PDWs and a Decent Cherry Cake!

I think I'm going to bake today.

What I have in mind is a Kentish Cherry Cake, because I have a bunch of sweet and tart cherries and I think they need a happy home. It would also taste good for breakfast tomorrow with clotted cream.

While I'm working on the cake, I'm going to be thinking about PDWs and whether they're a coming thing or an interesting but small branch of the family. It's probably fair to say that this year's SHOT was a Year of Precision Rifles. They were everywhere, like head lice. I've got some...you've got some...all God's chilluns got some, or at least will have as soon as some room opens up on Ye Olde Visa Carde.

But just under the surface of thousand yard plinkers was the rise of the "civilian" PDW, an itsy bitsy teeney weenie usually AR-patterned, folding or collapsable pistol braced backpack-sized blaster...usually, but not necessarily,  in a pistol caliber.

The prototypical version of the wee beastie is the SIG Copperhead, the shrunken 3.5-inch barreled version of the Rattler, with an overall length of 14 1/2 inches and in 9mm. In a flat market, the interest in the Copperhead is predictably off the charts.

Probably the Belle of the Ball at SHOT was the Maxim Defense PDX, an 18 1/2 inch 5.56 or 7.62 X 39 pistol that grew out of the military solicitation for PDWs. It's beautiful, it shoots just super and people are already queuing up to buy one at a couple of grand a pop, deliverable in April.

Other versions abound — the Sol Invictus TAC-9, the Fightlite MXR interchangeable pistol caliber pistol, CMMG's Banshee, the Angstadt Arms SCW-9 (currently in subgun or SBR configuration, but a pistol is coming), the CZ Scorpion S2 Pistol Micro, several B&Ts, and on and on. I could even make a case that the current crop of MP-5 clones in pistol config fall into the same category.

Why? Well, there are both trite and serious reasons. On the trite side of the equation, they're cute and — say what you will — cute sells. Americans have always had a fascination with subgun-styled guns...paging the MAC 10! The difference between the earlier generation little subgun-styled guns and what is now available is that today's versions are much lighter, much more refined and — dare I say it — useful.

for the last couple of years we've all been saying that, should you stumble into a worst case shooting situation, say an active shooter, regardless of what you have in the trunk of your car, you are going to fight with what you have on your person..excepting, of course SAS troopies in 3rd World counties. But what if you, as a paranoid person a la Mikey, has a backpack on your person, and that backpack has a PDW? Far-fetched, to be sure, but not totally beyond the pale.

Plus, expect even smaller iterations. The Flux Defense "Flux Brace" system that adds a brace-equipped extension to a Glock G-17, or the several systems that utilize the SIG 250/320 fire control cradle to drop into a brace-equipped or properly papered SBR.

We should probably also add in the RONI-type "conversion units," which allows one to stick a handgun into a cradle that gives one a brace-equipped bigger pistol or an NFA gun. I always thought they were putting much gimmicks until I ran one at longer distances. Hey, an additional point of contact helps when you push out past 50 yards.

Given the huge success and prevalence of Polymer80 and the flood of Glock-ish frames, I suppose it it only a matter of time until we see dedicated PDW "uppers," a la the old Mech Tech carbine conversions, for aftermarket Glock frames, skipping the intermediate pistol stage altogether. Heck, maybe such a thing exists and I just haven't stumbled on it yet.

Time to go sift flour!