As these short shooting clips are uploaded to my channel I’ll be updating this post. Nothing informative to be honest, I just don’t get to actually shoot often so I try and record it whenever I’m able.
In 1995, Heckler & Koch produced a variant of the infamous USP that chambers the .45 ACP cartridge. This is me, shooting one such weapon badly.
My 2nd ever time shooting a shotgun, in this instance (what I believe to be) and Ithica Model 37. It’s either a WW2 vintage or dressed up by Battlefield Vegas to add the barrel shroud/heat shield, bayonet mount and front sling point arrangement.
This gun is somewhat descendant of the most common pump shotgun used by the US in the closing act of WW1. The most interesting feature by today’s standards is that, as the keen eyed will have noticed, this gun ejects downwards from the same opening in to which shells are loaded.
On the one hand less openings is better in terms of reliability in any location outside of a ‘clean’ city and keeping the environment out of the gun. On the other hand this feature has basically died away and most modern pump shotguns are 870s, Mossberg 5xx series or copies thereof which all have a standard side ejection design. Then of course there’s the options of directly loading the chamber easily in a pinch and quicker swaps between solid and pellet type shot loads.
I really expected the UMP in .45 ACP to be horrible being a ‘cheaper’ blowback SMG mostly made of plastic. Sure it’s not an MP5 but honestly, not bad at all to shoot. Hopefully I’ll try out the 9mm variant some day.
For those who might not know, the UMP was designed by Heckler & Koch in the 90s to replace the MP5 since it is quite a bit cheaper and easier to make compared to the stamped steel and roller-delayed gun. It has seen some limited adoption and use but never as much as the MP5 despite the lower price; which is unusual of course
For me I think the problems are the fact it is barely lighter than the MP5 (less than 0.5lb), but a lot bigger and bulkier thanks to the plastic receivers – like the G36 of SMGs in that respect. There’s also that bit more recoil given that the blowback has no real delaying system. Aesthetically though it clearly has something going on as this gun is in so many games I lost count long ago.
This was an interesting experience as at a previous year’s show I had fired a civilian Scorpion and found the recoil absolutely terribly bad for a mere 9mm weapon. This gov-only style gun however with both burst and automatic modes was gentle and easy to control in the higher rates of fire. I’m not sure if the difference is just some phantom artifact of my memory, whether the guns themselves were somehow different or maybe the two 9mm ammunitions were very different.
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