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Old 01-14-2012, 04:19 PM
Mazryonh Mazryonh is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 290
Exclamation Telling the difference between a machine pistol and a compact SMG

The following is an article I was writing up for the "General Information" section of IMFDB. It was written to clear up any confusion regarding whether a firearm using pistol-caliber cartridges is a pistol-caliber carbine, or a machine pistol, or an SMG. I would like to hear the community's feedback on it.

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How to tell the difference between a machine pistol, a pistol-caliber carbine, and a submachine gun.

There can be some confusion regarding just where the differences between these three firearm types chambered for pistol cartridges lies. This article was written to help IMFDB's users with that problem.

The iconic machine pistol is a handgun with select-fire capability, or else a handgun capable of fully-automatic fire. And the handgun classification is defined partially by its ergonomics; it has no dedicated place to put your offhand in a different place than your trigger hand, and has no buttstock whatsoever. A true submachine gun, however, has ''both'' a buttstock and a dedicated place to put your non-trigger hand (whether this a sufficiently-long handguard, a foregrip, a protruding magazine well, etc.), as well as select-fire or fully-automatic fire capability. With the exception of the [[Izhmash PP-19 Bizon]] (largely because you don't really have a choice in the matter given how the helical magazine blocks the handguard from below and you shouldn't put your hand in a place that blocks the iron sights), a firearm's magazine doesn't count as a dedicated place to put your off hand, since that will likely cause a malfunction. Both these features, along with select-fire or fully-automatic fire capability, are necessary for a firearm chambered for handgun cartridges to be considered a true submachine gun.
Examples
  • A Beretta CX4 Storm has both a buttstock and a sufficiently-long handguard to put your off hand, but is limited to semiautomatic fire only. It is thus a pistol-caliber carbine. The recently released MX4 variant, however, does have select-fire capability, making it a true submachine gun.
  • A standard MAC-10 does have a buttstock and fully-automatic fire capability, but no dedicated place to put your off hand (the space between the pistol grip and the muzzle is distinctly undersized for this purpose). It is therefore a machine pistol, albeit with a buttstock. For the same reason, the Sa. Vz.61 Skorpion falls into this category.
  • The original Steyr TMP has select-fire capability and a foregrip, but no buttstock. Thus, it is still a machine pistol, just with a foregrip (though the more recent variant, the Brügger & Thomet MP-9 with its folding buttstock, is an actual submachine gun). The Beretta M93R is also in this category for the same reason.
  • A full-size stock Uzi counts as an SMG because of its buttstock, select-fire capability, and the cylindrical protrusion (from in front of the trigger to just before the muzzle) IMI put there as a place for the user's offhand.
Grey Areas
  • A machine pistol like the [[Glock 18]] could conceivably be converted to a compact submachine gun by using the CAA Tactical RONI-G1 conversion kit, but because it wasn't originally manufactured as a submachine gun, it's still only a machine pistol in a conversion frame.
  • A pistol-caliber carbine's barrel length, unlike the other uses of the term "carbine" which normally means "shorter than full size," is actually longer than usual "handgun-length" barrels. "Handgun-length" (in terms of barrel length) is conventionally 6 inches or less, the reason being that a longer barrel length would make the pistol difficult to holster or draw.
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