What is the practical use of machine pistols like the Glock 18 or CZ75

[DaSquariusGreen]

I am reffering to actual machine gun-pistols, not the German nomenclature, like the MP-40 or MP7. Two parts:

1. Is there any practical use for them given the limited capacity (generally hard to holster with an 18inch mag) + ridiculous cyclic rate + lack of stock and (usually) forgrip? Would a select fire version, G18 with switch be less, reliable than a semi-only, G17? Even in semi-mode?

2. Are there any units that actually issue them/known to use in combat? (Does EKO Cobra even use it)?

[T. O'Heir]

Not everything requires a "practical" use. Proper term for an MP40 is 'machine pistol' too. 'Submachine gun' is American in origin. Apparently coined by JT Thompson himself.
They don't usually get holstered with the mag in. Slung under your overcoat.
2) They're used by Special Forces(SAS, GSG9, et al), 'SWAT' types and are particularly handy in a tank/AFV where there's no space.

[JohnKSa]

Limited practical use, in my opinion. That doesn't mean no practical use but it does mean that there are not a lot of applications where they would be practical.

Seems that when they are being used in a "practical" application there is a very good chance of there being a stock attached.

A G18 being shot semi-auto would theoretically be less reliable than a G17 since it incorporates more parts and more parts mean more potential for parts failures. In practice there is almost no difference between the two guns so I would expect no detectable difference in reliability.

[Jim Watson]

I have seen a demonstration of a G18.
A SKILLED shooter could clean out a room in a hurry.
The attachable stock makes it a fair little carbine.

But you could use up a lot of ammo getting good enough to make it count.

There is (was?) one super tough European anti-terrorist group that even stuck to semi-auto HK MP5s when they could have had SMG versions just as easily.

[Willie Lowman]

FWIW the Chief of Police in my town carries a Glock 18 as a sidearm.

[DPI7800]

The G18 is a great option for dignitary protection when concealability is key but still need a full auto option. Typical carred with standard capacity magazine and then extra expanded capacity magazines to load into.

The G18 is very manageable in full auto even doing full expanded magazine dumps. This is from first hand experience. What do I mean by manageable, how is all hits at 15 yards on a 12"X18" steel target.

Find it odd a Police Chief would carry an G18.

[dogtown tom]

DaSquariusGreen ....2. Are there any units that actually issue them/known to use in combat? (Does EKO Cobra even use it)?

In my Glock Armorers class the instructor mentioned that there are several US police departments that issue the G18. (they even have a special class for those)

[Model12Win]

The G18 is about the perfect "gitoffame" gun. It can be used as a standard Glock in semi-auto, or be used to put up a wall of suppressive lead between you and the enemy. It's a great weapon for tank and vehicle crewman, as well as for high profile escort missions. It does require a good amount of training though to make full use of it's automatic firing function.

[James K]

I rarely chip in on this subject since folks usually form opinions quickly and often with little or no experience. So, toss brickbats, but here is my $.02.

A full auto or selective fire handgun would be about the worst weapon in the world for a police force in anything like a democratic country. I have fired enough FA pistols to know that control and accuracy are almost non-existent; few shooters will do anything but spray the area, hitting about anything except the intended target. Even well-trained and experienced shooters will find it nearly impossible to keep shots in a man-size target "across a crowded room", let alone at greater range. If protecting a VIP is the mission, putting one or more slugs into him/her is not the desired result.

I know that is not what happens in the movies or TV, where we routinely see FA pistols or short sub-guns being used to nail the BG at 100 yards or more. The truth is that in the movies, the BG falls down because the script says that is what he is to do. In the real world, with iive ammo, thins are not so neat.

Jim

[dogtown tom]

James K .....I have fired enough FA pistols to know that control and accuracy are almost non-existent; few shooters will do anything but spray the area, hitting about anything except the intended target. Even well-trained and experienced shooters will find it nearly impossible to keep shots in a man-size target "across a crowded room", let alone at greater range.....

At my Glock Armorers class the Instructor shot down this myth pretty quick with a video of him shooting a G18 one handed......at 15yds all rounds were inside a standard B-27 target.

I'm sure that it would take a bit of practice and that's why Glock has a special class for departments that issue the G18.

Here's a video of several folks shooting a full auto Glock without shoulder stock and having little problem with keeping rounds on target https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUUlIJB-toY

With stock and without.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqwPY-0UpjY

And best video of all......Hickok45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWKvaSiNOAc


I would imagine the G18 would be carried with a standard 17 round mag and the shoulder stock and extended capacity mags carried concealed. This would allow using your regular draw, yet when needed attaching the stock and reloading with the 33rnd mag.

