Let's talk PDW's

[Clusterfrack]

Hmmm.....if one already has a handgun in a service caliber, why duplicate that in a shoulder fired weapon?

Seems one of the major advantages of a shoulder fired weapon is an increase in terminal performance--that does not occur when using a service handgun caliber in a long gun......

Completely on board with you sir. But my APC9 PRO is much smaller than even my 8.5”/PDW stock 300BLK for travel. Not trying to rehash the AR bbl length discourse from earlier in this thread, but I am not comfortable going any shorter with a rifle. And I’d rather have a PCC than a handgun whether in a match or real world encounter.

I'd rather have a handgun in a real world encounter, unless I could have a rifle caliber weapon. The risks of carrying a PDW size pistol caliber long gun don't outweigh the benefits in accuracy and capacity for me. Long gun = disadvantages for: ease of carry, time to deploy, stowing post incident, grappling, and appearance to the 'public'. As well, I've never seen a PCC that had the reliability of a quality 9mm auto.

[TGS]

As well, I've never seen a PCC that had the reliability of a quality 9mm auto.

What PCCs are you referring to?

[Clusterfrack]

What PCCs are you referring to?

I've seen so many. Various AR-9 types, MPX, Scorpion, Uzi, Ruger PCC, Keltec, you name it. They all have issues.

[RevolverRob]

I'd rather have a handgun in a real world encounter, unless I could have a rifle caliber weapon. The risks of carrying a PDW size pistol caliber long gun don't outweigh the benefits in accuracy and capacity for me. Long gun = disadvantages for: ease of carry, time to deploy, stowing post incident, grappling, and appearance to the 'public'. As well, I've never seen a PCC that had the reliability of a quality 9mm auto.

So, I typically only think of these weapons as useful for exactly one purpose and one purpose only (for 'civilians' at least) - travel when you will be away from home for an extended period of time ( > 48 hours). For me then the pistol-versions are the most useful in that they can be covered on a concealed carry license and therefore usually stowed, loaded, inside a vehicle and of course carried into your abode in the evening, to serve in the same role that a long-gun at home might serve.

The shorter/compact pistol caliber weapons simplify logistics (i.e., I only need to pack one type of ammunition, which is shared across both my primary weapon (handgun), and secondary weapon (PDW)), and the fact they fold up into neat little packages that fit into the average backpack and yet can still work without needing to be "opened" like a LAW folder on an AR does. That said, the advantage of a rifle-caliber weapon is tough to ignore and if someone besides Sig made the Rattler, I might well be all over it like a fat kid on someone else's birthday cake. As it is, when I sit down and evaluate the whole field, the compact AK-pistols make a lot of sense, in that a side-folding brace + rifle caliber is ideal and 7.62x39 even out of an 6" barrel does not suffer the same questionable expansion and penetration issues that 5.56 does, move up to an 8 or 10" barrel and it's even mo' better, the problem of course being AK ergonomics, but whatever, deal with it.

[El Cid]

I've seen so many. Various AR-9 types, MPX, Scorpion, Uzi, Ruger PCC, Keltec, you name it. They all have issues.

While mine isn’t that high in round count yet - it feeds everything I shoot through it. Now B&T is hardly in the same class (or price range) as River or Keltec... but I completely trust it.

[TGS]

I've seen so many. Various AR-9 types, MPX, Scorpion, Uzi, Ruger PCC, Keltec, you name it. They all have issues.

The MPX and Scorpion surprise me. The others, not so much.

What about MP5K-PDW and B&T APC9K or TP9?

[RevolverRob]

While mine isn’t that high in round count yet - it feeds everything I shoot through it. Now B&T is hardly in the same class (or price range) as River or Keltec... but I completely trust it.

I suspect the B&Ts will do better with higher round counts.

With "PCCs" in the general sense as most people have them setup today there are several issues in play:

1) The use of single feed-taper column magazines that are really designed for pistols...not high-volume machine guns and thus when you start getting cyclic-rate type fire in a carbine, the mags can't always keep up.

2) Pistol mags that present the bullet at an odd angle relative to a rifle mag or double-feed SMG magazine. There is the a reason the most reliable SMG magazines on the planet are typically sticks or slight curves that end up presenting the bullet nearly straight into the chamber of the sub-gun.

3) Extended mags that suffer the same kinds of problems that things like big-stick STI mags suffer from, people trying to cram as many bullets into the magazine as possible.

___

Colt-SMG Mag pattern AR9s tend to only suck when they aren't tuned with a big enough buffer or spring or the ejector is wrong (ramped barrels are definitely necessary in full auto or near full auto firing rate). But let's bear in mind that Colt built the whole 9mm SMG system and magazine to function with as stock an AR15/M16 setup as possible. The pistol-mag (e.g., Glock-mag) AR9s are just compromises on top of compromises. Starting with the mediocre design that is the Glock 18 magazine.

A clean(er) sheet design like the B&T should be better overall, because they weren't constrained with trying to jam 10-gallons of shit into a 5-gallon bucket.

I think it was @Dagga Boy who made the point here once that the superior way of building a semi-automatic gun is to design the best magazine possible and then build a gun around it, hence why HK tends to produce some really reliable pistols. They don't really make guns...so much as they make magazines and then devices to use those magazines...or something like that I'm sort of butchering this in my paraphrasing.

[Clusterfrack]

The MPX and Scorpion surprise me. The others, not so much.

What about MP5K-PDW and B&T APC9K or TP9?

PCCs have increased in popularity at matches, so I get to see a lot of people trying to make these guns work. Of course, many are probably 'tuning' their guns, so that's a factor.

The MPXes have been problematic from the beginning, with catastrophic failures in fairly low round count guns and various types of feed-related malfunctions. People I know at Sig are saying that they finally have these guns fixed. I'm skeptical, but it would be great if true. It's a cool design, and amazingly soft shooting.

Scorpion Evos seem like the best of the bunch. Even so, they seem to have more feed issues than a production handgun like a Glock or a CZ.

AR9s are universally awful in terms of reliability. There is absolutely no correlation between cost and reliability.

Clearing malfunctions in PCCs takes more time than it does in a handgun. E.g. a good doublefeed can require a tool to get unstuck.

I have seen one dude shoot an MP-5, and another with a HK94 and they both ran well. I have no experience with the TP9.

[GJM]

Completely on board with you sir. But my APC9 PRO is much smaller than even my 8.5”/PDW stock 300BLK for travel. Not trying to rehash the AR bbl length discourse from earlier in this thread, but I am not comfortable going any shorter with a rifle. And I’d rather have a PCC than a handgun whether in a match or real world encounter.

Picture is worth more words.

[GJM]

I've seen so many. Various AR-9 types, MPX, Scorpion, Uzi, Ruger PCC, Keltec, you name it. They all have issues.

You are hanging out in the wrong neighborhood — the stock HK SP5, SP5K and APC9 Pro have all been extremely reliable for me. Good designs and good magazines. I wouldn’t trust a full size USPSA PCC, with a tricked out trigger, extended magazines, and “optimized” recoil system mods on a bet.