ATF Day 050320

Today I went to the range with the primary goal of zeroing the iron (plastic) sights on my Keltec CMR30 .22 WMR autoloader.

The CMR30 is a neat little rifle that weighs 3.8 lbs. unloaded. It fires .22 Magnum ammunition fed from a 30 round magazine located in the pistol grip. The receiver is an aluminum extrusion with Picatinny rails on top and bottom, in front of the trigger guard. The top rail is fitted by the factory with Magpul MBUS sights.

When Keltec announced it several years ago it immediately piqued my interest as a potential PDW that would be very compact, light, and reasonably effective for recoil-sensitive shooters. I finally picked one up last year in trade.

I've had the CMR30 out to a friend's place a couple times. It was in need of zeroing, which I finally did today at my rod and gun club.

I first put it on paper at 25 yards offhand and the fine tuned the zero at 50 from the bench. It's shooting about an inch high at 50 with either CCI 40 grain Maxi Mag FMJs or Federal 50 grain Game Shock JHPs.

I didn't take any pictures of the groups because, frankly they sucked. I attribute this to my not being able to easily focus on the front sight. When shouldered, the front sight is right at the distance where my almost 52 y/o eyes start to lose their ability to focus.

I did bring a Bushnell Trophy red dot with me and intended to mount it after zeroing the irons. Unfortunately, the Bushnell rings are intended for Weaver mounts and weren't compatible with the M1913 Picatinny rail of the CMR30.

After shooting the rifle the last time I field stripped, cleaned, and lubricated it with FP10. In spite of that, I had some reliability issues.

Specifically, on many magazines the second round down had a bolt-over-base failure to feed. Racking the action fed the round into the chamber and the rest of the cartridges fed OK. Keltec recommends using 40 grain or heavier ammo but I don't think the malfunctions were ammo induced. This didn't start happening until after about 50 rounds were down the pipe so I think it was a fouling or lubrication issue.

Another thing I noticed today (and which I experienced before) is that it spits unburned powder grains out of the ejection port. Right handed shooters may not notice this but as a lefty it's a bit annoying. If you're going to shoot one of these portside, glasses are absolutely required.

Both the reliability issues and spitting from the ejection port mean that until they are remedied, I wouldn't rely on the gun for defense.

I'm going to try and come up with some sort of brass and gas deflector.

All told, I put 150 rounds through the CMR30 today.

Aside from the Keltec I also brought along my Ruger 50th Anniversary Blackhawk .357 Magnum. I put a few cylinders full through it at a 25 yard paper target, and some at 50 yard steel. Once I got the elevation figured out I was able to regularly bang a ~12" gong shooting two hands, offhand at 50 yards.

The ammo I shot in the Blackhawk were some of my .38 Special +P handloads, with a 178 grain Keith SWC on top of 5.2 grains of Unique.

After getting home I relaxed out back with a Yuengling Black and Tan beer and a San Cristobal Quintessen cigar.