Best flashlight ...Bar None

MagPul FMG9: Prototype 9mm Folding Submachine Gun
Published by David Crane in Submachine Guns on February 22nd, 2008

by David Crane
defrev at gmail dot com

article:
http://www.defensereview.com/magpul-fmg9-prototype-9mm-folding-submachine-gun/

vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhxoMYbaQwY&feature=player_embedded

By now, just about everyone and their mother should be aware that Bushmaster Firearms (now wholly owned by seemingly unstoppable and more-than-a-little-ominous, voracious and rapacious gun-company-gobbling juggernaut Cerberus Capital Management, L.P.) will be manufacturing the multi-caliber MagPul Masada assault rifle/carbine under the name "Adaptive Combat Rifle", or "ACR" for short. But another MagPul item has been getting a good bit of press since the show, as well, and that’s the slick little MagPul FMG9 (or, FMG-9) a.k.a. "Glock in a Box" prototype folding 9mm Parabellum (9x19mm NATO ) mini / micro-submachine gun (SMG) that utilizes a Glock 17 slide and any factory Glock 9mm magazine, including 30-33-round Glock 18 mags. "FMG" would seem to stand for "Folding Machine Gun".

In it’s closed position, while you’re carrying it around, the MagPul FMG9 is designed to look something like a…


portable radio, and incorporates a detachable tactical white light. Drake Clark, MagPul’s resident media/PR manager showed the FMG 9 to DefenseReview at the very beginning of the show, and MagPul’s resident designer/engineer Mike Mayberry ended up taking us through the weapon a little later on in the show. The FMG9 mini-SMG is very slickly designed and looks like a fully-developed product, which is particularly impressive considering that, according to our understanding at present, Mayberry and the MagPul team developed the FMG9 on short notice specifically for the show (SHOT Show 2008).

The MagPul FMG 9 9mm subgun essentially shows in microcosm all of MagPul’s creativity and product design and development strengths (including ergonomics and "usernomics")–and, yes, perhaps even a desire to entertain–in one little lethal foldable SMG package. No matter how one feels about mini-subguns or micro-subguns, one must acknowledge the rapid-design & development skill the FMG9 showcases. You really have to see the FMG9 folding/foldable subgun being opened, closed, and handled to fully appreciate it.

By the way, counter to what’s been stated by some folks on the web (on YouTube, specifically), I believe I remember Rich Fitzpatrick informing me (verbally) at the end of the show that MagPul does indeed intend to put the FMG into production in limited quantities as an SBR (Short Barreled Rifle). We’ll try to verify this.

And, let’s hope the FMG shoots as good as it looks. After all, that is what ultimately matters.

Editor’s Note: Regarding what I stated at the beginning of this article about Cerberus, I was stating it semi-tongue-in-cheek. DefenseReview has been told by various professional/industry contacts of ours that the Cerburus guys are gun guys first and foremost and very pro-Second Amendment, benevolent regarding the gun companies they’ve been acquiring (Bushmaster, Remington, Cobb Manufacturing, etc.), and all-around good guys, which is a very good thing. However, since I’ve never actually met, spoken with, or even seen one of these guys, based on their behavior and rather serious financial capabilities, I can’t help thinking of The Star Chamber (1983). What these Cerberus guys want, they get. They’re powerful, well-financed, determined, and deliberate in action. So, let’s hope that the rumors about what great guys they are are true. And, if we ever end up spotting one of these guys in the wild prowling around in their natural habitat, we’ll let you know. So far, though, they’ve been about as easy to spot as a Chupacabra.


Company Contact Info:

Mailing Address:

MagPul Industries Corp. (a.k.a. MagPul Military Industries Corp.)
PO Box 17697
Longmont, Colorado 80308-0697

Shipping Address:

MagPul Industries Corp
400 Young Court – Unit 1
Erie, Colorado 80516-8440

Phone:

877-4MAGPUL Toll Free
303-828-3460 Office
303-828-3469 Fax

magpul@magpul.com Email

Military Cage Code: 1LX50

Additional Photos:

Old news, don't go calling them with your address and credit card number to order for the coming revolution...

What is a address ...
or credit card?

You think we have not already looked into those folding guns?

Check the dates on those original articles.

You can get the airsoft version from China, which has several of the parts you will need, but purposefully is not compatible with original Glock stuff, except that you can make adjustments in design to make the rest of the parts domestically, and cost effectively, provided you have around $100K up front to invest in molds and tooling. For safety and equipment stress purposes, then you go with something less powerful than 9mm which leaves us that weapon in .380 or 9mm makarov, and functionally, no better than a subcompact MAC which can also be designed to work as a folding gun, AKA the ARES folding gun from the 1980s, or the KZIN or KEDR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARES_FMG

This weapon is more within the realm of possibility. It is not readily disguised as anything else, but then not incredibly difficult to hide/smuggle either. Blueprints have been circulating on the web.

So two workable options exist:

Resurrect the ARES design, which is likely not incredibly difficult to product in clandestine workshops, or come up with a parts kit in .380 or 9mm Makarov that works with the Airsoft FMG housing.

Consider a $50K investment gives you limited production capability, say 20 guns per month using covert sourcing of parts on contract, and then some parts made clandestinely in house, and of course clandestine final assembly and testing. In a pinch, you could likely ramp up production to 40-50 guns per month.

Sale price would initially be $2500 each, but market saturation and distribution issues would likely mean the producer gets around $1000 per gun with three to six spare magazines. Assume a worldwide market if you can get smuggling channels set up, prices remaining high with the mandatory purchase of high end accessories in a package deal to keep the weapons out of the street hoodlum crowd league.

On the quasi-legal side of production, a parts kit for converting the airsoft to live fire is technically not illegal as long as installation would require some permanent modification of the airsoft reciever housing, or possibly a receiver insert, where the steel insert is technically the "firearm parts" and the airsoft housing is simply there for cosmetics (kind of like where people hack a Ruger 10/22 into an airsoft G36 or FN P90 housing).

Another quasi legal thing for the folding ARES type design (which had its patent run out like ten years ago) is producing component parts in different workshops, sold by different retailers, and parts kits vs flats the way you see with the various MAC clone parts and parts kits. One added bonus of the ARES design is that the swing down grips can be changed out depending on the availability of different magazine formats, although two position feed magazines (like the Uzi, Sterling, or Thompson) would likely require a different bolt from a single position feed magazine (Sten, MAC, or M3 Grease Gun) but it may be possible to come up with a universal bolt design and only have the variations in geometry change out with the grip assembly.

Keltec does some folding semiautos on the same basic platform, but they sell it with different grip assemblies in order to be compatible with different types of autopistol magazines, IE, Beretta, Glock and S&W, all single position feed types, and the folding mechanism of the Keltec is not friendly to setting it up with a shorter barrel.

The European and Israeli solutions have involved standalone handgun actions with an extremely short grip option, and then the option of swapping out either longer magazines with a grip section built onto them, or a grip assembly with a longer magwell, and then a whole stock/housing assembly that mounts to the handgun frame rail system. SIG has that entire thing incorporated into their SIG P250 pistol system, where the actual "gun" is a chassis that is inside the actual handgun, and the external plastic, magazines and slide are all swappable.