Intratec TEC-22 Makes The News

Steve Johnson
by Steve Johnson

A political scandal broke out in Mexico today when a photograph of a young congressional candidate posing with a firearm was published on Facebook. The politics of this is far outside the scope of TFB, but what I do find interesting is the gun itself. The Mexican press are calling it an “UZI submachine gun”. It is about as close to an UZI as it is to an AK-47!

I believe the gun is an Intratec TEC-22 / Scorpion. Back in the early 90s Intratec tried to capitalize on their infamous TEC-9 pistol by producing a cheap .22 patterned after it. It was mainly made out of ABS plastic and used Ruger 10/22 magazines. The TEC-22′s designer was none other than George Kellgren, the founder and Chief Engineer of Kel-Tec.

Kellgren was ahead of his time. Today just about every infamous gun of the 20th century has a plastic .22 patterned after it. A couple of years ago Ruger decided a forward magazine fed .22 pistol was not a bad idea and produced the Ruger Charger.

[ Many thanks to Ztryfe for emailing us the link. ]

Steve Johnson
Steve Johnson

I founded TFB in 2007 and over 10 years worked tirelessly, with the help of my team, to build it up into the largest gun blog online. I retired as Editor in Chief in 2017. During my decade at TFB I was fortunate to work with the most amazing talented writers and genuinely good people!

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  • Zach Zach on Mar 10, 2012

    I checked out the link to the GSGs that Bob Z Moose posted for SEDENA, and it appears the stock photo used for the GSG .22 has the magazine inserted backwards. An inside joke, maybe?

    • Bob Z Moose Bob Z Moose on Mar 13, 2012

      @Zach Saw that too and it made me wonder what was going on. Someone must have been lazy when they search "GSG-5" on Google Images.

  • Kevin A Kevin A on Aug 17, 2012

    Unfortunately, the media does know what it is saying.....most media outlets are run by liberals, hence, they will throw names around like "automatic" for a semi-auto.......or "Uzi" for anything that looks like, well, an Uzi......and correctness be damned( unless its political correctness).....us against them mates......

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