After looking at the history and mechanics of the VP-70 yesterday, we are heading out to the range to try it out (and thanks to Trijicon for generously offering use of their range!). I am curious to see just what that 2200 rpm rate of fire is like to shoot, and whether the awful trigger is as much of a hindrance to effective burst shooting as it is to simple semiauto. So, in addition to some shooting of the VP-70M, I will also be comparing it to an MP5…
Thanks to H&K for providing access to bring you this VP-70M!
Too bad you didn’t have say a Beretta 93R to compare it with.
…and Stechkin.
We left out the Mauser Schnellfeuer too.
…and Skorpion vz.61
(holly crap, this volkspistole is junk in comparison)
shooting Russians to backc…… hahahahahaaaaa
🙂
Shooting occupying armies in the back tends to result in the occupying forces exacting reprisals, as in the case with Imperial Japan dealing with Hakka guerrilla forces on Taiwan. Many times, a Hakka village would pretend to surrender, and when the Japanese soldiers put their weapons down for a good meal, the villagers would literally BUTCHER THEM ON THE SPOT and send the mutilated remains to cowering Qing officers elsewhere in exchange for gold coins. Guess how Japanese reinforcements reacted to THAT?
It is quite possible they were just hungry: Was Ketchup requested, no? Well there you are; hungry natives.
For Pdb: the Hakka are a sub-branch of Han Chinese, not really Taiwan natives.
Speaking of which:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k50k8C8TFJc
courtesy by Yakuza
I think that VP-70M might be compared with GLOCK 18 as in both polymers are used, though that latter has bigger magazine capacity (around 33 – vary depending on source) and it is not made to accept stock so far I know.
In videos I have seen it was without stock.
Nonetheless there existed additional stock for GLOCK 17:
https://www.fab-defense.com/en/category-buttstocks/id-753/glock-full-size-models-tactical-stock-.html
though I do not know what modification of automatic pistol they required (if any) and I do not know if it could be used with GLOCK 18
The Glock 18 has a whole series of vents running down the barrel, on its upper; thats another cheat. It runs like a.380 acp as a consequence, but it is offered in 9x19mm for sales.
.380 M11 was more honest.
“another cheat”
I am not sure what are you requesting, but if you object to drilling ports alongside whole barrel there also existed GLOCK 18C, see drawing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Evers_Glock_18C.PNG
having cuts near muzzle rather than along whole barrel.
Well I saw one and the top of the slide was cut away and it had ports all the way down; unless it was a movie prop, fake news maybe not sure… Although I do remember thinking Vp70!
Slots would probably be the -18C, not sure what the designation would be for the Scheumann barrel with rib/ports. The plain barrel original -18 is probably still available.
I used both and the Beretta performed a lot better, but their burst mechanism was delicate and didn´t take too much abuse.
i doubt HK keeps berettas or guns from anyone but them around. kinda wouldnt be good for PR for them to put theirs up against something newer from another company.
if you couldn’t tell from the hat ( lol ) that this is a marketing video.
At least four weapons of the system were acquired by dubious means in the 1970’s by the terrorists of the RAF (Red Army Faction). A article in the late 1980’s in Die Spiegel magazine stated thank thankfully when used by the RAF the rounds went everywhere save the persons being attacked!
In essence the “spray and pray” approach was a failure, as the intended victims were able to run for their lives without suffering so much as one hit.
The results of the video are pretty “revealing”, kinda mildly disappointing.
Maybe some kind of slide mounted muzzle brake (as in ots33 Pernach) could help with muzzle rise.
Yeah, I kind of emotionally wanted that to work a lot better than it did – if only because it looks like it ought to be a lot cooler than it turns out to be in practice.
I really wanted it to turn out great, now I’m making desperate thought attempts of how it could be perfected.
It turned out this is legitimately a forgotten pdw, as it does not function as advertised.
Top of the stock connecting to pistol is wobbly, seen on slomo, thats not helping.
Holding it horizontally ?
Reducing the rate of fire with Skorpion type bolt hold mechanism?
