Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum,
and I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company,
taking a look at some of the guns that they are going to be selling in their upcoming February of 2018 regional auction.
Now, today's rifle here is an answer to the question of, or the dilemma of,
"I really would like to have a Soviet World War 2 submachine gun; but Soviet World War 2 submachine guns are
expensive; and,
depending on where I live, legally prohibited, or at least heavily restricted; and they're loud;
and they cost a lot to shoot; and I want something that's a Soviet submachine gun, but it's a lot easier."
This is Pietta's PPS/50, and it is a .22 rimfire
semi-automatic
mostly sort of look-alike of a Soviet PPSh-41.
Pietta started making these things in, as far as I can tell, like 1976. They still make them today.
They have gone through like a dozen different
importers into the US. You know, companies come and go and they, you know, they set up to import guns from various places and
you have a lot of options of what's being manufactured OUTside the United States that you think would sell well
INside the United States; and a military
sort-of looking, and yet easy to own and cheap to shoot and very pleasant to shoot .22, is kind of a perpetual
popular item in the American commercial market, so
import companies come and go; the PPS/50 has stayed around. A lot of times
this is known as a Squires Bingham PPS/50, because that company was one of the early importers,
and they kind of got their name associated with it; they're in fact the ones who imported this particular one, so...
So this is manufactured by Pietta, catalog number, made in Italy,
Yes, that's the same "Pietta" that makes all of the Old West reproduction revolvers, lever-action rifles; Pietta does quite a lot.
They're one of those companies that, they may not make anything that's like super exciting or revolutionary; but they have a good stable of popular
firearms that they've gotten pretty good at making, and it's a stable reliable business. On the back here, we have the model designations
Bingham Limited of Atlanta, was the importer,
and this is the PPS/50, so the importer names and the trade names up here change, but this remains: Pietta's PPS-slash-50...
model rifle. It is caliber .22 rimfire. We have some Italian proof marks and a serial number there. There is of course
U.S. and foreign patents applied for, blah blah blah
Now if we look at the features, you'll see that some things are vaguely military-ish, and some are not.
The front sight is not; that's actually a reasonably decent large square front post from a set of very much commercial sights.
There's the rear sight, right off of something you would expect on an inexpensive commercial .22,
so it's a little open notch rear sight; it folds down if you want to replace it with something else, I guess.
Once it's folded down you have no sights so I would leave it up.
The safety is very much like a commercial little .22: Forward is fire; backward is safe.
This is semi-automatic only; fires from a closed bolt, and it's just a simple blowback,
well, it is a .22; there really doesn't need to be anything more complicated to it than that.
There is one interesting little element and that is this upward curve at the end of the bolt's track, and that acts in conjunction with
a little extra buffer spring at the back of the receiver,
to make sure that this doesn't batter itself when it's shooting; so, at the end of travel the bolt does rotate
slightly up, and that's going to dampen
whatever remaining energy it has at that point.
Now on a real Papasha, the barrel jacket is square;
on this one it's round, because that's what made sense with a round receiver and a round bolt and just for manufacturing purposes.
And the styles change a bit, so I think the ones that they're currently producing have oval-shaped vent holes instead of these round holes;
that's the sort of thing that just
changes from time to time when when a gun's been in production for close to 50 years now.
There's a front sling swivel, that's pretty much a commercial sling swivel.
Kind of neat, though, that the rear sling attachment is actually very much like
a Papasha-41;
it's a sling bar inletted into the stock and someone has put on a Russian-style submachine gun type sling here,
so that's a neat little addition.
This hook in the front of the trigger guard is the magazine release,
and that brings us to the main reason, I think, why most people buy
a PPS 50, which is the 50 round drum magazine; though, this does come with other magazines if you'd like;
in fact I think they generally charge a premium for the drum,
but virtually everybody gets the drum, because without the drum it doesn't have that Soviet World War 2 look.
They have 30- and 10-round stick magazines as well.
However, as far as I am able to understand, the drum is actually pretty darn well designed and pretty reliable so,
one of the cool things is we can take it apart, and I can show you the inside.
I've loosened the screw a bit, so we just take this
screw out; and then the back plate
lifts off; this is kind of like
a Suomi, or a, well, a Papasha drum, where the back comes off; however you don't have to do this to load;
they do make a little loading tool, and you can load it through the top. If you do look inside though, you will find this plastic wheel.
Worth pointing out that the vast majority of the space in this drum is not used at all; it is this size
simply to fit a circumference of 50 cartridges; and then what makes it actually run are three dummies at the top.
So these dummy cartridges are held together by a little rubber piece;
which is one of the weak points of the gun that
can get old and brittle and break; and when they get to the end those three feed up into the feed tower,
just like regular cartridges...
...feeding up like that, and that means that there's something still pushing on
the last cartridge in the drum, even though you haven't had a real cartridge available for a couple rounds.
By the way, pro tip: If you are shooting one of these, and you have a malfunction at the end of the magazine,
be careful when you clear it, because
if that rubber piece has broken, and one of these dummy cartridges has gotten chambered in your rifle,
you do stand a good chance of losing it if you're not paying attention; and if you lose it the drum doesn't really work so well,
so you need all three of those.
The other cool little detail to notice in this drum is:
I'm holding the drum square-on, and if you look you can see that the two, the front and the back plate, these plastic plates
don't appear to be in line with each other, and that's not because of poor quality control; that's very deliberate.
You can see if I tilt the drum a little bit, those line up.
Because the .22 rimfire is a rimmed cartridge,
you need to do something to avoid rim-lock; and so what they do is actually take the cartridges and cant them, each,
just at a slight angle, so that the rims don't interfere; in particular once they start feeding up into the tower.
That is definitely going to be one of the elements that makes this
a more reliable drum magazine than many others, so, there you go.
That's the angle that they are put in at; and that's square-on to the drum.
Sorry, I don't have any dummy .22s, or I would show them to you.
So if your collection is in need of something that's sort-of military style,
but just cheap and easy and affordable and fun to shoot,
you know what? There's a reason that things like this have remained popular for so long.
They're really not bad little guns. A lot of
military collector types will look down their noses at them because they have absolutely no military provenance; they just are fake look-alikes;
but you know what they're still fun to shoot, so: If you're interested in this one it is part of a batch with several other rifles;
if you take a look at the description text below, you'll find a link to Rock Island's catalog page covering the entire lot;
you can see their price estimate, their pictures, the other guns that are in the lot, all that sort of stuff;
and if you're interested you can place a bid on them right through Rock Island's website. Thanks for watching.