Telling the difference between a machine pistol and a compact SMG

[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

Your creating a definition for a submachine gun that goes further then the dictionary meaning, or then what most people would consider a smg. That is arbitrary.

I based it on the fact that the archetypal machine pistol is a handgun converted for select-fire and/or fully-automatic fire capability. That is what separates a machine pistol from other types of handguns--the ergonomics could be exactly the same (i.e., such as when you compare a Glock 18 to a Glock 17) as a similar semiautomatic-only handgun, but select-fire and/or fully-automatic fire capability would be what separate the two.