Crafted by Carl Walther Waffenfabrik + the gang back in the Weimar Republic of the late 1920s and pitched as a police gun, the Polizeipistole (PP) was beautiful for its time soon edged out its contemporaries to a degree. By 1929, a shorter and more compact model, designed specifically as a concealable detective’s carry piece, Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell (PPK), hit the market and hasn’t looked back.
Fueled by Bond films and a hungry import market in the U.S. for the gun after WWII, the rebooted Carl Walther GmbH shipped the PPK by the boatload to the States until 1968 when the Gun Control Act lowered the boom on the design.
Walther ad from 1955, note the prices
Tweaked to meet the “point” system to make it qualify for “sporting purposes,” the PPK/s model took over as Interarms/Ranger/EMCO built the standard PPK under license from Walther in Alabama starting in the 1980s.
Eventually, this all changed as S&W replaced EMCO and made the guns for Walther starting in 1998, a relationship that ended around 2012-ish.
Now, after a hiatus, both the PPK and PPK/s are being made here in the U.S. again, this time in-house in Walther’s plant in Arkansas.
The PPK and PPK/s compared, with the latter being a skosh larger and with a 7+1 capacity of .380 rather than the standard 6+1 of the PPK
They are set to hit the market this month, priced around $700~ which is about 3x as much as a polymer-framed LCP with the same capacity, but Bond didn’t carry an LCP.
Better trigger D is recommended…
More in my column at Guns.com