As concealability in some fantasy scenario, you can always cut away 2/3 back of the stock and use 3round burst as a two hand pistol, but from a few feet range – it’s certainly easier to pull the horrible trigger once and get 3 rounds,
than 3 times, which I suppose you could not do under two seconds, or even more
Regarding such a cut-down stock, with a little bondo work it wouldn’t be dissimilar to the “Crusher loop” grips made for Thompson-Center single-shot pistols. Of course, handling recoil from one powerful shot is not the same problem as keeping on target during a burst, so I’m not sure whether such grip techniques would really extend the useful range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yuz0c0ZKivE
A better option would be to leave the stock alone, but use it like the original “Arm Gun” that became the Bushmaster pistol;
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/03/31/bushmaster-arm-pistol/
You’d probably still get vertical stringing, but at least the slugs would land somewhere on the target.
Probably the least-worst way to use this one on burst would be firing prone, with the pistol on a solid rest, snugged up to your shoulder with your off hand going “over the top” of the stock like a Bren. Just make sure it’s far enough back to avoid slide bite.
cheers
eon
First time I see this grip, interesting,
it is possible that holding the VP70 with some different grip technique,
like pointing the weapon with left hand downwards holding it by the end of the stock (instead having the stock at your shoulder, your right hand holding the pistol and being a somewhat “pivot point”),
could help, but thats only a speculation, and results still would not be phenomenal.
As a ‘stay behind’ weapon in an occupied West Germany….a small, concealable pistol would have been more practical. Hide it away till you have to pop a commissar.
Wonder how many commissars you get to “waste”, until the occupation forces starts to shoot at every civilian that is walking or nearing too close to them.
Its one of the reasons why Liberator was never dropped to Europe.
One of the others being that they didn’t trust the populace not to start shooting up West German government officials before the invasion even happened. HK was chasing a market that did not exist, and I seriously doubt that there was any real support for this idea in the West German government. A few cranks, maybe? Certainly not enough to authorize the purchase of hundreds of thousands of weapons, and then distributing them to the public. This would have gotten up to the Ministerial level, and then the guys advocating for would have been asked “What?!? You want to do what? Are you mad?”.
And, that would have been that, and the end for the careers of the men who brought the idea up.
That being recognized, is there a place for weapons like this, in national defense plans? Say, in Latvia, or Estonia? If yes, what should such weapons look like?
I don’t think pistols fill the necessities. At all–Bare minimum ought to be a shoulder arm that can be easily trained on, such that the 90th percentile can make kills out to 300m. The Swiss ideal of the standard infantry weapon filling this role probably requires adoption of the Swiss defence model, so a nation unwilling to go to that solution needs something else in the way of mass-issue arm.
Something like the TRW Low-Maintenance Rifle, perhaps?
You have a point there, Kirk. Call me insane, but I think something like the Ruger Mini-14 would fit the bill.
Thinking more deeply about it, I think there are a couple of questions to settle about this idea of “arm the public” to prevent, or at least, discourage invasion.
One thing to do is to determine philosophy with regards to this–Do you want a citizen militia, with all that implies, or do you simply want to create the opportunity for armed anarchy taking place? If the first, then the choice of weapon should have a lot in common with your national infantry arm, but perhaps made a bit more cheaply? If the second, wellllll… Maybe you’d do well to have scattered dumps of things like the Liberator or the Vietnam-era version, the so-called “Deer Gun” all over the country.
Where something like the VP70 or TRW LMR would go is somewhere in the middle of those two–You can’t afford a real Swiss-style militia-based defense force, but you do want to be able to produce a levee-en-masse in case of need. In that case, liberal stocks of these mid-grade arms and ammunition are there to hand out to the public as needed.
I’m not sure that anyone has ever really thought this through in all of its permutations and implications. The Swiss keep a stock of their standard infantry weapons out in the ranks of the militia mass, and the Yugoslavs had local armories scattered all about the countryside–One of the things that kicked off the Balkan Wars of the early 1990s was the JNA trying to seize the arsenals in Slovenia and Bosnia–One failed, the other attempt succeeded. Guess which was which?
I’m not sure what a realistic use case for something like the VP70M would look like. It’s not a Liberator, and it’s not a weapon for a militia-based national defense force, so… What the hell is it? I’m not sure that HK really knew; I think this was all of a piece with the various frenzied “national defense stay-behind army” ideas of the post-WWII era, and made about as much sense as that crap down in Italy did, where the caches wound up arming the damn Red Brigades instead of the remain-behinds.
I agree with Kirk. I’d favour something like the TRW rifle instead of a pistol (even with “fun switch”).
Cherndog: yes, the Ruger Mini-14 could be adapted for the role, perhaps with updated furniture and some manufacturing improvement (to cut down production costs).
