Meet the Walther SP22. I assume SP stands for space pistol, and I refuse to be corrected.
I, like most people, forgot about the Walther SP22. The difference is that I really wanted one when they came out. The weird design, the affordable price point, and the fact that it fired .22LR triggered a need in my young self. Sadly, they only sold them from 2008 to 2010, which was a time when disposable income wasn’t in my vernacular.
A core memory unlocked when I finally stumbled across one. I was transported back to the gun magazines of old, where I undoubtedly saw the pistol advertised. A longing for the pistol hit me, and it had to be mine.
There is a lot going on with these guns. You’ll see S&W and Walther markings. S&W was Walther’s importer for several years.
The gun doesn’t have a slide; it has a bolt, and the assembly is covered by a solid aluminum shroud, which also contains your sights. To load and clear the gun, you have a pair of ambidextrous charging handles. It looks awesome.
Walther made four of these guns: the M1, M2, M3, and M4. The M1 was the standard 4-inch model; the M2 featured a six-inch barrel; the M3 had a six-inch barrel with optics and a light rail; and the M4 featured a six-inch barrel with an Olympic-style wood grip, customizable to the end user. There are a few other small differences between each model as well.
The Walther SP22 – Beyond the Norm
The guns were modular, at least for 2008.
You could add rails for optics to each gun. The 4-inch models could be converted to six-inch models. Weight sets were produced to reduce muzzle rise. Walther produced a laser sight and optic for these guns, and Truglo produced a higher visibility rear sight.
You could add a larger magazine release and even swap the grip modules. Push out a punch pin, and you could install a Junior-sized grip or the adjustable wooden match grip.
The front sight can be rotated to three different positions. It’s triangular, and rotating it allowed to change its size. Although even the smaller-sized front sight is quite massive. I’m not a sports shooter, or Olympic shooter, or bull’s eye, so I’m not sure if this sight was desirable.
It tends to obscure the target a fair bit, and I like a smaller sight for shooting small targets and tight groups. The rear sights are fully adjustable for windage and elevation.
The controls are a little weird. The safety is a crossbolt that sits flush when on safe and sticks outside the left side when pressed to fire. The magazine release is a heel type, not my preferred, but it’s a .22LR target pistol, so who cares. The grip is quite large for a .22LR, but incredibly comfortable.
The magazines hold ten rounds, and it’s basically a P22 magazine with a different baseplate. You can buy baseplates and swap them to use P22 magazines, which is nice. Technically, the barrel is threaded, a lot like a P22; you need a thread adapter, but you can’t use a P22 adapter. You need a SP22-specific adapter, which doesn’t seem easy to find. Not even Numrich lists this gun for small parts.
More Than Modular
The M1 and M2 allow you to adjust the trigger’s sear engagement position. The M3 and M4 had an adjustable sear engagement position, a first-stage position, and a sear engagement force. You adjust the sear engagement position via a small screw behind the trigger, and the other adjustments are done inside the gun and are user-accessible.
The SP22 series are single action, hammer-fired gun with an internal hammer. There is a hammer cocked indicator that sticks a red rod out of the rear of the backplate. The gun features a magazine safety and a hammer lock that requires a key to turn off and on. I didn’t get that key or any of the small tools that came with the gun. Ahh, the joy of used guns.
Taking everything apart is easy and allows you to customize and clean the gun. You have to remove the front plate and cocking handles, and the shroud pops off, allowing you access to the internals of the gun.
Inside the SP22
I shot about 350 rounds through the gun. Nothing fancy, just Blazer ammo, which tends to be fairly hot. It cycled it all without a problem. You probably need that 40-grain projectile to keep this thing running reliably. Stuff like Blazer and Federal Automatch will be your cheap bulk option.
It’s a 22LR, so recoil isn’t a concern, but watch your thumbs. More than once, that cocking handle popped me. Your thumb is meant to sit in front of the trigger guard, not along the shroud. I’d forget that from time to time and get a painful reminder.
The gun is quite accurate, and I made a 2ish-inch group at 15 yards offhand with the cheap Blazer ammo. The entire group was obscured by the front sight, which is about as good as I’m going to do. For me, a smaller front sight would be a great benefit. Better yet, a red dot would be perfect.
At 50 yards, I can’t see a piece of IPSC steel, so I wasn’t making the hits I’m sure this gun is capable of. At 15 yards, I couldn’t see the largest parts of my rimfire dueling tree. I rotated the sight to the thinnest position, and I could see the paddles and send them spinning. Even the thin sight makes this gun difficult to shoot at 25 yards and beyond.
It’s clearly meant to bisect a target in a bull’s eye or Olympic shooting situation, and not for me to plink with.
Going Ham With the SP22
The SP22 is a lot of fun to shoot. Since the sights don’t move and the gun itself barely moves, it’s easy to track the sights and shoot relatively fast with excellent accuracy on targets you can see. I found the weight kit on eBay and added it. It made the gun into an unmoving laser beam.
The trigger is certainly interesting.
It is one long, but smooth pull with a slight wall. There isn’t much feedback, and again, not an Olympic shooter by any means, but I’m not sure why a single-action gun has so much take-up. You can’t even ride the reset to get a shorter pull because it has to fully extend the take-up range to reset.
It runs reliably with no notable issues. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a malfunction from the gun. Admittedly, I only shoot ammo I know works in semi-autos after years of clearing malfunctions in other .22LR semi-autos.
Getting Weird With Walther
Overall, the SP22 is weird in many ways. It certainly looks weird and has weird controls, but the big front sight and the trigger are odd for a gun designed for punching small groups.
I don’t know why this gun existed. It was affordable at the time of its premiere. Maybe it appealed to target shooters on a budget who can’t afford a GSP. It must not have appealed to many folks because Walther only sold them for two years and likely didn’t sell many, since you don’t see them all that often.
As a collector of curios, it certainly satisfies me, and if you find one for a great price, then it’s fun. If you want a dedicated target pistol, there are better options. For now, I’m collecting the parts I can find to turn this into a monstrosity of mid-2000s-ness. I wish more guns were weird like this.