Walther PPK/s .22

     My affection for Walther firearms is well known.  I've carried three different PPK pistols in my time as a police officer, through all my ranks and job positions.  I did some of my best talking to convince a then not-gun-friendly (and not very me friendly) administrator to issue me a PPK/s that the department had in inventory.  I also owned a Walther P22 (.22LR) that is a delight to shoot and even had it in the car with me occasionally in addition to my regulation armament as a “just in case” piece. 

     I say “had” the P22 because when my wife and I were dating she proved eager to learn how to shoot and proved to be a very good student.  My P22 at some point became her P22 (much as my Ruger 10-22 became her Ruger 10-22 once she shot it).  Oh, it’s still in my house, within reach from my side of the bed, in fact, but just ask her and she’ll make it quite clear that while it’s OUR cars, OUR house, OUR money, it’s HER gun.  ;)

     My wife proved to also be as big a James Bond fan as I am (insofar as the movies go; I haven’t convinced her to read the original Ian Fleming books just yet).  Come to find, she was enamored with the PPK (which I think is one of the most elegant pistols ever made and still frequently find myself carrying either of my personal ones in spite of other “better” pistols in my armory).  However, one severe automobile accident left her with her very dominant right arm being held together by a plate and screws.  Given her already size extra tiny hands, a .380 anything was not in the cards for her (she’s the toughest person I know but two shot with a Beretta .380 and her arm was out of commission for the whole day).  The two PPK examples I have now are .32s and are right on the cusp of manageable for her.  But she doesn’t want to borrow one of my guns, she wants HER gun, and is far more comfortable with a .22 or .25 which, by the way, she shoots well enough to put the rounds where they need to go.

     Well, there we were, at the annual weekend-before-our-Valentine’s Day/Wedding Anniversary gun show.  This is where she usually tells me to go buy a gun for myself from her to me with the admonishment “I don’t buy cheap crap.”  Yes, she loves guns, is a great shot, is a big James Bond (movie) fan, loves Walthers, and sends me to buy guns as her gifts to me.  No you can’t have her and though, yes, she has a sister, they are quite different.

     Where was I?  Oh, yeah, gun show -   We eventually found ourselves drawn like moths to a flame to the table of the dealer  from whom I usually wind up making a purchase more gun shows than not.  In fact, I have told him we should just save time by me just handing him a signed check when I walk in the door and him just handing me what he thinks I’ll want and letting me know how much it cost me.  I pointed out to my wife a brand new Walther PPK/s .22 in a display case.  This is one of the new ones that have just been out for a year or so.  I’ve read mixed reviews on it.  The worst labeled it as essentially a pellet gun that aspired to being an actual pistol.  The best essentially said it worked and the commenter was keeping his.

     Wife fell head over heels right there.  She asked me to give it the once-over before she held it.  It was placed in my hand and it felt rock-solid.  It felt for all the world like my blued steel 1967 sample and did not, in any way, feel like a beefed up pellet gun.  I was actually surprised at how well put together it appeared to be.  I passed it to her and she all but drooled on the display case.  If she were a guy she would have drooled.  Hell, I think I did drool!  She agreed the blued (actually black kinda Parkerized type coating) model was better looking than the chrome version.  She asked the lady at the case to please hold it and stationed me to guard her and the piece from the crowd whilst she ran back to the car to get her ID which she’d accidentally left behind.  When she returned, she filled out the paperwork, passed over our debit card, and, cradling her new baby with our checking account about four bills lighter, made one more circuit of the show with me before we left.

     By the time we ate a late lunch time had gotten away from us so it was the next day (Sunday – blue laws be darned to heck) that we got to go to the shooting range.  By then, of course, I’d had time to give the piece a good going over. My initial impression stayed in place.  It was solid and sturdy.  The barrel is like the one on the P22 in that the actual barrel is a liner that goes inside a tube which surrounds it and gives it the girth to look “normal.”  The barrel sleeve has an end cap near the muzzle that threads on and has notches for a spanner.  This, I imagine, will take the threaded adapter to fit a suppressor that the P22 uses.  We’ve discussed this a few times and now that she has the PPKs I think a can might be in our future.

     It weighs less than my ’67 .32 PPK, but still has heft.  I’ve seen the original .22 models of the PP and PPK where the slide is milled down presumably to reduce the weight.  The new PPKs .22 has a standard-looking slide. To me this looks much better (“elegant,” I call it), though I’d love to have one of those originals which thus far has escaped my collection.

     Manual of arms and disassembly is the same as for the center-fire relatives.  After making sure the weapon is empty (no mag, empty chamber), pull down on the front of the trigger guard and when it clears the underside of the frame push it slightly to one side so it’ll rest on the frame but not return to its previous point (a wee bit of sideways pressure from a finger will keep it there for the rest of this procedure).  Pull the slide all the way back and lift up the rear.  When you see/feel it tilt up, run the slide forward off the frame.  The recoil spring goes around the barrel.  In theory, one end of the spring is slightly belled out (hard to see in my example).  That end goes toward the muzzle.  Reassembly is reverse.  Sometimes it takes a bit of jiggling to get the barrel back through the bushing hole in the front of the slide.  This can be eased by some careful and slow positioning of the barrel to the hole.  Once the slide is back on, let the front of the trigger guard go back home and work the slide a few times to ensure it’s all properly in place.