Now that I think of it, maybe a modernised SKS could fill that niche.
“minimum ought to be a shoulder arm that can be easily trained on, such that the 90th percentile can make kills out to 300m.”
For that I might suggest battle-proven [during Korean War] SKS (self-loading carbine, Simonov’s [design])
– can be loaded from stripper-10-rounds or loose cartridge if needed
– П setting of sights, which you can use if you do not bother with distance assessment (“good enough” for most usage cases during combat)
– when cycling moving parting have high “energy reserve” for providing reliability even in adverse environment
– bayonet, which most probably would not become lost
There exist some conversion which using detachable magazines, although then they lack bolt hold-open feature.
Hold it! There’s no way West Germany would adopt the SKS during the 70’s. But if we’re talking about the era AFTER the Berlin Wall crumbled, your idea works. There’s also another annoying problem with the SKS: the bolt disassembly procedure, if not done with care, may result in someone putting the firing pin back THE WRONG WAY (slam-fire danger).
“no way West Germany would adopt the SKS”
Well, in Germany(Bonn) various sub-machine gun were created, which could be produced in high quantity, like for example MP60:
http://guns.wikia.com/wiki/Erma_MP60
but they did not, so it is nor surprising that VP-70M was not produced as while MP60 was (in terms of performance) fully-blown sub-machine gun, VP-70M was only machine pistol, with heavy trigger.
Although not yet available in the 1970s, the best cheap but effective weapon for a guerrilla army would be something like the Mini-UZI (open bolt version). An open bolt, selective fire SMG with a compact construction for easy concealed transport in normal sized back bags. Open bolt SMGs were and still are the cheapest but effective (semi-)automatic shoulder arms. In fact they are cheaper than bolt action rifles as well.
A guerrilla weapon does not need a common weapon 300 meters of effective range. At such ranges a regular army with its superior firepower will dominate practically always. The only exceptions are restrictive rules of engagement like in Afghanistan during the current war, which limit the firepower superiority of the regular army due to fears of excessive collateral damage. If the guerrillas sometime need a greater range for assassination, captured enemy rifles or even hunting rifles could be used for that.
Of course if you have a lot more money, a rifle or carbine would be preferable to an SMG. In that case you couldn’t much wrong by some AK variant, possibly a shorter variant such as AKS-74U or AK-102/104/105.
“not yet available in the 1970s, the best cheap but effective weapon for a guerrilla army would be something like the Mini-UZI (open bolt version).”
I would say, that at that time Germany(Bonn) have ability to produce very similar in terms of performance sub-machine gun, namely Walther MPK
http://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/germany-submachine-guns/walther-mpl-eng/
which was inferior to Mini-UZI in some important aspect, but not by much, namely:
with collapsed stock it was longer (381 mm vs 360 mm – that is less that 1 inch difference)
MPL layout is “magazine well in front of trigger” rather than Mini-UZI’s “magazine well inside grip” so it has shorter barrel (173 mm vs 197 mm, again less than 1 inch) and MPL is heavier (empty mass: 2,83 kg vs 2,7 kg)
Forget the bayonet, forever and ever.
I’ve never shot either Mini UZI or MPK,
but despite the numbers on a paper like barrel length,
I have a strong feeling that MPK handles better than mini Uzi, possibly having lower rate of fire.
Would like that someone with experience of firing both of them chimes in
Estonia’s all ready doing just that. The weapon in question? The Swedish variant of the G3 with an Aimpoint red dot sight, namely the same AK4 that used to go to the Home Guard…
There is absolutely no evidence, and I mean NONE that the SKS was ever used in the Korean War… Mausers, American M1917s, Arisakas, Garands, Enfields, SMLEs, Mosin-Nagant 91/30s and M44s, you name it… But no Soviet self-loading rifles.
The Erma MP60 comment is more like it
http://augfc.tumblr.com/post/125688752295/the-erma-mp60-series-the-mp60-was-designed-in
9mm Parabellum caliber, basically a copy of the Soviet PPS43, and with the receiver made from a single piece of sheet metal, stamped into place. The Erma MP60 was easily the cheapest SMG tested by the Bundeswehr… But it lost out to the Uzi MP2, built at FN in Belgium. Matthew Moss’s recently published study of the Sterling SMG indicates that the British SMG beat all of the contenders: MP57 from Mauser, MP60/65 from Erma, and even the vaunted Israeli Uzi, but the Bundeswehr apparently really liked the telescoping bolt of the Czech samopal, and the Uzi allowed them to have it for armored vehicle crews, etc. So the Uzi went to the army while the polizei went (ultimately) for the MP5… Meanwhile, a handful of the DUX53 PPS43/ kp/44 clones went to the Bundesgrenzschutz who actually patrolled the border with the DDR. (Where the K98, StG44, M44, SKS, and eventually Kalashnikov were carried by Denny’s “other side…”)
I feel like the SKS is a close model for what’s needed, but I’m also not fond of some of its quirks. There’s also a bunch more machining involved with the design than I really think is affordable for the category that I’m thinking of.
