The Uzi Submachine: A Gun Like No Other

A cool firearm, but I agree with Cpl Mark McMiller that there's nothing remarkable about the weapon design. The Czechs came up with the magazine in the pistol grip idea. Everybody had made a stamped receiver straight blowback subgun by this time, so there was nothing remarkable about that. Everything about the UZI was vanilla except it's outsized reputation. And that fascinates me. Ask someone who's NOT a firearms guy about the UZI, and he may not be able to tell you what cartridge it fires or any design specifics, but he'll likely be able to at least recognize it as being an Israeli weapon. The only other submachine guns with such broad recognition are the H&K MP5, and the Thompson gun. However those both were inovative and revolutionary at their time. One could argue that the MP5 still is. I am unaware of any other delayed blowback roller locked action subgun anywhere. But the UZI's peers? Who knows about the STEN, or the M3 grease gun, the Swedish K, the Czech 23/26 that the UZI copied, or any of a myriad other stamped receiver, straight blowback design 9mm parabellum designs of that era.

What makes the UZI unique isn't it's design. It's the fact that it was designed and produced in a country that was in its infancy, and one that many people didn't expect to survive. One who's people had just survived the Holocaust, and who were determined to never be subjected to such abuse again. A people who were determined to make their own path in the world, and establish themselves as force to be reckoned with in the Middle East. A people who were and are bent to prove their worth and value, and prove the Zionist experiment would work. The UZI was the first weapon designed by not a Jew, but by the Israeli State! That does make the UZI a unique weapon.

PO1 Tony Holland, we got to familiarize and fire them at the SF weapons course at Fort Bragg in 1970.

I had the opportunity to fire one many years ago. It functioned well. Good close quarters weapon.