Kel Tec KSG Review.....

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dajerseyrat

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I can tell you this much about the gun, dont buy it. I waited months for mine and recently took delivery of it and as any excited boy with a new toy would do,I cleaned it and I went straight to the range. First Impression,it looks cool and that’s where the good impressions end. Kel Tec should have waited till the design was complete and bug free before releasing any of these weapons to anyone.

The gun is very awkward almost to the point of difficult to load and you will most likely cut your finger doing so. Now imagine trying to load this thing in the field under high stress situations. I dont see how it is possible to combat load a round into the chamber without turning the gun upside down. The magazine selector switch is very hard to manipulate from right to left on my gun and would need to be in the neutral position to attempt a combat load, which is one more extra step which would most likely get you shot in the face in real combat..

Chambered and fired first round, and racked it back only to encounter a double feed jam! The gun failed to extract the spent shell and attempted to load not 1 but 2 additional rounds at once, so a total of 3 rounds were stuck in there, leaving me with a 26″ long baseball bat to defend myself with. This type of jam is simply impossible to clear in a combat situation and would have cost me my life. It takes several minutes to clear the jams once they happen. I fired another round and it did the same exact thing. In fact the first 6-7 attempts the gun jammed the same way. Thinking it was me possibly limp wristing the slide, I allowed 4 other colleges to attempt to shoot it and it did the same thing for all 4 of them, including one range master/fire arms instructor. So it was not me. Now I am far from a gun expert, but I have been in law enforcement for over 15 years and qualify 2 times a year with our shotgun and have put thousands of shotgun rounds down range and never once had a shotgun jam on me.

I notified Kel-tec who told me they wanted me to return the gun which keep in mind was just purchased a day or two prior, and would send me a call tag and take a look at it when they get a chance. That was over 4-5 days ago, no call tag, no returned email or phone call.

I fired the gun several more times since and the gun now religiously jams on me at least once out of every 10-15 rounds.

To make things worse I attempted one more time today to shoot it utilizing a forward pistol grip which subsequently broke 2 teeth of the rail within the first 3 shots….

Kel-tec stated this gun would revolutionize the industry, and if by revolutionize they mean get a ton of people killed, then yes they are doing it. At this point I fell that Kel Tec is utilizing people like me to do their R&D for them while making big money on markups.

The design is really stupid when you look at it in detail and how the rounds are extracted and rechambered via one exit which increases the jamming probability much more than a side eject. The extracted round has to pass downward past the rounds in the magazine, then a new round needs to be fed upward. In my opinion this X-crossing effect is a poor design prone to failure and jamming. There is no way this gun would ever stand up to the abuse of actual combat performance either for police or military.

Save your money and buy a real shotgun this thing is a video game cool looking novelty, and I dont predict Kel Tec being around the marketplace much longer with failures like this weapon.
 
Greetings dajerseyrat, and welcome aboard.

Thanks for the heads-up, many have expressed interest in this gun.
To some, I fear, your review will be more troubling than a youthful discovery about the reality of Santa Clause.
 
I'd not consider both feeding and ejecting from the bottom to be a poor design; the Ithaca 37 has been doing this for decades without any issues. Yet, it can be troublesome- witness Remington's issues with and eventual abandonment of the 105 CTi (doing it in a semiauto has its own issues, and while they worked them out, it isn't easy to get right).

Kel-Tec does not have a good rep for getting their designs right the first time lately, and the dual magazine tubes are enough of a design change that many people didn't expect it to be bug-free.

Hopefully they can get it right for you- they may have a bunch of people at the NRA convention right now, so it may be into the middle or so of next week to get much of a response.
 
You're putting words in my mouth. There is a fine line between a design being great and one that is easy to get right. The existence of other designs that feed and eject out the bottom and make it work negate your premise that such a model of operation is a poor design. It is most definitely a tougher design to make it work right, but left handed shooters might disagree with you about it being such a poor design that it ought not ever be done.
 
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I actually am a Left handed shooter and never had any issue firing a conventional shotgun or handgun. This gun is not anything special as far as ambidextrous usability is concerned. In fact I find it easy to shoot a right handed gun as I have become accustom to it. The only difficult thing is dropping a magazine on most handguns. As far as Im concerned I rather have a reliable right handed shotgun that rarely breaks over an ambidextrous shotgun that breaks in one use and will cost you your life if you ever depended on it.

The Keltec is no where near production ready and they simply cant admit it or must need to recoup some costs. But I can tell you if that was my first time using this gun in the field and I was in a fire fight, I was taken out of the fight after getting off my first round.

If you look at the construction of the gun, it appears to be molded in 2 separate plastic halves and bolted together, as opposed to a solid injection molded 1 piece construction. When you really start messing with the gun you can tell it is flimsy and will not stand up to the abuse of real world use. This gun should be left in the real of video games, or completely redesigned with stronger parts and metal lower rails.
 
Thanks and welcome dajerseyrat.

I've been wondering about this weapon for a year, and considered buying one. Based upon your and other reports, I'm not so sure it's something I want to pick up.

Great idea, neat features. Like software, I think I'll wait for at least version 2.2.

Thanks,
TXAZ
 
It seems that everyone's predictions about how quickly the KSG would be refined and available were correct. I know they are shipping small numbers since before the SHOT show, but mine has been on order with a major online gun distributor for 14 months, almost four months after their first shipment. I was number two on their wait list for most of that time, and now in the first position for 2 months. They have confirmed that they received exactly 1 (one) KSG since taking 100s of pre-orders in Feb 2011.

