Most of the transferrable Uzis in the US are not factory original guns, but rather semi autos that were converted and registered as machine guns in the US before 1986 (when such activity was legal). There were several different ways to do this, with the two main ones being the registered bolt rou...

The “American 180 Security Briefcase” is the best execution of the operational briefcase concept that I have yet seen. The idea is simple; hide a submachine gun inside an ordinary looking briefcase so that it can be carried in the open by VIP security without arousing attention. Sometimes this is...

One of the classic "pick one" debates of World War Two is the German MP-40 versus the Soviet PPSh-41. During the war, both sides often opined that the other's SMG was better, so which really was? The MP-40 is more compact, with a smaller magazine but also a lower rate of fire. The PPSh is larger,...

The story of the Tec-9 begins with a Swedish company called Interdynamic AB and their designer Göran Lars Magnus Kjellgren designing a cheap and simple submachine gun for military use. It found no interested clients, and so the company decided to market it in the United States as a semiautomatic ...

Colt SMG: First of the 9mm ARs

With the expansion of SWAT teams throughout law enforcement in the 1980s, Colt realized that it was leaving a lot of sales on the table by not having a submachine gun it could offer alongside M16/CAR-15 rifles and carbines. They addressed this in the early 1980s by...

The FORT-230 is Ukraine's 9x19mm submachine gun. Since the start of 2025 these compact personal defence weapons have been seen more and more frequently with various different units of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Be sure to check out our accompanying article for this video here -
https://armoure...

The CZ247 was developed for Czechoslovakia's post-war submachine gun trials, where it was pitted against the ZB47. It was a simple blowback 9x19mm SMG with a number of interesting elements, most notably the ability to fire with the magazine either vertical or horizontal. In theory, this made the ...

The Model 1941 Orita was Romania's first domestic submachine gun, but after World War Two the design was upgraded in many ways. The Model 41/48 improved the stock, sights, and controls - and virtually all of the guns underwent these changes. Original configuration 1941 examples are extremely rare...

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This month's Q&A theme is submachine guns:

0:00:41 - Do different nationali...

The Type 79 is an overly-complex submachine gun that uses a scaled-down AK operating system chambered for 7.62x25mm Tokarev. In many ways, this is akin to the H&K MP7 - it's a miniaturized combat rifle. The locked breech system allows the reciprocating parts to be arather lighter than a simple bl...

Boasting 1,200 rounds/min with a unique "Super V" recoil mitigation system, The Kriss Vector (on paper) sounds like a firearm to be reckoned with.

So Jonathan is going to put it to the test.

If you want to see how the Super V system works, in-depth, and in your own virtual hands, then you can ...

In the fall of 1944, the Mauser company was given a contract to develop drawings of a direct copy of the British Sten gun (code named Gerät Potsdam), and to manufacture 10,000 of them. In fact, they were to make two different sets of drawings; one suitable for large factory use (like their own) a...

The German military began looking for a new submachine gun design in secret in the mid 1930s. There is basically no surviving documentation, but the main contenders appear to have featured: Hugo Schmeisser's MK-36,II and Erma's EMP-36. Today we are taking a look at one of two known examples of th...

The German military began looking for a new submachine gun design in secret in the mid 1930s. There is basically no surviving documentation, but the main contenders appear to have featured: Hugo Schmeisser's MK-36,II and Erma's EMP-36. Today we are taking a look at the two known examples of the S...

During World War Two, the Swiss had adopted Adolf Furrer's toggle-locked MP41 submachine gun, and they found it too fragile, complex, and expensive. Looking for an alternative, one easy choice was the Finnish Suomi. Used and appreciated by the Finns, Danes, and Swedes it was reliable and availabl...

Military interest in a submachine gun was late in Czechoslovakia, but by the late 1930s a development program was put into place. Interestingly, the main use case for an SMG was seen as being a replacement for a rifle-caliber LMG in fortification mounts. The thought process seems to have been tha...

The ZB47 was developed at Brno as a contender for Czech military submachine gun adoption in the late 1940s. The Czech Army had technically adopted a submachine gun prior to World War Two (the vz.38; video on that is coming a bit later) but production did not begin before the arrival of German tro...

Eric, @neutral_af and Mike went to Kudu Tir in Sion, Switzerland, and had a chance to shoot Mike's STEN Mk.2, Mk.5 and L2A3 Sterling Mk.4 alongside each other. These are all open-bolt blocked-at-semi subgats, and are a lot of fun! Plus it was Eric's first experience on a STEN, he's more of an U...

If you had to pick one, would you take a Sten MkII or an Ingram M10/9? This applies specifically to the guns in their original factory configurations; no Lage products allowed! It's hard to come up with a mass-production SMG that isn't obviously better than a MkII Sten, but the stock Ingrams migh...

If you had to pick one, would you take an early Beretta 38A (with bayonet), or a Finnish kp/31 Suomi? Both have semiauto selectors, although the Beretta's its easier to use. The Suomi has a higher rate of fire and larger magazine capacity, but is slower to use. Both have roughly equivalent sights...

The initial model of the Beretta 38A had a number of features that were dropped rather quickly once wartime production became a priority. Specifically, they included a lockout safety switch for just the rear full-auto trigger. This was in place primarily for police use, in which the guns were int...

Sterling Mk.4 / L2A3: the ultimate angry toob. Uzi: the ultimate angry box.

Mike owns a Sterling and Eric @neutral_af owns an Uzi. Both open bolt, both blocked at semi. What do they think of each other's gats? What if we throw a closed bolt Sterling Mk.6 into the mix? And for a final compariso...

The Uzi was originally designed in the 1950s, and it was on the technological cutting edge at the time. The stamped receiver, telescoping bolt, and compact magazine-in-grip layout made it an inexpensive and effective weapon. Its sedate 600 round/minute rate of fire helped as well, making it easy ...

Filed off markings and serial numbers usually point to one thing: whoever used this gun didn't want you to know who they were. With our records indicating this rare and intriguing example was sent to us by no one other than the CIA, Jonathan has a lot of digging to unpick this covert creation.