Kel-Tec

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Kel-Tec CNC Industries Inc.

Type	Private
Founded	1991
Headquarters	Cocoa, Florida
Key people	George Kelgren, Owner & Chief Engineer
Industry	Firearms
Website	www.kel-tec.com

Kel-Tec CNC Industries Inc. is a United States manufacturer of firearms. Founded in 1991 and based in Cocoa, Florida, the company has manufactured firearms since 1995, starting with semi-automatic pistols and expanding to rifles. Kel-Tec is a privately-owned Florida corporation. George Kelgren is an owner, and is the Chief Engineer. He is the innovative Swedish designer who also designed many earlier Husqvarna (in Sweden), Swedish Interdynamics AB (in Sweden), Intratec, and Grendel brand firearms.

Weapons currently (and formerly) manufactured by Kel-Tec include the 9 mm P11 pistol; the 32 ACP P-32 pistol; the .380 ACP P3AT pistol; the .40 S&W Kel-Tec P-40 (now discontinued but highly collected due to its design pushing the limits of power for its size and weight)); the Kel-Tec Sub-9 (now discontinued and replaced by the Sub-2000) and the SUB-2000, both semiautomatic pistol caliber carbines that fold for storage. In addition, the company offers a family of 5.56mm caliber rifles known as the SU-16 series. Newly-introduced in November 2005 is the Kel-Tec PLR-16, an unusual Long Range pistol design based in large part on key design elements copied from the earlier SU-16 rifle design.

New Kel-tec PF9 single stack 9mm pistol

The PF-9, a flat 9 mm single column magazine semi-automatic pistol based in large part on the earlier P11 and P3AT designs, is claimed to be the flattest and lightest 9 mm pistol ever mass-produced; it was announced on February 9, 2006, and was released into production in the fall of 2006.

At the 2007 SHOT Show held in Orlando, Florida, KEL-TEC introduced a series of new "High-Efficiency Rifles" called the RFB, standing for "Rifle, Forward-ejection, Bull-pup". The RFB is a gas-operated semi-automatic rifle with tilting breechblock locking mechanism, loads the 7.62×51 NATO (.308-Winchester) cartridge and uses metric FAL magazines; the RFB "family" consists in a series of Bullpup rifles with three barrel lengths (18"bbl carbine, 24"bbl sporter and 32"bbl target versions), and a patented forward-ejection system via a tube placed over the barrel that ejects the spent case forwards, over the handguard of the rifle. This eliminates the major drawbacks of Bull-pup rifles, which are generally not readily usable (if at all) by left-handed shooters and cannot be fired from the hip; however some shooters think that the forward-ejection Bullpup rifles like the RFB (and the Belgian FN F2000) create other concerns, such as not giving direct access to the chamber and thus making very difficult the clearing of the gun (taking out the chambered cartridge). Furthermore, shooters which have ever experienced a catastrophic failure on a firearm are generally seriously concerned about such an event to happen on a Bullpup rifle (where the chamber is very close to the user's face), and the fact that the RFB rifle chambers the powerful 7.62×51 NATO cartridge might pose higher risks of injury for the user. Full-scale production and marketing of the RFB rifles is scheduled for early 2008.

According to the company's website, Kel-Tec is one of the top ten handgun makers in the U.S.

[edit] Trivia

George Kelgren's name has figured prominently in the names of two firearms manufacturers. His initials have figured prominently for naming two well-known weapons.

The second syllable of his last name was the basis for Grendel firearms. Likewise, Kel-Tec is a combination of the last part of Intratec tacked onto to the first syllable of George Kelgren's last name. It also pays homage to the TEC-9 pistol made by Intratec and designed by George Kelgren.

In recognition of George Kelgren's design work, the original open bolt design TEC-9 was named model KG-9. The re-designed closed-bolt model was designated KG-99 and marketed at first as the TEC-9 and later the TEC-DC9. The significance is that the "KG" in both names, KG-9 and KG-99, simply represents George Kelgren's initials, in reverse order.