[Pond, James Pond]

And best video of all......Hickok45

I like Hickok's fairly relaxed delivery and his "bayonet charge" in the first bit is the fastest I've ever seen him move!!

[Willie Lowman]

Find it odd a Police Chief would carry an G18.

Small town law enforcement. The department bought a Glock 18 and the chief carries it. It's not about practicality or necessity. It's a fullauto belt trophy.

[James K]

Of course there are professional shooters who can control those FA Glocks at least to some extent, the same as there are shooters who can fire an M1919 machine gun from the hip. But if FA Glocks were general issue, I have to wonder how many would be fired by those experts. More to the point, when, in a police situation, is it better to rattle of 20-30 rounds full auto than to fire controlled semi-auto, with aimed shots.

Jim

[Theohazard]

Originally Posted by dogtown tom

At my Glock Armorers class the Instructor shot down this myth pretty quick with a video of him shooting a G18 one handed......at 15yds all rounds were inside a standard B-27 target.

The G18 is difficult enough to control two-handed. I'd be willing to bet he was using a compensated G18C. Glock "C" models in full-auto are a heck of a lot easier to control than the regular un-ported models.

[JohnKSa]

I've shot a G18C. I used both hands. I kept all the shots on the target--at 3-5 yards.

I didn't get to practice with it, and I imagine I could have gotten better with it over time. Even with practice I think it would be pretty tough to shoot it one-handed and I would have to practice a lot before I would even feel safe shooting it one-handed--let alone trying to shoot for score.

I recall reading that when the army was pushing the M14 they found some very skilled individuals with lots of practice and used them to demonstrate how easy it was to shoot the M14 in full-auto and to show how controllable it was. Of course it was neither and that's a big part of why the M14 had such a short service life and was only adopted by one or two countries.

I wonder if something similar is going on here.

[johnwilliamson062]

I would think it would be the ultimate "Get off me" pistol for protective services earning high marks for disrupting an attack irrespective of hits, but I do wonder.
My experience with full auto is limited, but I have been down range from fire. A SAW with a cyclic rate of 800 RPM doesn't really sound like what we think of as a machine gun from movies. It is more a very loud buzz as if a mosquito is right against your ear drum or maybe a chain saw right against your ear. A burst is almost like a longer single shot. An M2HB has a cyclic rate of about 450 rounds per minute. Slow enough that there are distinct individual shots. It is louder and it has the 'cover into concealment' reputation, but when I heard the rapid, but distinct, shots sustained for a period of time; I found it much more intimidating.
I would think a Glock 18, with a cyclic rate of 1200 RPM, would be empty before anyone realized what was going on. With one target at close range and several hits it would work well, but probably not much better than a semi-auto in the hands of someone with equal amounts of time and ammo expended at the range. I'm not sure it would work well to get peoples heads down.

[seeker_two]

FA pistols were the "proto-PDW" of the past and only useful in limited scenarios. I think the best of the lot was the Beretta 93R. It was limited to 3-rd bursts and had an integral "foregrip" (more like a fold-down tab) that helped make shooting it manageable. Today, PDW's like the FN P90 have made pistols like the 93R obsolete.....but I'd still like to own one.

[Machineguntony]

The practical use is that they're really fun.

[44 AMP]

Small town law enforcement. The department bought a Glock 18 and the chief carries it. It's not about practicality or necessity. It's a fullauto belt trophy.

And a perfect example "I can have one, you peons cannot". It may only be MINOR corruption, but it still is authority using that authority for personal PLEASURE.

There are NO GLock 18s available to ordinary citizens. The civilian FA registry was closed before the Glock 18 was invented. The only people who can legally "own" them are police (through dept ownership) the military (who doesn't want them) and licensed dealers in FA weapons (dealer samples).

It's not a new concept, it goes back to the Mauser Schnellfeurpistole. And yes, the ability to spray a number of rounds full auto from a pistol size weapon does have some tactical utility, in very special circumstances.

As a general duty weapon, it sucks. Not so much for the guy carrying it, but for everyone in the general area if he opens up.

A full auto or selective fire handgun would be about the worst weapon in the world for a police force in anything like a democratic country.

I have to agree with this, 110% or even higher. Particularly in the US. All one has to do is watch the news for a while, and it becomes painfully obvious that a number of our police are NOT sufficiently trained to handle the semi autos they already carry, and a full auto would be even worse.

