In the course of our talk with Mr. Elliot we learned that there was no collusion between Kel-Tec and Ruger on the design of these nearly identical guns. Ruger basically copied the overall Kel-Tec design, making sure no patents were infringed and also ensuring Ruger's parts would not interchange with those of the Kel-Tec. The guns are, for the most part, made by each company as entirely individual efforts.

One exception is the magazines for both guns are made by the same company in Italy, using machinery owned respectively by Ruger and Kel-Tec. As we noted in the GUN TESTS report, we found that not many of the components will interchange, though the assembled Ruger slide will fit onto the Kel-Tec.

While the folks at Ruger are to be lauded for actually shooting their products, I'm not sure the ones with serious street-based competition behind them are the ones making the decisions about what works and what does not. What I learned many years ago is that fast hits count. Point shooting is generally useless. The best shooters always use the sights.

The yellow line indicates the metal that has to be removed to fix our faulty Ruger. Later guns already have this removed.

The red arrow points to the Ruger's battered inner shoulder, which is too long. Note the Kel-Tec has less metal in this area. Ruger has remedied this problem on subsequent guns by relieving the aluminum subframe at this point.