Tam on the Times Square Shooter’s Gun

Says Tam:

Allow me to offer an alternative explanation: The gun malfed because it was a wretched, pulsating ball of crap.

The cheap, closed-bolt copies of the MAC-10 and KG-9 are made primarily to look cool; actually functioning is lower on the priority list. With most I’ve seen, firing a full magazine without a stoppage of one sort or another is a noteworthy event, and it doesn’t matter whether the gun was held upside down, sideways, or clamped in a Ransom Rest.

I had a carbine version of one of these called the CM-11 at one point in my early collecting days. Hey, it was cheap, and at that time I was buying stuff mostly because I was pissed off about the ’94 AWB and considered that the gun’s pant shitting factor might make a target for elimination, thus making my grandfathered model worth something at some point.

Well, first time out on the range with it, it broke before it could even get all ten of the cartridges down range (back then, they were sold with 10 round magazines, per the Clinton ban. I tried that first, even though I also bought 30 rounders when I bought the gun). What happened was the sear plate on it was made of such soft, cheap metal, the hammer managed to bend back a small lip which hung up the sear plate, and kept the trigger held back so the gun would not function. I shaved bent back bit of metal lip, which fixed the problem for a little but, but then it went again. I eventually had to fix it by ordering a replacement hammer and replacement sear plate, because if I had kept shaving, eventually the sear wasn’t going to catch, and we’d have a hammer follow, which would have either made an even more broken gun, or made me a felon. I wasn’t about to find out. Never had a problem with the replacements, but I never shot it much either. Ended up getting rid of it. The only one of two guns I’ve ever sold.

I’ve never understood anti-gunners desire to ban these guns. Shouldn’t we want criminals to be armed with pieces of shit? Clearly in the Times Square case, it saved lives.

9 thoughts on “Tam on the Times Square Shooter’s Gun”

  1. Granted, I’ve only run 1 magazine through a full auto M11 type SMG. But it took about 5 tried to get it running. I know little about them, so can’t speculate on why. I’d pull the trigger, the bolt would edge forward, then stop.

    Finally on the 6th try it ran the magazine. I found it wholly uncontrollable, and that was using a stock. If facing an opponent holding one of those things … please, give me a semiauto pistol.

  2. Forgot to mention it was suppressed, as well, which added overall weight and that on the front-end. And it was still not controllable in my rather inexperienced hands.

  3. We had a fake-suppressed (IIRC) full-auto in .45 at our indoor range. We also had a heat-proof mitten we made people wear, to grip it by the can with the off-hand, to keep them from shooting up the roof. It mostly worked for that purpose, kinda.

  4. A correctly made Ingram-style subgun with a quality magazine is quite reliable. But as with all guns, cut corners and you’re opening yourself up to trouble.

    Funny thing is, the modern MPA clones have a pretty decent rep for reliability. The semis made after ’86 and through the AWB years are the crappy ones.

  5. A correctly made Ingram-style subgun with a quality magazine is quite reliable.

    A correctly made Ingram is an open bolt gun, for starters. The lookalikes use jury-rigged closed-bolt setups and suffer for it.

  6. From the video imagery I’ve seen online, the weapon in question looks like one of the .380 caliber versions. I think they were called the Cobray M-12.

  7. It’s not a Cobray, it’s a Masterpiece Arms. No need to guess; Bloomberg’s police dept has released all kinds of info.

    The gun will turn out to have been a straw purchase that was “stolen” to cover tracks. This will all come out in a full-court press to “close the gun show loophole”.

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