say that you are a newly emergent nation under some duress from neighbors, or seeking to become some.
and, for some reason, tactically dictated, you decide that you have a need for an improvised sub-machine gun as you build your defense capability. you are strapped for weapons. and, money to buy them
well, then, might i make a suggestion.
buy some wood, and some steel plates, and some epoxy, and make lower receivers as i am making from wood laminates. make it on the pattern of the ar-15, as i have done. make the plates identical, two holes at either end for pins to attach an "upper," a whole for the selector switch, and two holes for the trigger and the hammer.
hold that thought.
as to the upper, because you are familiar with firearms, a thought occurs to you. suppose you take some steel seamless tubing, and thread it on one end just as an ar-15 is threaded. and, you make some barrel stock in .355" caliber (.355" in the grooves, .347" across the lands), and chamber it in 9mm parabellum, a common caliber.
you add to the barrel a barrel extension for a standard 5.56mm nato, and you get a bolt and bolt caliber in that same caliber, because they are ubiquitous, all over the world. and, by happy coincidence, the head diameter of the 5.56mm nato is nearly identical to the 9mm parabellum. (in fact, if under duress, you could probably make a serviceable piece of brass for a 9mm parabellum from brass scrounged from fired 5.56mm nato ammo.)
then you take the tube, and fabricate it so that it is longer than the normal upper, and extend it to a length to where it will accept the bolt/bolt carrier you have scrounged, and the normal 5.56mm rifle and/or carbine length buffer tube and spring, and you simply thread that on one end as well, and stuff the whole works into the tube, and cap it with a simple cap and lock nut. a little rustic, maybe, but simple, and sturdy.
you affix two lugs to this, and attach it to a lower receiver, just as i will attach an upper to the laminated lower that i am making. you make a hole in it for the shell casings to fly out when the gun is fired. you machine a little grove in the "upper receiver," and just use the gas key on the bolt carrier as a rib to guide the bolt carrier as it reciprocates back and forth in the receiver.
you do not require a gas system. you have locked the bolt in place by replacing the normal pin that rotates the bolt, to fix it, because the gun will be simple in operation, a straight "blow back" system. the bolt will be held in battery long enough for the cartridge to exit the barrel by interia, lent the "system" by the mass of the bolt and bolt carrier and the resistance of the operating spring.
now, you must conserve resources. you are scrounging things. you cannot have undisciplined louts wasting ammo by excessive firing, willy nilly over nothing. your command and control relies on a "noncom" of some sort, formal or informal, to enforce fire discipline.
you achieve this by the one form of sophistication contemplated in my "homemade," "kitchen table," "basement clandestine factory" (ala the jewish resistance to the british mandate before statehood), or a nascent national manufacturing facility.
let's go back to the ar-15 rifle, and its trigger mechanism. it may be had in a "semi-automatic" form, or in a version that allows for "fully automatic" firing: in the former, a pull of the trigger is required to fire each round, while in the latter, a single pull of the trigger fires the weapon continuously, until the trigger is released. but, here is where i contemplate sophistication as being useful, and probably needed, and surely of some utility.
the ar-15 rifle may also be had in a version that allows "burst fire," in which the weapon fires 3 rounds for each pull of the trigger. this is not a limitation of rapid fire, as the trigger may be pulled rapidly, and trust me, those three rounds will go by quickly enough that the firer will not have to "wait" on the weapon to fire again.
affix a red dot sight to the upper. that's all that it will need.
if manufacture of such a weapon is under the onerous condition of ongoing hostility, then such a weapon is well suited to small scale fabrication and assembly. no nation or person wants to be in this circumstance, but, if a person or nation is reduced to such a situation, there is something of a virtue in the weapon that i have described.
assuming the condition that an oppressed person or nation is oppressed by a nation or persons already rich in weaponry. assuming such, then the "raw material" for making such weapons, and supply ammunition for them, will be readily available at very low cost, though, some nice effort.
oppressor nations, you see, have a habit of amassing huge stores of munitions, and ammunition, via large expenditure of the public weal. it is placed in convenient storage.
it is there for the taking.
and, it will supply all that is needed, for the little weapon i have discussed.
john jay @ 12.14.2013
p.s. there is the little matter as to how the weapon will be fed. uzi makes a very good 9mm magazine, as does colt, from what i have been given to understand.
the virtue of my little sub-machine gun, as envisioned, is that the magazine well for it can be easily cut through the wood laminate. or, with a little forethought, the laminate could be laid up so as to have the magazine in it, when fabricated.
some laminate. two side plates. some holes for pins. voila, a lower receiver.
a steel tube. some recovered bolts and a bolt carrier, and a fixed pin to prevent the bolt from rotating, and we have the operating system. oh, yes, some springs, and such.
anybody could make such a weapon, over his or her own kitchen table.
think about it.
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