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Friends Don't Let Friends Overhype the MP7
Even real top-tier operators can be taken in by the hype...just remember that it was designed to be a truck driver's gun 25 years ago.
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US Military 25m ALT-C Qualification Course... With An Open Bolt Sterling Mk.4?
A number of years ago now, Henry of @9HoleReviews challenged me to try to do the rather lame 25m ALT-C rifle qualification course with an open-bolt 9mm Sterling Mk.4 / L2A3. Did I manage it? Did I redeem my honour with my KP-15 / CMMG PCC? What about the closed bolt Sterling Mk.6?
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Tale of Two Sterlings: Mk.4 (open bolt) vs Mk.6 (closed bolt) First Impressions
Thanks to supporters, BotR now has a second Sterling SMG subgat! This one is a factory original Mk.6, the factory closed bolt version. Bloke has been doing sterling work (geddit?!?) with his open bolt Mk.4 for a number of years now, and the opportunity to add a closed bolt Mk.6 to the channel col...
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Sten Mk5: The Cadillac of the Sten Family
The Sten Mk5 (sometimes written Sten MkV) was really the Cadillac of the Sten series. It was designed in 1943, and featured a full wooden buttstock patterned after the No4 Enfield rifle, as well as a front sight abductor bayonet lugs for the Enfield. It has a wooden pistol grip as well (and earl...
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PAM-2: Argentina's Improved 9mm Grease Gun
The Argentine factory FMAP-DGFM was first set up to produce a copy of the Colt 1911, and in 1954 they began production of the PAM-1 (after demonstration of the first prototype in 1950). The PAM-1 was a copy of the American M3A1 "Grease Gun" chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum. Production ran until 19...
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Sten MkIII: A Children's Toy Company Makes SMGs
Lines Brothers was a company in the UK that made sheet metal childrens' toys prior to the war. When production of the Sten guns began, Lines Bros was a parts subcontractor. Their engineers analyzed the design alongside the machinery the company had available and redesigned a version of the Sten t...
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Romania's AK-Based SMG: the LP7
In the mid 1990s, UMC Cugir began looking at ways to adapt its AKM production tooling to make a 9mm submachine gun. What would become the LP7 was first prototyped in 1998, and went into limited production in 2003, with an order of 200 made for the Romanian Interior Ministry. Romanian Gendarmes de...
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Sten MkII: Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Simpler
The Sten MkI had barely been approved for production when the Sten MkII was born. Initially requested to produce a version of the gun suitable for paratroopers, in March 1941 Harold Turpin redesigned the front end of the Sten to have a quickly detachable barrel and a rotating magazine well (for c...
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Sten MkI & MkI*: The Original Plumber's Nightmare
The Sten gun was designed by RSAF Senior Draftsman (sorry, Draughtsman) Harold Turpin in December, 1940. He sketched out a simple trigger mechanism on December 2, showed it to Major Reginald Shepherd the next day, and then finished out the rest of the submachine gun design that week. The first pr...
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UK Gangster Gun: The rare British MAC-10 with firearms expert Jonathan Ferguson.
What do you get when you combine a Micro Uzi magazine, an Australian fixed rifle stock (in this instance) and a well recognised American firearm? A British M10.
Watch this week as Jonathan delves into the history of this firearm which includes a tangle with the James Bond film 'Casino Royale'.
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Type 100 / 44 (Late Pattern) Japanese SMG
The Japanese never really embraced submachine guns during and before World War Two. A series of development programs in the 1920s and 30s led nowhere, and there never really seems to have been much motivation behind them. Some small batches of guns were purchased from abroad for units like the Sp...
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M1 Thompson: Savage Simplifies the SMG
The Thompson submachine gun struggled to find a market when it was originally produced, with the first batch of 15,000 Colt-made guns not finally all selling until the late 1930s. By that time, the clouds of war were gathering, and demand for submachine guns finally began to really grow. The US m...