     To load, insert a full mag, point somewhere safe, pull back the slide and let it go forward entirely under its own power.  Do not “ride the slide” forward … with any pistol that I can think of.  Leave that in the movies.  The hammer will be cocked.  Rotating the safety lever (left side of slide) down will lock the firing pin and drop the hammer.  Keep the muzzle pointed somewhere safe while doing this.  Personally, I like to apply the safety while slowing the hammer’s decent with a thumb just to keep from abusing the mechanism.  The first shot may be fired Double Action (DA) by simply aiming and pulling the trigger.  The slide will cock the hammer when it goes back and all subsequent shots (until you again apply the safety) are fired Single Action (SA).  You can also cock the hammer to get around the quite heavy initial DA pull.  This is such a familiar trait to anyone used to the PP series of Walthers that I call any pistol with a very heavy DA pull followed by light and smooth SA pull “Walther-esque.”  If you have strong hands, you’ll get the first round off DA no problem.  If you have very small, or weak, or arthritic hands, you might need to just plan on cocking the hammer. 

     There are two schools of thought on carrying a PP series of any caliber.  One is that since the only way the firing pin is locked is to have the safety on, “Safety-On” is the only way to go and the other guys are unsafe idiots.  The other school is of the opinion that since the weapon has a hammer block in the frame that prevents the hammer from touching the firing pin until the trigger is pulled, “Safety-Off” carry is fine and preferable if you understand that danger happens in an instant and you’re likely to fumble or forget levers.  “Safety-Off” folks tend to think of the other side as Nervous Nannies that should stick to ranges and not give themselves ulcers by actually carrying a loaded gun.  It’s like Alabama vs. Auburn or Cubs vs. Cardinals or North vs. South.  Understand your piece as well as the guy who built it, know your world, and make up your own mind.  Leftys like me don’t really get a choice.

     At the range, Milady loaded up the 10 round mag like a champ.  It is very similar to the P22’s mag and comes with a Walther-esque finger rest at the bottom.  The finger rest lets a ham-handed lad like me get three fingers on the grip.  The magazine is not interchangeable with the P22’s, unfortunately.  That would have been a nice extra from Walther, as would have been including the little tab on the side of the mag to pull down the follower to aid in loading.  The P22 had that feature, the PPKs does not.

     With wife’s new pistol in hand and her blessing to put the first mag through it (isn’t she GREAT?), I walked up to the 7 yard line, racked in the first round and fired at a Shoot-n-See® bullseye target.  I shot a nice, if slightly left of center group.  For the first rounds through the piece, my “new gun jitters,” and, I don’t know, planetary alignments or whatever, I was impressed.  No, it’s not a target pistol.  But minute-of-heart, or minute-of-eye-socket-and-nose from 21 feet ain’t half bad. 

     The accuracy did not decrease with about 250 rounds of CCI Mini-Mags® and Herself’s groups often involved three or four rounds from a magazine tearing a single, ragged hole from 7 yards.  Given time and perhaps some experimentation with different ammo, I can see someone being able to tighten the groups up impressively.  But, .22 ammo is scarce in our AO and most of what we have are the afore-mentioned Mini-Mags® because they work in all of our other .22LR firearms.  They proved to work quit well in the Walther PPKs as well.  Your experience may vary, but when someone can only pick one type, I usually recommend Mini-Mags® for a start.  In a short barreled .22 pistol, I don’t worry about hollow-points unless that’s just all there is available because it is highly doubtful they will get up enough velocity to expand and with tiny bullets, penetration is your friend.  Our load out was, in fact, hollow points and they fed just fine. 

     Before we called it a day, I shot it side-by-side with my afore-mentioned blued .32 PPK.  Accuracy was on par (excellent) and though the .32 PPK can hardly be said to kick hard, the .22LR PPKs seemed to barely move in my hand.  Oh, and FWIW, it is at least as accurate as the P22, at least in my hands or Herself’s.  Neither of us had any issue with the infamous “Walther-bite” where a too-high grip (or thick hands) get the web cut by the slide.  I think the pistol’s almost utter lack of muzzle flip contributed to that bit of Heaven.

     At around four hundred bucks it is not a cheap pistol.  It is, however, a fun pistol and one that pretty much anyone can shoot comfortably (except for the strain of finding enough .22 LR ammo to make a worthy outing to the range – hopefully this will change soon when supply catches up with demand).  If you want cheap, there are tons of little zinc alloy wonders out there.  If you want a piece that you can be proud of, handle like a real gun and not a delicate flower that might crack in a couple hundred rounds, and even rely on for self-defense (limits of cartridge, blah-blah, higher misfires with rimfire rounds, blah-blah), I think it’ll be darn hard to beat this new Walther .22 PPKs.  One thing’s for sure:  I think I “won” this year’s Anniversary/Valentine gift giving competition.  Anyone who doesn’t think these occasions are competitions hasn't been married very long. ;)

--- Go Shooting and Take a Newbie!