Submachine Guns - Forgotten Weapons

The Best Operational Briefcase: American 180 & Laser Sight

September 5, 2025 Ian McCollum 2

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 […]

Registered Bolt vs Registered Receiver Uzis

September 1, 2025 Ian McCollum 15

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). […]

Interdynamic MP-9 SMG: Origin of the TEC-9

August 13, 2025 Ian McCollum 28

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, […]

Colt SMG: First of the 9mm ARs

August 8, 2025 Ian McCollum 3

All the best firearms history channels streaming to all major devices! Join today and get a week free: weaponsandwar.tv With the expansion of SWAT teams throughout law enforcement in the 1980s, Colt realized that it […]

CZ247: Experimental Swivel-Action SMG

July 16, 2025 Ian McCollum 11

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 […]

Orita 1941: The Original Romanian Submachine Gun

July 2, 2025 Ian McCollum 7

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 […]

Samopal vz 38: Czechoslovakia’s Interwar Drum-Fed SMG in .380

June 25, 2025 Ian McCollum 25

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 […]

Gerat Potsdam: Mauser Copies the Sten Gun

June 2, 2025 Ian McCollum 19

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 […]

Type 79 SMG: China’s MP7 At Home

April 25, 2025 Ian McCollum 15

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. […]

Erma EMP36: External Form Factor of the MP40

March 26, 2025 Ian McCollum 24

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 […]