Nevermind that I still haven’t seen a P322 in real life on the LGS shelf yet, the fact that they opted to make it not share a platform with either the P320 or the P365 kind of ruined it for me in my intended use. I’ve been putting in quite a lot of effort to learn the red dot this year, and part of that has really solidified in my mind the importance of consistent grip and presentation to aid in acquiring the dot. As such, I’ve been trying to standardize my carry platform around the P320, since it’s what we use at work and I’m kinda stuck with it (not that that’s a bad thing).

I like the P320, but the light trigger and pre-cocked striker kind of skeeve me out for certain carry applications. I came across a P250 in 9mm at the LGS a few months ago. It was cheap, it shares grip modules and mags with my P320s, and provides that identical grip angle that I was looking for, so I scooped it up. It’s nothing special, but it’s been reliable and accurate, and if you can get over the long trigger pull and reset it’s actually a very nice gun. It makes a good chest carry piece for hiking, fishing, and kayaking, as the long trigger pull and exposed hammer offer some additional protection against an ND, and if it gets dunked in the water it’s very easy to completely disassemble in the field to dry and clean.

I was still getting comfortable with the 9mm P250 when I stumbled upon another good deal on a .22 version on a local gun board. Historically, I’ve not had good experiences with .22 variants of service-style guns, so I was a little leary, but the price was attractive so I decided to take a chance.



The gun is a standard P250 lower, with an aluminum upper. The slide profile is a bit different from the centerfire version of the gun, probably to help keep slide mass optimized for the blowback action, but it does still fit in my P250/P320 holsters, so it is usable in my intended role as a training aid.





Seeing as the P250 is built on a modular FCU, the barrel is obviously not fixed to the frame like many traditional blowback actions, but is locked in place by a bushing at the front of the slide. While not exactly a target gun with that long DA trigger, it’s plenty accurate enough for its intended role.

Recoil is obviously light…it’s a .22 after all…but the slide cycles with enough force that you at least feel like you’re shooting a gun.

The sights are traditional white-dot, with a nice adjustable rear, which is a must for a .22, IMO.

The slide DOES NOT lock open after the last round is fired, which IMO is pretty annoying, and maybe a little concerning with a rimfire, however I have not observed any signs of peening on the chamber rim from dry-firing following an empty mag, so the firing pin travel must be properly arrested to prevent this. I would have preferred to have that last-round hold-open, but for my purposes it’s not a deal breaker.



Reliability was a mixed bag. Out of the box, I have to admit it was better than I expected. It had no feeding, extraction, or ejection issues…just a propensity for light strikes. Being a DA gun, it has second strike capability, so sometimes you could pull the trigger again and get the round to fire, but sometimes it still wouldn’t. This got annoying quickly as it was happening once or twice per magazine.

I disassembled the slide and cleaned the firing pin and channel, and also polished the chamber to ensure complete seating of rounds, with no improvement. This led me to believe that it needed more hammer spring force to reliably ignite the primers. The hammer spring (actually a pair of nested springs) of the P250 sits in a channel inside the hammer, and is retained by and loaded against a pin in the FCU. I took a couple of spent large pistol primers and hammered them flat to create some shims,and stuck them up inside the channel inside of the hammer to add a little more compression to the spring. We took it out today and went through about 250 rounds with only 2 light strikes (and I think one of those was just bad ammo, as we dropped the hammer on it until the rim was crushed flat and it still wouldn’t go off), so I think this resolved the problem.



The only other issue I’m having with the gun is that it occasionally fails to strip the second round from the magazine. The gun does tend to auto-forward when you slam a mag home, and the problem seems to be more prevalent when it does this. I’ve taken to holding the slide lock up when I insert the mag, and then manually releasing it once the magazine is locked in place. I’m ordering a P320 Slide release lever for it anyway so that it will fit my P320 grip modules, so we will see if that has any impact on this problem. I’m also going to strip and clean the mags really well before I take it out again.

At the end of the day it lacks the insane reliability of my Ruger MkII, but it fills a role in my lineup and serves a practical purpose. I’m a tinkerer by nature, so I don’t mind a little project to get something running reliably, but if that’s not you I’m not sure I’d recommend that you buy one of these. Ultimately, it allows me to train on my regular grip from my regular holster, it’s now reliable enough not to be frustrating, and cheap enough to shoot hundreds of rounds in a range session without breaking the bank (or burning through primers that I can’t replace). I’m happy with that.