Which, actually, doesn’t exactly exist. Hell, maybe we really need something like Colonel Cooper’s Scout Rifle concept, in bolt action or something super-simple semi-auto. I don’t think full-automatic is necessary.
The way I’m thinking about this role, is that there are three tiers/levels/philosophies to the whole thing. One level, you do the Swiss militia-model army, and everybody who is fit goes through military training, gets their experience and weapon, and then goes home with both, ready for call-up. For that, you pick a really good long-service infantry arm, and make sure that it gets maintained out in the field. Annual qualifications and weapon/ammo/gear musters? Yep. With the armorers there to observe and repair.
Second tier, you can’t afford, or don’t trust the body politic enough for the Swiss model. Then, you have a well-armed military force, but chose to have a second-tier weapon capable of using the standard ammo, and keep everything in small de-centralized armories for issue upon declaration of war. For this role, you’d need a simple weapon that was capable of being quickly effective, so the sights and shooting characteristics would have to be virtually idiot-proof. Picture a version of the LMR with LAW-style graphic instructions on the side…
Third category? Well, that’s when you have some money, and really don’t fully trust the populace, but you want to enable the enemy to fully enjoy their hospitality, too–So, that’s when you seed the realm with tons of things like the Liberator, STEN, and whatever other delights you can come up with, along with all the necessary seed materials for IEDs and so forth, while training a bunch of your military to melt into the population and give instruction on how to use everything in order to really make life enjoyable and fun for the occupying enemy. You’re basically enabling the native bandit-like instincts of your public, here…
All told, I’m not even sure that this is a really workable philosophy of defense. It’s kind of like the strategic/operational version of a sea cucumber–Vomit on the enemy, and hope they’ll be so grossed out that they leave you alone. In this case, instead of capturing a working nation they can exploit, they get… Either a nation-in-arms, ready to resist their attack and occupation, or they get to try to impose order on a Mad Max-like situation where everybody’s got arms, and are using them on each other and anyone else stupid enough to intervene. It’d be about like starting an attack on Brazil by going in through the favelas… And, I don’t know if enabling a nation-wide state of “Rio de Janiero favela” would be a good strategy for Brazil. I’d certainly give some thought to invading them, if I knew that would be the result–And, unless I was willing to nuke said favelas off the face of the planet, I don’t think I’d be up for invading Brazil, and then having to deal with that kind of chaos. I have a feeling it would make Iraq look like a cake walk…
“I feel like the SKS is a close model for what’s needed, but I’m also not fond of some of its quirks. There’s also a bunch more machining involved with the design than I really think is affordable for the category that I’m thinking of.”
Indeed, SKS is weapon from far year of 1945, as such it is made with technology then available (and price then achievable) rather than more modern.
But here I must note that trying to make weapon which is cheap, cheap and… cheap might fail, Korobov was once requested to design shotgun which would be cheap which resulted in: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/11/16/korobov-mts-260-shotgun-example-impractical-simplicity/
Also it should be noted that main field of development of cheap weapons are sub-machine guns rather than self-loading rifle. It is logical as plain blow-back operation is generally simplest solution, but it is unable to reasonably harness 7,62×39 or 5,45×39 cartridge. Automatic pistol cartridge (9×19 Parabellum and 9×23 Largo) could be used, but then getting 300 yards effective range is problematic. It should be possible to hit that range AND use blow-back operation with new cartridge, but this approach needs new cartridge.
Conclusion is that I do not see design which would fit your requirements or any simple method of obtaining one.
Probably the least-unreasonable use for this would have been as a PDW for West German Army vehicle crews. It would be less of a storage problem inside a Leopard I tank, for instance.
Of course, an HK MP5K would be about as compact and a lot easier to hit something with, too. Mostly, I think that at the time the army would have rebelled at the suggestion of replacing their old reliable Walther P1/P.38.
