I was stumbling around in H&H the other day and spotted something out of place over there in the end rack where they keep the .380 pistols; it was one of the dark new Walther PPK/S .22 LR pistols fresh from the new Walther facility out of Ft. Smith, Arkansas; (no longer made by S&W by the way) and it said "Walther" and "Made in Germany" on it. As the proud owner of a beautiful, very much shot; well broken-in, highly tweaked Stainless Interarms PPK/S for almost 20 years, I am a big fan of the old school, heavy, ammo-sensitive, web-of-the-hand-biting little bastids and so with one wary eye on the newest Walther; I somewhat casually sought assistance from a retail associate. 
. Now some of those guys are shrewd, 
and I quickly found myself hustled up front and filling out the required 4473 and forking over my cash. 
I was, however, quite pleased with my find and am surely one of the first in Oklahoma to own this newest iteration of the venerable old design. 
Popping the slide while the fine gentleman in the nice green shirt handled the financial aspects of the transaction brought a smile to my face. I was pleasantly surprised to see the same kind of internals, for the most part, as on the center fire versions...there was the much cursed hammer block with it's often lost very tiny little spring nestled in the same place; there was the blasted safety, the hammer release, and the internal slide lock. The familiar ribs along the top of the smooth, well rounded slide drew my eye to the same tiny sights...except I noticed that the rear sight is adjustable for windage and you get three different height front sights in a plastic baggie! Alas, you also only get 1 10-round magazine. Now to the fun part: I didn't do much but punch the bore a few times, wipe the goop out of the chamber and off the ramp with a q-tip and lube up the rails. I eagerly loaded up 10 40 gr CCI Mini Mags and smiled like a fat kid locked in a cupcake store as all 10 flawlessly fed, fired, and hit in just about the same spot. Repeated this for the first 50 rounds. Not a problem! A little Q-tip action on the feed ramp and downrange went 50 Federal Bulk Pack 36 gr rounds equally well. Next; 50 Federal Automatch; 50 standard velocity CCI and 50 standard velocity Blazers. One of the Blazers failed to fire, but the primer was dented so it was a bum round. I now had 250 rounds through the pistol and was very pleasantly surprised to find it worked so well, short little barrel and all, with the wide variety of .22 food I was feeding it. Now, this little thing is no Buckmark or Ruger Mark III in terms of accuracy, but it damn sure surprised me as to how good it was! I set the baby PPK/S aside and fired a few mags of those hot Fiocchi .380's out of my trusty Stainless PPK/S whilst humming the Bond Theme Song to myself, of course, then just dumped the rest of my .22 out on the bench and shot another couple hundred rounds with one or two more of the expected dud rounds through my newest plinker. NO problems with the pistol; none at all! My only gripes so far is: Gripe #1: the ridiculously heavy DA pull; are you kidding me? It's like 17-18 lbs or something! Try holding a decent sight picture on a target with a lil shooter like this and a 17 Lb trigger for awhile and you will soon be cocking that hammer with every fresh mag for the SA joy it has! Gripe #2: It doesn't let you use previously (read: older model) made PPK/S .22 mags! That would have been sweet...Oh well, other than that, iIt chambered, fired, extracted, ejected, chamber, fired and finally locked back on an empty magazine until I was out of boolits.
Do I like it? No Duh! It rocks. It's an awesome little gun. Was it worth the $439 I had to pay to make it mine? To me it is. Will Walther make a killing on these? I bet they do! I intend to shoot the crap out of it every chance I get; it is small enough to give one a bit of recoil, if like me, that tickles your smile-bones. Thank you Walther! Oh,and yes, thank you for doing away with that abomination of an extended beaver tail courtesy of S&W and making this little gun look like what it is; a Walther PPK/s.
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