SWAT weapons in Speed
 

Can somebody please tell me why the entire LAPD SWAT team only used HK94A2s or look a like MP5s and there weren't any M16s or carbine variants?
This was filmed in 1994 but has it got something to do with the armourer or the LAPD technical advisor?

Aesthetics?

I also think back then the SWAT trend was still submachineguns also.

Most of the time, SWAT would use MP5s unless they see fit to use M16 variants.

(1.) In 1994, the MP5 would have been standard-issue to LAPD SWAT. M16s were only issued for armored suspects.

(2.) Our own Steve Karnes worked on the guns for that movie while he was the gunsmith at Ellis Props & Graphics. The MP5s were HK94s converted by LaFrance Specialties and supplied by Ellis to the propmasters of "Speed". The reason that you see the partially-converted HK94s is because it was sometimes too expensive to convert them to look completely like MP5s, and since armories have to stock dozens of identical weapons, they didn't always have the money. So they would buy HK94s, chop the barrels and install DIAS, and it would be cheaper than buying a factory MP5 or undergoing a full conversion.

I've also seen photos taken of SWAT teams as recently as the early 1990's and they've had entire teams armed with Uzis.

I'd like to see a photo of that and which SWAT team are they?

If I can find the book at the library again I'll try and scan some images. I want to say the SWAT team was from Arizona but I'm not sure.

I wonder if any police have actually used the ruger mp9. It was desighned for law enforcement then.....disappared.

There were definitely some SWAT teams using Uzis before the MP5 became popular. Although I can't imagine there were too many. Once SWAT teams decided to ditch their ARs in the 80s and go to 9mm subguns for CQB, the MP5 pretty much was the first gun they all turned to (mostly because Surefire forearms for the MP5 were introduced at almost the same time).

But I do remember seeing pictures in Gun Digest of SWAT teams practicing with Uzis...

I don't think I've ever seen an MP9 anywhere besides the movies. By the time the MP9 was introduced, H&K pretty much dominated the SWAT long gun market. It would have been almost impossible to compete with them. And almost nobody really tried. Even Action Arms, the Uzi's importer, pretty much gave up on marketing the Uzi to the LE market by the 1990s (that, combined with the ban on importing AWs, was one of the reasons they folded).

I jsut remember it being an updated uzi, i only saw it in video games. i wonder if they ever exported it? Seemed like a good desighn.