Does KelTec lack sufficient resources to bring this design into fully developed state and full-production runs?

If that's the problem, then with all the hype, pre-sales, and general high sell-ability of this design, it would seem like the prudent thing to do would be to give up a little bit of the pie, get some funding, and get the damn thing perfected and tooled for large scale production. The numbers in the end would more than justify a dilution.

If it's a POS after all this, it will be unforgivable. The best thing they could do at that point would be to sell or license the design to a manufacturer who can actually execute the final R&D and full production.
 
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Now reliable sources tell me that out of 100 guns shipped so far, the have had 8 failures not including mine which would be 9. Now that's assuming all 100 guns are in the hands of end users and not sitting on shelves in gun stores being gouged for 3X's the MSRP by these animals...That's also a conservative number released by KelTec to my source, which means the actual failure rate may be much higher than that..Even so lets assume 10 guns out of 100 had issues thus far, that is an dismal 10% failure rate!!! What do you think the Military or police personnel would do with a 10% failure rate? It would not make the initial testing and be cut from their arsenal for sure. Lets take our assumption 1 step further, and realize that out of the 100 guns shipped, all 100 of them are in the hands of recreational shooters who shoot in a controlled environment and very few of these guns will see actual combat or real life scenarios. When you look at the fact that 10% of these guns have failed under those conditions and almost immediately, it is quite disturbing.....Put this gun in a harsh dessert or jungle environment and the failure rate will skyrocket IMHO...

Keep the Keltec in the video games, because in real life you dont have extra lives..
 
Here are some pictures of the 2 piece construction if thin plastic used in the gun. Some of the edges are still rough.

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In this picture you can see what appears to be rust in between the barrels of a brand new gun...Rust!!! Seriously? How do you make a gun that starts to rust immediately?:mad:

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Firstly, I don't think the Kel-Tec is a combat shotgun. It hasn't been marketed as anything like that.

Secondly, 98% of firearms eject up or to the side because 98% of firearms are fed from the bottom using box magazines.

It sucks to see the gun hasn't turned out as well as hoped, but being sensationalist about it doesn't do much.

dajerseyrat, are you military or LEO?

That doesn't look like rust to me, either. Looks like packing grease.
 
Only 100 guns shipped so far... That in and of itself is pretty amazing. That means they are making a gun every what, 7 days?

I don't think 10% failure rate for a totally new design is all that out of the ordinary. A number of designs from top dollar companies have had a near 100% failure rate.

Diamondback shipped a lot more than 100 with a much higher failure rate.
 
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dajerseyrat,

I mean no offense with what I'm about to say but I feel it must be said.

First let me make the disclaimer that I am in no way affiliated with Kel-Tec nor do I have any great fondness for them. I've only owned a couple of Kel-Tecs and having sold them won't purchase another Kel-Tec - they just aren't a flavor of juice I like.

Now then looking at this thread and your post history (or lack thereof) I have to question the reliability of your "review" (more like rant). You have all of 6 posts as of my writing this reply. All 6 posts have been complaints about Kel-Tec and their new shotgun. So far we have seen nothing from you that would lend your review any credence in experience, knowledge and/or reliability.

As others have said this shotgun is still a project in development. Other weapons platforms have been released with just as high or higher failure rates and they are now loved by those who have them. The AR system comes to mind right away.

Personally I had been intrigued by Kel-Tec's KSG when I first read about it but decided to hold off on it. I don't make enough money to spend on first run prototypical guns. Obviously you decided you could afford to take the gamble because you obviously liked the way it looked and perhaps what it was supposed to have been able to do. Now I'd believe you are disappointed and understandably so but this whole thread seems more like you p***ing and moaning about your particular unit. I'd like to know what the other 90 or so owners of the KSG would say about their properly functioning weapons... in fact I'd bet if you had been one of those people you'd be lauding the shotgun and its attributes right now instead of complaining about it.

Temperance my friend - and patience. Keep on Kel-Tec and work to get your gun repaired/replaced. Don't alter the gun in any way and refrain from shooting it any more lest you void the warranty.

EDIT: It was asked previously if you were LEO or military... I'd like to know the answer to that too. Where does your knowledge of firearms come more from - the web and other sources rather than real life experience or is it the other way around?
 
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I for one appreciate your notice.....confirms my conservative approach to many things and prototypes, even those from Microsoft and Apple, have a bad habit of biting the first purchasers. That, however, does not preclude your right to complain about youor experience thus far....I'm certain I would have a much different vocabulary! Best of luck getting this resolved to YOUR satisfaction!
 
I can't believe some of the posts attacking this guy. You think from what theh pictuires look like that is packing grease and not rust? Why not ask him if it wipes off, because it looks like rust to me but he is the one observing with a naked eye.

Who cares if he is miltary or LE? One rangemaster was confiding in me the other day how poorly many agencies' officers, and I think he mainly meant feds as opposed to street cops, understood their weapons care and use.
 
It isn't rust - as explained on the "other" forum where this rant is also located, it is the brazing from the assembly process. Beta-testing to what amounts to a video-game commando gun, there are going to be "oops" as they fine tune things. When you want to have the first and latest and greatest, then you need to understand the quality of ANY product will not be that great - whether guns, cars, software, etc.

Most folks know to wait on something as new as this - if for nothing more than to let the initial price to come down
 
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