I like it. 22 guns just seem to need tinkering sometimes. Unless it's a Kadet or an 87!

I too would have bought it but it is a bit of an acquired taste visually. lol

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
I too would have bought it but it is a bit of an acquired taste visually. lol

Yeah, a looker it sure isn't. That half-inch of solid aluminum slide around the ejection port is probably the weirdest visual feature to my eye...

Sweet, I'll take It!

Thanks for the review. Those keep popping up, particularly in online auctions. I like the centerfire 250Fs and have been wondering lately whether one of these would be worth the investment. I'm still pondering it, but it's a good deal to have heard from someone who's shot one.

After I bought my P320 I really wished I’d looked harder at the P250. I like the P320 a lot but like you the light trigger combined with the striker doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies. I’m not saying it’s unsafe or anything, I just don’t love it. I would like to try a P250 though because I think I might really like it.

I used to have a bunch of 320’s. They shoot incredibly well. I just am not a fan of the fully compressed striker. I sold a couple, would sell the rest but my son likes them. I have moved back to hammer guns and LEM in particular. The 250 interests me.

Don't hear me saying that I think the P320 is unsafe, because I don't think that. I carry one daily in a duty holster, and am completely comfortable with it. I've banged it around enough, rolled around on the ground with it, gone through brush and undergrowth, and holstered and unholstered enough to be fully confident in the safety of the system. But I'm not a perfect person...I make mistakes just like anybody else...and the short pull and light weight of the trigger on that platform leave absolutely no room for error on my part, or any leeway for my holster/carry system.

In the backcountry I carry in a Hill People Gear kit bag. While it has some extra padding that adds rigidity, it's still a soft-sided system. The gun rides in its own pocket, but Murphy's law is real and stuff sometimes goes wrong. If I fall down a hillside or something while hiking and bounce off a few rocks and trees on the way, there's always that chance that something exerts pressure through the bag in the wrong direction and bumps the trigger. Now I've not only beaten myself up by falling down a hill, but I've made a bad situation worse by shooting myself. Or I simply screw up and snag it on a stick or one of my pack straps while re-holstering...there's just more safety margin with an exposed hammer and longer pull.

As to the mechanics of the pre-cocked striker...once again I don't think it's inherently unsafe, there's just less mechanical safety margin. The basic function of a fully-tensioned striker design is to prevent the gun from going off...the energy necessary to discharge the primer is already stored in the system, and by pulling the trigger you are simply removing the mechanical inhibitors to allow the weapon to discharge. With a DA system, the user has to create the force necessary to fire the gun by pulling the trigger...the gun needs outside input to create the energy necessary to fire. There are several redundant mechanical safeties built into the P320 design to ensure that it is safe, and multiple things would have to break at the same time for the gun to discharge without the trigger being pulled. But in some modes of carry, especially ones where the muzzle will potentially be covering body parts at times, I like that extra layer of mechanical redundancy that a DA system provides.

FWIW, the P320 is not the only platform set up like this. The P365 striker is also fully-tensioned (as are I believe...I'm not as familar with these...Walther and M&P striker-fired handguns). The P365 is actually fundamentally very similar to the P320, but there are obviously some significant changes to the parts to reduce the form-factor down to a micro-compact size. The P320 just suffers from more bad press than the others due to the early drop safety issues that were corrected by the "voluntary upgrade".

The P320/P365 are good, safe designs. But IMO you have to consider all the factors: gun, holster, other attire, carry technique, and environment to make the best decision for you on what you're comfortable with. It's why they make a wide variety of guns, and also the reason that I use to convince my wife that I need a safe full of them and a box full of holsters to go with them .

quote:

Originally posted by Pale Horse:
After I bought my P320 I really wished I’d looked harder at the P250. I like the P320 a lot but like you the light trigger combined with the striker doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies. I’m not saying it’s unsafe or anything, I just don’t love it. I would like to try a P250 though because I think I might really like it.