Forget about the fact that well trained, experienced people CAN manage the gun, because THOSE people aren't going to be a problem. It's the rest of the people, who won't get enough training or practice that would be truly dangerous.

Look at the recent NYC shooting were the police KILLED a couple of bystanders, wounded about half a dozen more, and never even HIT the bad guy they were shooting at! (or maybe just wounded him, once, I forget)

The point is that, that body count was from "trained" officers using SEMI AUTOS. What do you think would have been the result if they had been firing FULL AUTO???

Worse, I'm guessing...

Few people in the world get enough training and practice to be able to effectively handle actual SMGs (with stocks) weighing two or three times as much as a Glock 18.

Its a neat toy, that I can't legally own (pouts..), but I think would be a very dangerous weapon to arm overworked and under trained police with.

Might be ok for Seal Team 6, but for the cop on the beat, no.

[JohnKSa]

Look at the recent NYC shooting were the police KILLED a couple of bystanders, wounded about half a dozen more, and never even HIT the bad guy they were shooting at! (or maybe just wounded him, once, I forget).

Wow, when did this happen? I must have missed that.

They are having some serious problems in NYC, awhile back they had another police shooting where a number of bystanders were wounded by shots fired by the police.

[dogtown tom]

Theohazard

The G18 is difficult enough to control two-handed. I'd be willing to bet he was using a compensated G18C. Glock "C" models in full-auto are a heck of a lot easier to control than the regular un-ported models.

Nope it wasn't a compensated model.
If you look at the videos in the links I posted above you'll see plenty of uncompensated 17, 18 & 19's being shot full auto accurately and under control.

The Hickok45 video is most telling to me. He has little difficulty in controlling a full auto Glock.

[seeker_two]

Originally Posted by dogtown tom

The Hickok45 video is most telling to me. He has little difficulty in controlling a full auto Glock.

Hickok45 is also the size of an average male Wookie, so....

[Scorch]

Having seen examples of lousy trigger control from officers carrying revolvers back in the day, I would be concerned enough to write to my Senators and Congressman if a local PD were to issue full auto weapons to patrol officers.

As for the videos, sure, expert marksmen can do it well, but look at the dust signature from the rounds impacting between the firing line and the target area. Each one of those off-course rounds would be a potential lawsuit.

[JohnKSa]

After watching the videos, here's my observation.

I didn't see any one-handed shooting that would really qualify as "controlled". The closest was Hickok45 who did some one-handed mag dumps at perhaps 5 yards and ended up with all the hits going into what looked like a 3-5 foot circle. That might be "controlled" for a machine pistol, but it's not what anyone would consider "controlled" for normal pistol shooting. Later in the video he unloaded around 20 rounds on a watermelon from a few yards away, shooting one-handed, and got only a few hits. Shooting semi-auto, one-handed, from that distance and in the same amount of time, he would have likely made about the same number of hits and still had rounds left in the magazine afterwards.

There was very little full-auto shooting that could be assessed for accuracy. Hickok45's shots on the close range paper target were about the only situation where it was easy to see multiple hits being made at a known range while shooting full-auto.

Most of the full-auto shooting done at any significant range (more than 5 yards or so), even in the video with the shoulder stock attached amounted to making a single hit (usually with the first round) and then spraying the rest of the rounds in the burst without making any additional hits.

Hickok45 did the best, I think at one point he dumped a couple of mags at a tombstone target at around 10 yards and kept a little over half the hits on the target. At a little longer range he fired 4 bursts--each of 2 or 3 rounds--and made 4 hits. Which is the same number of hits he would have almost certainly made had he fired 4 times with a semi-auto pistol at the same range.

[Machineguntony]

You don't have to be a large or strong person to effectively shoot a machine pistol. It's not easy, but with some technique and practice, it very possible.

The technique to employ a tight grip on the pistol, lean forward into the pistol, tense up the dominant arm and lock out the dominant arm.

This is the important part: then place your nondominant hand on top of your dominat hand (like you would a normal two handed shooting grip) and pull back really hard on the pistol with your nondominant hand. Then lean in.

You are effectively locking the gun and making the gun an extension of your arm. So the recoil pushes your gun, arm, and entire body back, instead of recoil pushing the gun up.

If you don't do this, no amount of human strength will prevent the gun from rising.

Also, for safety's sake, when loading a machine pistol, DO NOT load it like a semi auto pistol. Do not load it where the gun is below your head and close to your body, like a speed load. If the gun runs away (probably due to operator error), it will muzzle climb and shoot you in the head. The rate of fire is so high on a machine pistol, that you won't have time to take your finger off.