H&K UMP-40

I really shouldn't call this a range report, since I only fired one round. It works as advertised. My motivation was different.

Col. Jeff Cooper wrote at length about the Machine Pistol in To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth. He wasn't a fan.

It is my profound conviction, based on a great deal of experience with it, that the MP is a silly weapon - clumsy, wasteful, puny for its bulk, over-prone to run dry at the most inconvenient moment, and a source of frequently lethal over-confidence.

Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

I must admit a certain sympathy to Col. Cooper's view. Perhaps it's because I'm such an old stick-in-the-mud: I could be happy shooting nothing but revolvers, the 1911, and the Winchester 1894. Century-old designs, there.

But as anyone who's ever had children knows, this is not Burger King, and you (mostly) can't have it your own way. A more expansive and generous view is why not have lots of designs, and let a thousand flowers bloom? As it turns out, the MP has one characteristic in abundance, and even Col. Cooper recognized this:

Fully automatic fire can be fearfully effective - off a tripod or a vehicular bracket. An honest-to-God machinegun, shooting a full-sized rifle cartridge and handled by a team of experts, can win battles - not just fights. But hand-held automatic fire is generally a drag. It is great fun, but to be taken seriously only if fun is the object of the exercise.

While I'm not qualified to comment on Col. Cooper's professional assessment, here Chez Borepatch I can confirm that the mission objective was indeed fun, and the mission was achieved.

It's not often that I get #1 Son out to the range with me. Alas, he's not as interested in marksmanship as #2 Son. But fun - Col. Cooper's glamorous racket? That's entirely different.

The UMP-40 has a prodigious appetite for .40 cal, and while I indulged #1 Son in renting it that day, we only got one box. #1 Son made good use of the selective fire switch - single round, two shot burst, five shot burst, and continuous. More specifically, he only used continuous at the end when we were about to leave, and with the ammo he had been saving up for an extended burst.

So would I shoot this, given the chance? Depends on whether someone else is paying for ammo. Ranges that rent guns must love these, since to really give it a whirl you'd want 4 or 5 boxes. Maybe I'm stuck in a rut, with my old school designs, but as I said before, my motivations were different that day. Shooting with the family is a high priority for me, and if that takes automatic, then so be it.

Postscript to exile from Requiem for a Republic: We rented, so I'm not sure it would do any good to adopt you. We unfortunately don't have the cash to keep a bunch of fully automatic guns around the house. This being Massachusetts, it would certainly be fun to do this to give the vapors to the bien pensants, but it's cost-prohibitive. But let me know if you're ever in the area, and we'll go shoot it. With more than one box of ammo. ;-)