Posted on 02/02/2025 6:15:05 AM PST by marktwain
The KelTec PR57 is one of the more innovative pistols seen at the 2025 Shot Show. As indicated by the name, the pistol is chambered in 5.7×28. The pistol is top-loaded with a 20-round magazine. The magazine is integral, like a Steyr 1912 or a C96 broom handle Mauser. This allows for a smaller grip, fewer parts, and a very thin and light pistol. As expected, there is a significant muzzle flash and blast when the pistol is fired. Recoil is more than most .22 rimfire pistols but less than most 9mm pistols. The capacity is listed as 20+1. How is the 21st round loaded?
Bottleneck cartridges make for reliable feeding. Because the magazine is integral, the feed lips are subject to less possibility of damage. No tolerance is needed to accommodate slight differences in removable magazine manufacture. The integral feed lips are sturdy and unlikely to be easily damaged. Stripper clips are much easier and cheaper to manufacture than magazines.
Using stripper clips to reload is much slower than using a detachable magazine. A stripper clip reload is as fast as reloading a revolver with speed loaders. Twenty or 21 rounds of ammunition is likely to allow an opportunity to reload at some point. Twenty rounds of ammunition would require three reloads in a six-shot revolver.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
But much more difficult to reliably conceal and use in a high stress situation.
This does NOT check the boxes for a EDC weapon. Not sure what boxes it checks for anything.
Interesting and inexpensive pistol. The price of FN 5.7 is about 43+ cents per round versus 21 cents a round for Fiocchi 9mm.
The cynic in me sees this as nothing more or less than a manufacturer getting a product in place before a hypothetical detachable magazine ban.
Cool looking gun, it would be great for concealed carry. :)
Double stack version would run a long time.
Not sure how a stripper would work.
“”””Fully loaded, the KelTec PR57 weighs 19 ounces””””
Nice, 20/21 rounds at 19 ounces.
It sounds like the answer to a question that’s never been asked.
I had a PMR 30. If you dont like a 12 inch muzzle flash and louder than a you know what this gun will probably be a disappointment.
Bulk and weight are always important, if you are going to carry all day. That’s a wicked little cartridge, I don’t own one, but have had the opportunity to shoot two of them owned by friends. Neither one was a Keltec, though. I don’t see a problem with reloads, or even the need to carry extra strippers with a 20 round capacity for daily carry.
And not nearly as easy to find/trade/barter should that environment unfold.
One of the other engineers at work wants to get one as a bedside gun.
It might be possible that the use of stipper clips gets around state laws limiting magazine capacity.
We don’t have such laws here and given Kel Tec’s questionable quality he might consider something else.
Before George Kellgren founded Kel-Tec, he designed and built a pocket pistol called the Grendel P-10. It was a .380 with the same integral magazine design, fed through the top using M-16 stripper clips. Production was in the late 1980s - early ‘90s. Later models switched to a removable box magazine, but this is definitely Kel-Tec returning to its Grendel roots.
Most people who carry a concealed handgun do not carry a spare magazine.
KelTec...Weird for Weird’s sake....
“It sounds like the answer to a question that’s never been asked.”
You should give them more credit - they are directly answering a question that people who concealed carry ask all the time: how do you make a thinner, more easily concealed firearm. And as a bonus, their answer allows more capacity.
I definitely would not carry my Ruger 5.7 as a concealed carry. I would use it as an open carry (something I rarely do) as both gun and ammo are light in weight, has less recoil than a 9mm, and has a 20 round capacity.
I would use my Ruger LC Carbine 5.7 as a truck gun. Magazines are interchangeable with the pistol and carbine.
How odd that this cartridge languished for so many years, with no one apart FN building a gun chambered in it, and now it’s the hottest thing since pockets on shirts.
It still nears mention this cartridge was created specifically to be fired from a select-fire military PDW with a 10-inch barrel and that used a 50 (yes, FIFTY) round magazine.
The FN Five-SeveN pistol was an afterthought. They hoped it would cash in on the buyers of the FN P90 looking for a handgun firing a common cartridge to their PDW.
In the original configuration, firing 50 armor-piercing rounds full-auto from a 10-inch barrel, it almost made sense. Semi-auto, 20-round mag, 5-inch bbl and no AP ammo, I don’t see it.
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