Shooting the MP40 Submachine Gun

Alright, so we're going to do a little bit of shooting with the MP40 here. It is of course a simple blowback submachine gun, not much to it. Fantastically smooth and enjoyable gun to shoot. Now, I have kind of messed up my shoulder and voided my own personal warranty, so I am only going to be shooting this sucker from the hip. And then I'm going to hand it off to Karl, who's currently behind the camera, to show us a little bit of shooting from the shoulder. Ready? By the way, I have locked the charging handle up to load a magazine. Because this is an open bolt gun it is ready to fire in this configuration with the bolt back. ... It's kinda like watering the yard. - Until you run out of ammo, and then ... - Karl, you have another magazine there, right? - I do. - Alright, why don't you show us some from the shoulder? - OK. - You're extending out the folding stock there. - The folding stock is startlingly similar to the Russian under folder. In fact, I'm pretty sure they copied it. I don't know the exact provenance on that, but I'm pretty sure the Germans had it first. Proper loading procedure, as Ian said, is you lock it back into the safety notch as it is an open bolt gun. Insert the magazine, you then take it out of the safety notch, let it get on the sear. At that point you're ready to go. Ready? - Got a little malf there. - This is an all-original gun, and its recoil spring is a little bit old. - Those malfs are just the age of the spring. ... I've fired a number of MP40s, and they are generally very reliable guns. I don't know if you can tell when I'm shooting it, this is one of the most controllable submachine guns. Period, the end. It's not just because it's German I'm saying this. It really is a well designed submachine gun for as early it really is. You do not lose any situational awareness, it's easy to control, easy to aim, easy to fire from the hip or from the shoulder. Cyclic rate's just about right, so a fire specifier without necessarily burning up ammo to the point where you have to reload immediately. There are many submachine guns that came post-war that in my opinion do not equal what the MP40 was able to bring to the table. There are of course better ones now, but you really still can't go wrong with the MP40 in terms of a 9mm submachine gun. I just love them.

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 499,714

Rating: 4.9666643 out of 5

Keywords: mp40, smg, 9mm, 9x19, submachine gun, german, germany, luger, blowback, subgun, shooting, firing, slow motion, high speed, mccollum, kasarda, forgotten, history, development, forgottenweapons, inrange, inrangetv

Id: U5gE_bUZtfE

Length: 2min 38sec (158 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 21 2017