George Hyde was a gun designer who is due substantial credit, but whose name is rarely heard, because he did not end up with his name on an iconic firearm. Hyde was a German immigrant to the United States in 1927 who formed the Hyde Arms Company and started designing submachine guns. His first wa...

During World War Two, the British spent several years developing a silenced version of the Sten gun for special operations commandos and for dropping to mainland European resistance units. This is a recreation of one of the experimental types, based on a MkII Sten with the receiver lengthened int...

The Israeli Uzi has become a truly iconic submachine gun through both its military use and its Hollywood stunts - but how effective is it really?

I found this fully automatic Uzi Model A to be actually rather better than I had expected. Despite the uncomfortable sharp metal stock, the rate of ...

This modern Hungarian submachine gun bears a remarkable similarity to the AKM rifle in many aspects, from the pistol grip to many of the manufacturing practices. In fact, the more we did into the gun, the more Kalashnikov influence we can see in it. This particular example is semiautomatic only, ...

The Kommando was a semiauto SMG-type carbine designed by Alex du Plessis in Salisbury Rhodesia in the late 1970s. It was manufactured by a company called Lacoste Engineering, and financed by a man named Hubert Ponter - and those initials were the name of the initial production version of the gun;...

I have gotten quite a lot of questions about this experimental Austrian 1915 machine gun or submachine gun since it was included in the Battlefield One computer game. Unfortunately, the sum total of information we have on this weapon is three photographs found in an Austrian archive. Extrapolatin...

The Beretta 38A is not a gun that comes to mind for many people today when discussing World War Two submachine guns, but at the time it was one of the most desirable guns of its type. So - does it live up to that reputation?

The Cobra was one of a variety of semiautomatic compact carbines designed and manufactured in Rhodesia in the latter half of the 1970s for sale as civilian self-defense weapons (primarily for rural farming families). Unlike most of these guns, the Cobra was designed as a hammer-fired, closed bolt...

Sport Systeme Dittrich in Germany is a manufacturer of a remarkably wide range of reproduction German World War Two small arms (including the FG42, StG-44, G43, MP-3008, MP-35, and VG1-5 as well as the MP-38). They have a mixed reputation, as they are magnificently accurate looking reproductions,...

The Hotchkiss Universal is a pretty interesting submachine gun, despite its rather clumsy appearance. The overriding design intent was to make a very compact folding carbine, and Hotchkiss certainly met that objective. However, the gun ended up being too expensive and complex to achieve any real ...

loke takes his STEN Mk.II, which was blocked at semiauto with two blobs of weld on the selector (which means he can shoot it on any range rather than just at permitted events as would be the case if it were not permanently blocked), shooting it "precision" (lolz) offhand at 25m.

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Music Cre...

Mike takes a look at the mechanics of an L2A3 SMG / Sterling Mark 4, and gives a potted history of the 9mm submachine gun which replaced the STEN machine carbine in British service and served for around 40 years.

Link to Sterling commercial manual: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A0Mh1m9GJ_ou...

Following an earlier vid on the Sterling's mechanics, I had the fine fellows of M426 in Wangen an der Aare block my Sterling Mk.4 / L2A3 SMG at semiauto, so that it can actually be fired on a range any time (not permitted if it's still a full auto, even if only firing semiauto). This is the one p...

Thanks to the guys at M426 in Wangen an der Aare, here's a Silenced STEN Mk.II(S) that's not quite right. We take a look and show how to tell a fake.

Mike takes his open bolt Sterling Mk.4 in 9mm Para out to 100m and 200m to see what it's capable of at its sighted ranges, which are pretty much "long range" for an open-bolt SMG. The results are interesting though!

Mike takes his 9x19mm STEN Mk.2 (blocked at semi auto) to 100m to see how it does at the far end of its doctrinal range. It's rather optimistic, but how did he get on?

Combat in sandy places such as Algeria highlighted that tight tolerancing of the conventional MAT49 32rnd magazine and mag well could cause jamming and feeding issues. The was resolved with the issue of a (19)58 sand magazine with a number of features to render it and the SMG far less sensitive t...

Chap goes full nerd on the MAT49, including history, features, a major design fail and accessories. For those patient enough there's a bit of dakka at the end, or just skip to 23:28!

Big THANK YOU to http://armesfrancaises.free.fr/ for letting us use his photos!

How does full automatic effect a gun's time on the PCC Cours of Fire? Well, let's find out with a Lage Max31A Mk2 on a M11A1. I've got a red dot optic on the gun to simplify aiming, and so the question is how semiauto compares to bursts.

My hypothesis was that automatic fire would offer no rea...

I bought an M11A1 machine pistol several years ago, when I first heard about the Lage Max11/15 project (I chose the M11A1 because I wanted the shortest registered receiver possible). Well, the M11A1 version of that upper sat in ATF purgatory for more than two years, but it is finally out! (Note: ...

"Bloke takes his 2012-production .32 ACP and, after having made it vaguely run with an awful lot of work, puts it through its paces on the 25m range. As a comparison, an HK MP5K both with and without PDW shoulder stock appears too!

Apparently these things were called the Klobb in James Bond Gold...

The L2A3 Sterling submachine gun was a staple of British and small arms after World War Two, until the L85 rifle was adopted. Designed by George Patchett during the war and produced by Sterling, it is a simple and economical tubular open-bolt, simple blowback gun. It uses a very compact folding s...

The Czech ZK-383 is a magnificent submachine gun, but sadly very scarce in the United States. So when I saw the semiauto example, I wanted to take it out to the range for some plinking. It has some magazine issues (as one might expect form a one-off semiauto made by a hobbyist here in the US), bu...

The Sten Mk4 was developed experimentally in 1943 for use by British paratroops. It used a remarkably awful folding stock along with a shortened receiver and barrel to make a very compact package - albeit one that must have been very uncomfortable to shoot. Several different models were made, wit...