Today I have Kalashnikov USA’s KP-9 (which is a virtually exact semiauto copy of the Vityaz SMG) out at the range. I chose the most suitable ammo to try it out with; slightly rusty steel-case Tulammo. And it just ate it all up. The KP-9 does not have the best trigger or the lightest recoil (although neither is actually bad), but it simply runs like flawless clockwork – and it easy to hit with to boot.
Antiques
Military-Issue Colt Model 1839 Paterson Revolving Rifle
The first rifle made in Sam Colt’s Paterson NJ factory was the 1837 “ring lever” rifle. These were rather fragile and underpowered and while they were used successfully in the First Seminole War, they needed […]
Conversion
Semiauto ZK-383 on the Range
The Czech ZK-383 is a magnificent submachine gun, but sadly very scarce in the United States. So when I saw the semiauto example, I wanted to take it out to the range for some plinking. […]
Slide action
Colt Lightning: A Pump-Action Rifle to Challenge Winchester
Colt held a dominant market share in revolver sales in the 1880s, but was quite interested in taking a piece of the rifle market as well. This initially manifested with the Colt Burgess lever-action rifle, […]
You might try the ALG recoil spring. Got one in my AKX-9 and it makes the recoil softer while still working with every flavor of ammo I’ve tried.
As for that missing witness hole in the magazine: drill one.
And as for boring to shoot: get further way and fire while moving, but you knew that 🙂
Is their much blowback from a south paw view?
While undoubtedly effective etc. It appears somewhat overkill (including looking rather like a Christmas tree) for an sub machine gun. Was it considered worth it by its Russian customer i.e. acquired in volume by them and did any other countries buy / use it – was it widely exported and used as a standard gun by other than Russia?
They are not very used in Russia itself too…
Mostly for parades and commercials.
In the presence of the AKS-74u and “normal” SMGs, this is useless trash and an extra headache for the chief of armaments.
E.Dragunov (father of one of designer of Vityaz) designed sub-machine gun yet in 1970s. It was unable to met high requirement set back then, but was revived in 1990s resulted in PP-91 also named KEDR (Construction [of] E. DRagunov):
https://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/russia-submachine-guns/pp-91-kedr-klin-eng/
it does fire 9×18 cartridge and is smaller (shorter – both overall and regarding barrel) and lighter than Vityaz