Gun guru and MVD agent KardeN gets to play with all the best toys – this time, it’s the 9mm Kalashnikov-based submachine gun, the PP-19-01 “Vityaz”. Designed to handle high pressure 9x19mm Russian ammunition, the Vityaz is a more elegant weapon than its predecessor, the PP-19 “Bizon”. In KardeN’s photos below you can see the steel-cased and steel-cored 9x19mm 7N31 ammunition with polymer coated cases. This ammunition is extremely high pressure and powerful, flinging its 63gr armor-piercing bullet to nearly 2,000 ft/s, while the cartridges themselves are about a third lighter than standard 9x19mm ball rounds.

The chief difference between the two weapons lies in the magazine: The Bizon utilized a novel but troublesome helical magazine that doubled as a forend, while the Vityaz utilizes a more conventional stick magazine. This change from high capacity rotary magazine to standard capacity stick magazine echoes a similar change made decades earlier to the PPSh-41 submachine gun that served the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War on the Eastern Front of World War II. Russian engineers, like those worldwide, seek the holy grail of high capacity magazines, but so far it has eluded them.

Be sure to click through the link and take a look at all the pictures KardeN took of the PP-19-01 “Vityaz”, and all the other cool guns he’s photographed!