If you can shoot a DA revolver, you'll have no trouble with the P250. The pull is smooth and light, but very long. The reset is very long as well. I found that I had to put some time in on it to keep myself from short-stroking the trigger as I'm used to the P320 and my DA/SA guns, most of which are set up for a short reset. Even compared to my revolvers, the reset feels long, and it lacks the heavy return spring of most of my Smiths, so you dont get quite as forceful a push back to reset as you do with a revolver. Once you get used to it, though, it's not a problem.

I agree with everything you said. I have gone almost completely to appendix carry. On my 365’s I added the manual safety to all (most) of them. If I stuff something pointed at my femoral artery I just prefer a hammer or at a minimum the manual safety. It’s one of the reasons I love the old P99 system and the LEM so much.

My issues with LEM have been completely negated by the steel flat trigger and going away from the ergos of the USP line.

I like the 320. It’s hard to shoot them poorly. I’ve just kind of moved on for no great reason. The 250 though is intriguing with its own weird Sig induced quirks (rear sight).

I’ve never even held a 250. (Which would feel exactly like a 320 lol, never dry fired one how about that)

Love my P250, keeps me honest. Mine has been sitting in a weighted and magwelled Xcarry module from when they came out. When using .22 it has a Xcompact module.

Still going rounds with this thing trying to get it more reliable, and figured I'd update.

I took it out in the cold then other day and it wasn't running for crap. It was short-stroking and stovepiping 3-4x per mag. I don't think the recoil of the mighty .22LR was enough to reliably overcome the increased spring tension in the mainspring that I introduced with my crushed primer shims.

I removed the shims and polished the heck out of the inside of the chamber, the firing pin, and the firing pin channel. I'm still having light-strikes with Federal Automatch, but it's down to one every 3 or so mags. Not great, but at least it's shootable.

If you want an annoying gun to try to make run right because you love it anyway might I suggest the mighty Beretta 21a Bobcat.

Best worst gun ever made. lol

I have polished every square of that gun that could conceivably make a difference. I have snipped coils off of its twin recoil springs, I have tweaked the magazines, I painted the front blade. It's the height of annoyance. I respect your drive. I don't envy it however. lol

I actually owned an older variant of the Bobcat...a Model 20...back in the day. Mine was a .25, not a .22, so it didn't really have reliability issues in the traditional sense. It fed, fired, and extracted/ejected just fine.

The problem was that it would break all the time. The grips cracked early on in my ownership of it, and I had to source new ones. Then the slide started falling off every time I'd tip the barrel up. Add to those issues the obnoxiously expensive and difficult to source, yet extremely anemic cartridge, the terrible sights, terrible trigger, and terrible grip for my size XL hands, and I quickly decided I didn't want it anymore.

My brother-in-law wanted it and didn't care about the issues (he's not really a shooter, I think he just wanted a gun so he can say he owns a gun), so I sold it to him. He still has it and likes it, and I don't have it anymore so I'm happy. Everybody wins lol.

Honestly, if it had been in .22LR I'd probably have kept it and worked through the issues, but .25ACP is stupid.

"If I fall down a hillside or something while hiking and bounce off a few rocks and trees on the way."

If you LARP that scenario, be a buddy ... wear a GoPro a d share.

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:
"If I fall down a hillside or something while hiking and bounce off a few rocks and trees on the way."

If you LARP that scenario, be a buddy ... wear a GoPro a d share.

Lol there is plenty of bodycam video of me falling at work...it happens. Last time I was trying to herd a bunch of loose cows, stepped wrong going up an embankment, and went down in a field full of cow crap. It was only 2 hours in to a 12 hour shift, too.

As to falling down a mountain, when I was about 10 or 11 we went to southern Italy on vacation. We were living in Prague at the time, so it was a two day car trip. We stopped in the Austrian Alps for the night on the way down. The place we were staying at was on the side of a mountain, and there were hiking trails so we decided to check those out after a long day in the car. Well, I managed to trip and fall (imagine full-on summersault head-over-heels) off the trail and down the side of the mountain....right in a huge patch of stinging nettles. I was wearing a tank top and shorts, and I actually had to grab hold of nettle plants to arrest my fall...I probably rolled 30-40 feet before I got myself stopped. It hurt like hell, I got stung literally everywhere...I swelled up like a balloon, and we spent the next day driving 1000km through Italy in the heat of the summer in an un-air conditioned car. Not my finest moment, lol.