Mystery Machine Pistol Seized in Europe

Neat-o.

Wonder what this is...

I expected it to be crude. That thing could be sold on the open market. Either there's a covert weapons factory or a legit one is doing some under the table work. It could also be a Russian gun imported to destabilize the area.

"As DIY machinepistols go, it is a pretty high quality piece."
That's because it's made in an illicit but fully-fledged factory, not a biker's garage

Lots of crime and shadow conflict going on in Eastern Europe these days (as always) and surrounding boroughs, so it isn't surprising there's capital to make a fairly nice gun (which themselves aren't super crazy expensive items; the one pictured is about as nice as a Hi Point carbine with a selector switch, and probably costs about the same to produce)

"Wonder what this is..."
Yugoslavian clone of the American 180 full auto 22LR, apparently (uses the drum mags also present at the seizure)

TCB

That's pretty cool.

As soon as I saw the denial of any knowledge by the ATF I thought it was probably a phase of Fast and Furious we hadn't heard about.

I'm gonna take my tin foil hat off now.

and once again proves that....

Laws are for the law abiding. Criminals do what they want.

If you wanted to make a quantity of 1911s in, say, 1911, you started by producing quite a few very expensive jugs and fixtures that were only useful for producing 1911s.

With today's CNC machinery, you don't need all that tooling to produce a full featured gun, especially if you design it to only need standard cutters. There are still economies of scale, so machine shops don't try and compete with Ruger by making black market guns. If there was ever a ban, though, I think you'd have machine shop owners - maybe ones in financial trouble - showing up on Sunday with a thumb drive with the programs to make gun parts. If you raid the shop on Monday, all you find is swarf.

So, somewhere in Europe, a machine shop owner did the gun version of 'Breaking Bad'.

(rifled barrels are the only thing that isn't a standard machining operation, but for a short, not too small caliber it's not that hard to cobble together a rifling machine - or just go smoothbore)

I recall reading of gun makers in 1920's Chicago building not only a gun, but suppressed ones for criminals.
Not because factory were hard to get. But because they wanted something special.

Mmmmmm?
Let's see?

What large industrial nation with a under-used arms industry would like to create chaos and strife in Croatia??

And blame the USA for it??

I bet Canada did it!!

rc

"seized in the United Kingdom" That's impossible. They don't have guns over there.

Interesting design; maybe someone (legally that is), should be making it here in the U.S.

bannockburn said:

Interesting design; maybe someone (legally that is), should be making it here in the U.S.

Click to expand...

I believe they were.

R9 Arms Corp. appears to have been a small shop in Mission Viejo, California.

The grip sure looks like the UZI grip. I want one!!

So, I assume that this will start a chain of blame accusing the US for gun crimes in EU.

Mystery pistol

OK lets cut to the chase. If they don't want them how do we order ?

Free Europe! Woot!
Ok I'm done now.

If I were a young cop again that sort of design is the last thing I'd want to encounter on the street at close range.... During the cocaine wars years ago that sort of piece would have found a volume buyer or two in the Caribbean or a lot closer to home. Glad I'm out of that line of work.

Lemaymiami;wasn't that era when the MAC10 was a part of the cocaine wars?

Sniper56 said:

OK lets cut to the chase. If they don't want them how do we order ?

Click to expand...

That's what I'm wondering lol its a rather nice little package particularly if the design can impress some of the guys in this thread

Ryanxia said:

Free Europe! Woot!
Ok I'm done now.

Click to expand...

Free you say? I'll take two; one to keep and hold on to the other in case it's ever worth something.

Without a stock, its not going to be of much use, unless its being used in an anti aircraft/wildfowl, and possibly a suicide role.

Those type guns usually have a high rate of fire, and without a stock, and/or a muzzle device, are difficult to control and shoot, especially when set to auto.

With the grip mounted amidships, the gun wants to rock about it, making it harder to control. The stock makes for a more stable, shootable platform. With a stock, they can be used quite effectively. Without one, not so much.

"Lemaymiami;wasn't that era when the MAC10 was a part of the cocaine wars?"

...and the Uzi & Tec 9 and all the other evul gunz that were eventually targeted with the open-bolt-ban-by-ATF-fiat, AWB, and closure of the machinegun registry. I've always wondered how truly prevalent such guns were during the unrest of that period compared to other eras (or if the much higher crime rate meant an increased number of individual examples to blame). Prohibition times press and police were notorious for inflating the usage of machineguns in an effort to demonize them, when then as now, small concealable pocket guns were the choice of villains.

If there was a reason it wasn't this way in the '70s-'90s, it'd be worth looking into why (was it just the new cheapo open bolt gun tech of the age made them more obtainable, was it just a 'fad' sweeping the underworld, was drug crime special in some way that required heavier firepower in the course of business?). Whatever it was, it sure wasn't the guns themselves, since they're still around, and still easy to make, yet burp guns have fallen off the radar for the most part (I suspect illegally converted AR15s are probably the weapon of choice for that class of bad guy, these days, which is apparently big business in CA; the EP Armory raid by the ATF started with them investigating the source materials used by an illicit shot masquerading as a BIY gun store, when in reality they were doing all the customer's work, including modifications for auto sears and short barrels . That's why the ATF has to crack down on 80%'s, you see; illegal machine guns :banghead

TCB

As noted full auto weapons were fairly common down here in the late seventies/early eighties and much prized by folks that had bad intentions/low skills.... The problem with them was that unless you wanted to wipe out everyone in a single vehicle at pointblank range they were pretty useless.... We did have one pretty spectacular incident where a one crew of bad guys chased another group right through a large local shopping center (Dadeland Mall) - machine guns blazing, during normal shopping hours. Yep, that pretty much scared the heck out of the local citizens... but didn't harm a single actual target if memory serves. As a result open bolt weapons were a pretty easy target for regulators.

There were also things like Tec-9's that were fairly simple to convert to full auto using a pencil eraser behind the trigger to interrupt the sear from working properly. That sort of stuff made it easy for regulators to act (particularly once south Florida became infamous for everything else going on down here at the time...). The closest I ever came to having an encounter with full auto operators was when a co-worker was shot one New Year's Eve and I ended up spending that night staying with him as they prepped him for surgery. He was only shot with a small caliber pistol (groin injury....) since the shooter was too drunk to put the magazine in his machine gun.... We didn't learn that little detail until a few years later after his girlfriend turned him in for several other murders.

As time went on and the dope wars changed character, more and more of those involved were actually pretty skilled with weapons but favored semi-auto military weapons and handguns instead of full auto gear. There was also a pretty active home grown suppressor industry down here (since any competent machine shop operator can easily make anything needed for silencers...). I can also remember reading an ad in the Miami Herald for "auto sears available for AR15 carbines" that I figured was probably posted by our local ATF....
Yep, definitely interesting times.

The euphemism back then for someone getting "disappeared" had a bit of local flavor as well.... up in Chicago it used to be "taken for a ride" down here it was "he went fishing"....