BB submachine gun

[possenti]

Does anyone remember the "BB submachine guns" that used to advertise in Guns-n-Ammo and other gun rags back in the 80's?

I was in middle/high school at the time, but I'll relay what I remember...

The gun was a pistol-type, but had an AR-15 style carrying handle. The muzzle end had what appeared to be a long brake attachment on it. The main part (reciever?) resembled a MAC-10 which tapered down towards the barrel. You could supposedly screw on a can of Freon (it was legal those days) to power the gun. The ad said it would fire at an amazing rate - 12,000 rpm, or something like that. It seemed a little exagerated, even to a school boy like me. I often wondered how well this thing shattered bottles and what the accuracy was like.

The ads were B&W, about an 1/8th page size, and some versions had a tough guy munching on a cigar holding the gun. The mailing address was in Florida I think. The cost of this amazing toy was only around 50 bucks - but way too much for a poor kid like me, but I wanted one so bad...

I'm sure this company is long out of business. I've searched Google for info, but the only results I've found are for the new Airsoft guns that fire the plastic pellets. The one I'm describing fired the "real deal" .177 steel BB's, IIRC.

So...dig out your old gun mags and see what you can find. If you've ever owned one of these, let me know what it was like. I'm doing some research for an upcoming project.

 

[Dave R]

American Rifleman did a very favorable review on a new one just a coupla months ago. Its made by Baikal (Russia) and imported by EAA (?). Called the Drozd. IIRC the list price was around $200.

 

[Hkmp5sd]

I've still got mine in the closet. It wouldn't shatter bottles. The best it would do is shred a piece of newspaper hung on the fence. Accuracy was terrible as it was literally a BB hose. Barrel froze up every few minutes and you had to let it thaw out before shooting again. It was still enough to make BB gun wars interesting.

 

[Dave Markowitz]

LARC M19A BB SMG:

http://www.geocities.com/bbmachinegun/review9.htm

 

[pbhome71]

I had one of those. LARC. It ran on can freon. The can would freeze up when you discharged the little bugger.

What fun, until my cousin shot out one of big glass window at his house. His mom was real mad....

-Pat

PS: I heard that you can connect it to an air compressor for real high-capacity plinking....

 

[griz]

I had one too. In addition to freezing from long bursts, the velocity dropped off to nothing as the can emptied. This inspired me to make an adapter to run it off of compressed air. This worked better, but being on the end of a leash kind of ruined the fun of sending out streams of BBs. I think I threw it away the last time I moved.

 

[Dave R]

For those interested in the latest iteration of the BB Machine Gun, the review of the Drozd is in the January 2004 American Rifleman on page 64.

Uses standard CO2 cartridges, which cuts down on the "loss of velocity due to freezing" issue. Although they did note some of that.

One CO2 cartridge and 50 BBs are held in the mag. So you can do fast mag changes and let the "other" CO2 cartridge warm back up.

AR says one CO2 cartridge is good for 150 or so BBs, so I guess you change cartridges every 3rd BB reload.

482fps average muzzle velocity is not too bad. Looks like a fun gun to me.

 

[warrior23]

I just ordered a Drozd,I'll let ya know how it works out.theres also a very favorable write up in the airgun magazine.

 

[one-shot-one]

still got it some were

still got one some were in the garage.
converted mine to hook up to an air compressor and solved the above mentioned problems. with the regulator set at the max the the trigger will allow (it bleeds air by) it will break glass (mayonaise jars not old style coke bottles) at about 30-40 feet.
accuracy is about what you would expect with a smoth bore.
ok for killing horse flies and dragonflys.

 

[Andrew Wyatt]

the drozd is neato; it's got selectable ROF from 300 to 650, and 1, 3 and six shot bursts.

 

[Balog]

Peter Hathaway Capstick wrote a review of one of those. I dunno if it was that exact model, but it was the same concept.