After all, they fought their way across Europe, North Africa and about a third of Russia with that one in their holsters.
cheers
eon
I beg to differ on the use of the MP-5k. One of it’s nicknames was “roombroom”. Better than the MAC-10, but not by much. The addition of the Choate folding stock, to make it the MP-5k-PDW, transformed it into the best mini-subgun in 9mm.
These days the MP7 is replacing many of the MP5s (not that there were that many to begin with) and in some cases, also semi-auto pistols in the Heer (Bundeswehr). I am not sure if they still have the Uzis (MP2) in storage, but they are not actively used any more and have not been for some time. Special forces still use the MP5, though.
About the P38/P1: although the Bundeswehr used some of the small arms designed for the Wehrmacht (and still uses the MG3), they tried to make a very clear distinction between the militaristic Wehrmacht and the defensively oriented Bundeswehr. Pride for the actions of the Wehrmacht was not really something you were supposed to show, and it still isn’t. A few years ago there was a scandal in Germany because one garrison had a small display cabinet with Wehrmacht items in it. Although no Nazi symbols were prominently displayed, even having Wehrmacht equipment on display in a manner which could be interpreted as showing pride was considered highly inappropriate.
Estonia’s all ready doing just that. The weapon in question? The Swedish variant of the G3 with an Aimpoint red dot sight, namely the same AK4 that used to go to the Home Guard…
RESIDENT EVIL 2!
This is actually a sensible comment compared to
all the Red dawn/euro version fantasy.
..… 🙂
Hahaha, you got that right !
It was a fantasy of H&K’s own making, not us. We merely speculated on what could have worked better in that admittedly fantastical scenario. I think most people here realize that there was practically no chance of the West German government distributing any firearms to the general populace during the Cold War.
Besides, the Wolverines used primarily hunting weapons at first before acquiring military ones from the invaders, so this discussion was not like the Red dawn at all. 😉
Ian is definitely a better man than I, when I owned a VP70Z I could barely squeeze the trigger and had to use both hands to depress it after a few rounds. Traded that lemon for a .44 magnum revolver I could actually get some use of.
Is there any chronograph data on this pistol? The enlarged rifling cuts should have an effect on that.
3-rd burst tends to work that way: one on target, maybe two, and the last one for the deep blue sky. I think a 2-rd burst capability combined with a good trigger would be better, even, possibly in an assault rifle. You could adjust the sights to send the first rd a little low (and to the side, depending on the shooter?) to increase chances of getting two hits. It would be easy to try, anyhow. As for the VP 70-M? Well it couldn’t cure the problem, but at least it might make it feel better.
2 round burst assault rifle;
An-94 Nikonov ?
But lets not wonder too far away from machine pistol territory.
—
Whats horrible about this pistol in burst mode is that Ian on semi fire hit every plate, and with several bursts could not hit even one.
So, maybe to leave out burst option, only plain stock, would be an improvement (plus the trigger of course)
The obvious and easy way to improve a machine pistol like this would be to use a cartridge with a lesser recoil impulse. For example the Stechkin seems to be quite controllable in full auto with the shoulder stock. Control is also improved by the fact that the APS is 400 grams (nearly a pound) heavier.
Using something else than 9mm Parabellum perhaps was not considered practical by H&K, although in the 1960s and early 1970s .32 ACP was still a very common police and civilian cartridge in West Germany. So, for the original intent of “Volkspistole” it might have worked. Give it an overly heavy slide and you can bring the rate of fire down as well.
I live in El Salvador (one of the sh…thole countries as your president Trump says and one of the most violent places in earth…..).
During the civil war (1980-1992) I had most of the full auto pistol made during that years, Beretta 951 R and 93R, HK VP70, CZ 75 Automatic, CZ Scorpion, Browning and Colt 1911 locally full auto converted.
When peace agreement was signed in 1992 we have to give up to government all full auto weapons.
The VP70 was a very good gun to have in car, without stock was concealeble but the trigger in single shoot was too horrible to be accurate. I adapted a MP5 magazine to he body of a regular VP70 magazine and had almost 40 shots, I shooted it one handed with stock during driving thru an ambush, it performed very well.
I remembered that were prone to develop cracks in the body after heavy use.They came as present to high rank officials when HK G3 and MP5 were bought for army.
Very interesting info, thanks for your input !
To think about it now, magazines for both look somewhat alike (straight mp5 mag). Or did you use curved one?
