Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report! This ongoing series is all about the rimfire firearm world and its many types of guns, gear, shooting sports, and ammunition types! Last week we talked about a recent upgrade that was released for the KelTec P17 pistol. The new optics-ready slide is a cool addition to the pistol’s capabilities but I’m still debating on whether or not it’s a solid recommendation from me as it puts the pistol on the same price scale as the much more reliable and durable SIG P322 or even the classic Ruger Mark IV Lite. If the price were a bit lower for the entire package, I’d say it would be 100% worth picking up – so maybe wait for a sale or something because it’s certainly a lot of fun for a compact lightweight 22LR pistol. Today we’re going to combine the rimfire world with the world of clone builds. As you might have guessed from the title, today we’re talking about the DPMS Model RFA2-KIT or “Kitty Kat.” This pint-sized AR was originally intended to be used by SWAT entry teams which explains the ridiculously short 7″ barrel – even if you’re losing a lot of velocities, 5.56 has more than enough speed left to cause some serious damage at ranges you’d typically encounter baddies at indoors. However, if you’ve built one of these, you know you’re not training to use it for a planned entry – you’re probably mag-dumping it like the rest of us – and that’s expensive. Today we’re going to go over some of my recent experiences combining both Hop’s clone of the DPMS Kitty Kat, as well as CCMG’s latest iteration of their BRAVO 22LR conversion kit – this winning combination makes playing around with the Kitty Kat just a tad bit less expensive, and a whole lot more fun.

More Rimfire Report @ TFB:

• The Rimfire Report: The Five Most Affordable Rimfire Pistols Worth Buying
• The Rimfire Report: Comparing 22LR and 22WMR
• The Rimfire Report: Fixing My Dad’s Marlin Model 60

The Rimfire Report: How to Properly Play with Your Kitty Kat (Clone)

If you want a relatively short and quick rundown of what exactly the DPMS Kitty Kat is and some of its history, Hop has been messing around with the concept for quite a while now and has a lot of insights to share about the tiny rifle (or in his case a pistol at the time the video was filmed). You can watch that video here:

The Kitty Kat definitely has a dubious purpose and one that has more or less been dominated today by pistol-caliber carbines and submachine guns. So while the Kitty Kat might have had a purpose, it’s probably one that it didn’t get used for very often and like Hop said in his video, might have just been a rifle that an LEO armorer wanted to have around to burn ammunition.

With that in mind, that’s pretty much what any civilian would use the rifle for. However, in our case, 5.56 is still pretty expensive and a single 20-round mag dump is still about $10 or so making it not just a waste of perfectly good 5.56, but also a good way to drive yourself into credit card debt if you keep it up.

Enter the new CMMG Bravo Conversion Kit

CMMG’s Bravo 22LR conversion kit isn’t exactly anything new but in the time since I reviewed their last (2nd?) iteration of the conversion kit, CCMG has released a newer version sporting new magazines but the same overall bolt design. The previous iteration of the CMMG Bravo conversion kit worked near flawlessly with a wide variety of ammunition from several different AR-15 rifles, so the newest version should theoretically work. Right? Because if it does, this meant that mag dumping the Kitty Kat clone at the range for fun just got a whole lot cheaper.

Part of this new fun iteration of the Kitty Kat included adding an antiquated Trijicon RX01 reflex sight on a gooseneck mount to the mix – it really gives the entire firearm a retro vibe. Hop did some initial testing with the Bravo-equipped Kitty Kat and had some mixed results in the reliability department. On a subsequent range trip the addition of a suppressor and the discovery that the rifle ran pretty well with CCI Mini Mags (what gun doesn’t?). Despite the improved reliability, malfunctions were still pretty common and the majority of the malfunctions happened to be with charging the gun from a fresh magazine – unless the gun was tilted to its side (ejection port down),it would almost always get hung up on the very first round going into the chamber.

Thinking that a majority of the malfunctions might be because of itself, we swapped the same conversion kit and magazine into my WWSD 2020 rifle and had the same exact problems. This led us to believe that the newer injection-molded magazines, which look way better than the old magazines, might not work as well as the previously hand-assembled ones that featured orange followers. These magazines in my experience have been the most reliable out of all the different iterations of the conversion kit and I’d be curious down the road to test out those magazines in this same setup to see if it changes anything.

Final Thoughts

All in all, the combination of these two quite odd firearm components/items is one that I really like and have probably had the most fun shooting so far this year. Sometimes it’s fun just to head out to the range for no other reason than to plink at steel targets and other things like beer cans, spent shotgun hulls, and the like. With a cool, fun, and retro-looking gun like the Kitty Kat, and the raw affordability of the 22LR rimfire cartridge, you can have an entire afternoon of fun shooting. As always I’d like to hear your experiences with either your own version of the DPMS Kitty Kat, or any of its clones, as well as the newer versions of the CMMG Bravo conversion kit. Have you been having similar issues to me or does yours work straight out of the box? Thanks once again for stopping by to read The Rimfire Report and we’ll see you all next week!