotgun with a 9mm chamber adapter. When I get around to getting a Texas LTC (Licence to Carry), I'll start saving up for another 9mm more conducive to "concealed carry". So, what is it that I need/want that isn't made? 

A non-semi-automatic rifle/carbine chambered for the 9mm. What the...... why!?! Maybe, I'm weird, but I don't want to just shoot my gun as fast as possible. I want to slow things down and study the performance of the ammunition. I'm a reloader and I want to determine what my reloads are doing. So, what I really need is something along the lines of the Spanish "Destroyer" depicted above. Unfortunately, it's chambered for the 9mm "Largo" (9 x 21mm) and hasn't been made in several decades. And therefore; most importantly, around $500 when you can find one! So thoughts of having one re-chambered for 9mm Luger are not terribly realistic.

....... and therefore, we get this. My cheap solution, which is a single shot, break-open 12 gauge shotgun with a chamber adapter in it. My Turkish Fedarms SS12 was only $62 and the 9mm adapter was another $50, so that whole rig is definitely cheap. The problem is that it's also cumbersome at best. As you can see, the extractor pushes out the entire adapter, versus the fired case. It's not so much that it's a single shot, but that for each shot, I have to "break-open", pull out the adapter, punch out the previous shell casing with a cleaning rod, then load a new shell, close and fire. So yeah..... a single shot actually chambered for the 9mm or a bolt action would be awesome. But nobody manufactures such an animal!

In today's world, a person can find any number of AR based pistol caliber carbines like the one above..... although it's actually classified as a "pistol", but you get what I mean. Oh, they're cool, but I don't really need one. I don't want to shoot faster, I want to shoot slower!  So, I'm out there looking for a "unicorn"..... a non-existent gun......

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!