This could come in handy as a second gun mod/improvement in resident evil 2 or 4 🙂
Muchísimas gracias para la información imprescindible sobre el uso de esta arma.
It would be very interesting indeed if there was a book or website about the innovations made during the lengthy and bloody Central American Civil Wars. For example, I have read that the FMLN guerrillas pioneered the use of the RPG2 and RPG7 as an anti-helicopter weapon. Similarly, the carrying of an 82mm mortar was simply too large, what with the base plate and so on, so the rocket motor of the RPG7 was adapted to a mortar bomb warhead, except that the lethal radius of shrapnel was still so great that the rocket operator/gunner could be killed by the explosion. So it had to be fired from behind cover.
I am particularly interested in various field-expedient weapons like grenade launchers that are supposed to have emanated from Cuba and with training in their use too.
The armed forces of your nation have a handful of writers who describe the inventiveness of modifying vehicles and so on, but as far as I know no one has compiled it in a single volume.
Given the violence that you describe, and that is well known, perhaps the Civil War that ended in 1992 was just an ideologically-driven conservative vs. leftist/Marxist conflict, but it left behind the gang warfare that today must be regarded as an ongoing civil war? I was surprised to read all of the machine pistols that appeared in your post.
“(…)82mm mortar(…)RPG7(…)”
This is not Cuban, but Ukrainian development, but might be interesting for you:
https://topwar.ru/149041-jerzac-artillerija-na-osnove-rpg-7.html
photos from top to bottom:
– RPG-7
– Russian ОГ-7В “Осколок” FRAG ammunition for RPG-7 adopted in 1999, top: general view, bottom: cut-away in flight
– pile of HE ammunition for RPG-7 made from 82 mm mortar shells
– detail: on this photo warhead front is beyond right edge of photos, notice that nozzles are in front of combustion chamber
spacibo! Thanks. From El Salvador to the world, I guess…
I knew about the fragmentation warheads on RPG7 rockets. Even Egypt’s military industry–built with assistance from first Sweden, then the USSR, and finally USA as the various dictators responded to the vagaries of the Cold War and super power conflicts–playing off one against the other–produces such RPG rocket propelled grenades.
Is the first image from Vietnam?
There is a specific grenade launcher that turned up in El Salvador in FMLN rebel hands. I frankly don’t know if it uses the U.S. style of 40mm grenade like the M79 (many in Central America), the Soviet AGS17 30mm grenade (seems unlikely?) or the Soviet/Russian 40mm grenades… In addition, there are extemporized grenade launchers that apparently used blanks/dummy cartridges to propel the grenade. These weapons were a far cry from the hoary old Cuban Revolution era of taking 2/3rds of the powder out of a 16-ga. shotshell and using it to propel a Molotov cocktail/ petrol bomb attached to a length of broom stick with a washer at the end…
“Is the first image from Vietnam? ”
Yes.
Nobody realize that gangs were born in USA and not in El Salvador, they were formed by illegal salvadorean living in LA (18th Street= 18 gang). During the 2000’s began a very strong deportation program, some of these deportees hadn´t family here anymore so gangs begun to form, and here they had easy access to guns and ammo.
About the magazines, they are similar but the curve of the mp5´s make impossible to insert so a local gunsmith make me one from both, I don´t remember if it allow 40 or more, but the spring was very strong so just put 35-38 in it, but worked flawless.Never saw a straight magazine around here. We had access to a lot of types of guns, and carry them was legal for your protection, but after the end of the war the automatic guns of any type were prohibited in civil hands.
Dave, I will search the info you ask, if so, I will let you know.
Mil gracias.
I think you can contact me via email?
As for the notorious “maras” even there these went through an extreme transformation. In Los Angeles there were/and certainly remain many ethnic-neighborhood street gangs that leveraged the popularity of cheaper, smoke-able forms of cocaine (“rock” on the West Coast/ “crack” on the East Coast and mass media, hence “crack” is rather more widely known…)into money, organization, weapons, and power much like the earlier prohibition regime of alcohol propelled the old mafiosi into a multi-ethnic business-model of organized crime. Salvadorans were always being picked on and victimized by the earlier barrio street gangs, and so it may seem somehow “quaint” knowing what happened, but basically Salvadoran youth smoking pot and listening to heavy metal turned into the fearsome and murderous “maras.” Before long, there were alliances much like when Jewish gangsters and Sicilian gangsters and so on formed modern mafias in the USA, and the Mexican prison-gangs formed alliances with the Salvadoran/Honduran gangs.