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Chinese Type 50 PPSh: Founding “Gun City” in Manchuria
One of the first new weapons adapted and used by the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army after the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war was the Type 50, a copy of the Soviet PPSh-41. The story of its manufacture begins at the Japanese occupied Mukden Arsenal. It was briefly occupied by the Sov...
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Madsen M50: From the Korean War to Star Trek
During World War Two, Madsen (DISA) manufactured a licensed copy of the Finnish Suomi (see: https://youtu.be/hjs1uiAIpNQ). When the war ended, they wanted to replace this with a more modern, inexpensive design of their own. The result was the Model 1946 Madsen, a creative clamshell design of stam...
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Swedish K m/45As in Ukraine - Update!
A few of weeks ago I published an article/video detailing the appearance of Swedish Carl Gustaf m/45 submachine guns in Ukraine. One notable feature of the guns was that their configuration appeared to sit somewhere between the m/45A and the m/45B. In this video we examine why!
Be sure to check ...
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Prototype Matra Manurhin Compact SMG at the Range
I came across this prototype (serial number 7) PDW/compact SMG in a collection, and had the opportunity to take it out to try on the range. I don't have any specific data about it, but it was made by Matra Manurhin, which only existed for 5 years, from 1985 until 1990. This was part of the repeat...
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Zagi: Croatia HK's a Sten Gun
The Zagi is one of the more prolific of the Croatian homeland War submachine guns. It was developed with the intention of making substantial numbers, and a lot of capital was put into the PHTO (First Croatian Arms Factory, or Prva Hrvatska Tvornica Oružja) for its manufacture. This included polym...
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Token of Appreciation: a Presentation Sokac SMG
The Šokac was one of the more prolific Croatian domestic submachine guns of the Homeland War. This particular example is one that was specifically presented to the police chief of the town of Slavonsky Brod (the town where the guns were made). It is a mid-range production example, with the polyme...
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Swedish K In Ukraine
The war in Ukraine has seen a plethora of vintage weaponry being used by both sides. Everything from M1910 Maxims to TT pistols. One of the more surprising vintage weapons to turn up fairly regularly is the classic ‘Sweden K’ or Carl Gustaf M/45.
Be sure to check out our accompanying article for...
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Open Bolt Operation Is Backasswards: Sterling, STEN vs AR-15
You've probably heard all the stories about negligent discharges with open bolt SMG's such as STEN's, Sterlings etc. But what is it about the systems that causes this risk, and what impact does this have with operating them? Why is it backwards compared to normal, closed bolt operation rifles suc...
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Vila Velebita: Croatian Submachine Gun Made in a Shed
At the beginning of Croatia's Homeland War, a severe need for small arms led to a whole plethora of simple submachine gun designs. Some were made in proper factories with professional tooling, and some were made by a couple blokes in a shed - and the Vila Velebita we are looking at today definite...
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Prototype French MAS-49 SMG in .45ACP
In the late 1940s the French developed a new suite of small arms, including a competition to replace the 7.65mm MAS-38 submachine gun with a new 9x19mm SMG. The eventual winner of this program was the MAT-49, which became an iconic part of French Army weaponry in Algeria and elsewhere. The St Eti...
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Ero: The Croatian Uzi (With Israeli Help?)
The best of the submachine guns made in Croatia during the Homeland War was the Ero, made by a company called Arma. The Ero is a basically perfect, parts-interchangeable copy of the Israeli Uzi that was developed in 1992 and adopted into Croatian Army service in 1993. The only really distinguisha...
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9mm Sterling SMG Magazines: How Are They Constructed? L2A3 Mk.4
The 9mm Sterling Mk.4 L2A3 SMG has quite unique magazines. People are generally aware that the follower is made from rollers, but there's some other cleverness going on in there too, including massive improvements from the STEN magazine.
0:00 Introduction to Sten and Sterling Magazines
3:46 Sten...