My good friend REMOV managed to get a couple of photos of Renaud Kerbrat’s latest invention: the KRISS KARD pistol. The KARD will be officially unveiled later this year. Luckily you read The Firearm Blog and get the skinny right now!

The patent application (#20070214699) for the pistol was published in February. It somehow managed to slip under my radar! As you have probably guess by looking at the photos, the pistol makes use of a delayed bolt blowback system.

The KARD’s barrel is fixed, rather than the tilting barrel system used in most conventional pistols. To provide inertia, a weight is located at the front of the gun which is actuated by the bolt. The weight, which tilts downwards during recoil, provides the same functionality (interia) as a slide on a regular pistol. By the time the bolt and barrel separate, the pressure inside the barrel will be at safe levels. A recoil spring pulls the bolt back intro battery (stripping a round off the magazine on its return journey).

So what are the advantages of this system? The primary advantage is that the recoil mechanism transfers some of the recoil energy in a downward direction (and at the front of the gun), rather than backwards like a slide does in a regular pistol. This should help keep the gun on target. Another advantage is that the because there is no slide, optics can be easily mounted on the top of the gun. A fixed barrel could be more accurate than a tilting barrel and will make it easier to use suppressors and other muzzle attachments.

I would be very surprised if a machine pistol version of this gun is not made. The design seems to be crying out for full auto trigger!

You can read the full patent application after the jump …

[ Many thanks to REMOV for sending me info and photos. ]

UPDATE: The barrel is fixed. It does not recoil.
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