Over a decade and a half ago I think that as many people died violently in El Salvador as the early 1980s during the height of the civil war… These days, with a murder rate the sheer size and scale that it exists (particularly over there among the catrachos, no?), perhaps civil war is more apt?
U.S. Lt. Cmdr. A. Shaufelberger III was assassinated with a .22 magnum while waiting for a girlfriend. For U.S. personnel I think fifteen total died. Of course, something like 80,000 Salvadorans lost their lives. Now crime replaces ideological conflict, no?
Cuidense!
Dave
Give me your email and I will send you the information I can find.
I remember the assasination of Shaufelberger, it was commited in the university I studied in plain day sight.
Every year about 3500 to 4000 salvadoreans are killed, is like 80 murders for every 100K habitants, higher than any country in war.
True, but let us be honest: There are uniquely El Salvadoran issues and cultural features that helped make the gangs what they are. It wasn’t just a few years in Los Angeles that did it. El Salvador and many other Central American nations have endemic inter-personal violence levels that only match the numbers reported for Northern European nations when you go back to the 1500s. I’ve got friends who were in Special Forces and did a lot of time in El Salvador during the conflict down there, and what their medics reported from doing medical visits out in the communities indicated a certain lack of restraint in settling arguments with things like cane knives and machetes. The After-Action Reviews I borrowed and read (we were supposed to be tasked with rebuilding some bridges, at one point…) were… Educational.
I won’t say that the US was entirely blameless with regards to the creation of groups like MS-13, but that wasn’t entirely the result of US action. Although, I have an El Salvadoran business acquaintance who has made the statement that it *is* our fault for deporting them back to El Salvador, as opposed to executing them here…
Um, yeah. El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala have long been very violent and poor societies. _Armies Without Nations_ in the title of at least one book. _Inevitable Revolutions_ of still another?
But I thought that your special forces acquaintances “won?” Didn’t they? So how not “your fault?” Remember all the drivel about the El Salvador victory being a “model” for Iraq?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Option
So if victory over the Marxist Leninist takeover attempt within a social revolutionary situation resulted in the current situation the USA has to “own it.” I mean it is not as though the lavish aid and military intervention in the form of advisers, rotating TDY, National Guard deployments, CIA proxy armies, road building, etc. etc. didn’t have an enormous impact on what transpired and developed? Remember the “pottery barn” comment re Iraq by Colin Powell?
Your guanaco business acquaintance merely wishes that death squads operated in the U.S…
I agree with you, maybe is no one to blame, is a very vicious circle, poor social and economical condition here, people emigrates and they were driven to form groups to feel safe and then deported were they may not have any family and yes, people here are very violent.
I don´t think is any country´s fault to deport illegal inmigrants, even if they are good hard working honest people, you break the law, any law, and you have to know there are consequences, but is not rational that anyone can propose to execute them, an illegal inmigrant most of the time are very good people, and you have to treat them with respect even when you have to prosecute them and deported. And NO, you cannot respond with lethal weapons when someone throws a stone, there are plenty of no lethal responses that I asume ICE has access.
I know a brazilian cop who is very fond of VP70Z heavy trigger. It is not a target pistol or even a tipical single action (no Glock can match a 1911 trigger). It is a very safe revolver like handgun and, with a shoulder stock, the heavy trigger is not a problem. As a revolver fan, I would love to try one.
BTW, Ian, you are a great shooter, taking all the targets with that trigger is very difficult.
Hmmmm
I’ve got a quibble
A properSMG?
Guys on the full auto forums brag that they can shoot circles around the H&K fanboyz with a crappy old STEn.
Let alone something decent like an old Berretta, Star, Lanchester, Sterling, Carl Gustav, Suomi, PPSh etc.
It would be really useful to see just how well even something like a Luty design (I’m assuming that it can be done in a place where the gang that’s taken over, won’t put you in a cage for several years for making a Luty design) compares to an MP5 on full auto 😉
“crappy old STEn.”
I might this chart:
http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/canadian-sten.html
will be interesting to you, notice that while spread is roughly in par with other sub-machine gun of that era, then the distance between point of aim and average point of impact is significant.
Problem of source might that, at least in STEN Mk. III (I do not know about another) front sight was simply welded, without possibly of later adjustment.