[ German SMG Police Safety ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
and we're taking a look at an Erma EMP.
Now it's not so much the gun that we're interested in today,
it's this safety mechanism that has been added to it.
Because this is a style of safety
that wasn't on the gun when it came from the factory.
And you can find this exact pattern of safety on a wide variety of German submachine guns.
So the question is: what the heck is it?
Well, one of the common features of the guns that have this safety
is they often don't have military proofing marks.
These are generally believed to be police guns.
So the German police forces used a wide variety
of different armaments, including a bunch of different submachine guns.
There were a good half a dozen submachine guns that were available in 1930s Germany
and some of them got into military service.
The SS in particular wasn't originally using guns
from military supply chains, they had to get their own equipment.
And so the SS would use guns like the EMP and the MP35 and the MP34.
But German police forces also were purchasing some of these guns.
And some of those police forces wanted a different or an additional sort of safety
beyond what came on the gun. So let me show you up close.
One of the commonalities of all the German police submachine guns used in the 1930s
is of course they all fired from an open bolt. So this is the ready to fire position.
And the safety mechanisms on them varied,
but what was fairly common was to have a notch in the receiver like this.
So to safe the gun you pull the bolt handle back and lift it up into this notch.
That doesn't actually disable the trigger, but now the bolt's being held back
by this big chunk of metal in the receiver and it won't fire, no matter what you do.
However, this leaves the action open and so dirt or gunk can get in there.
This is a fine situation for a temporary need to have the gun on safe
if you're changing magazines, if you're clearing a malfunction of some sort.
But if you are, for example, a police officer walking around on duty all day,
you don't really want to be walking around with a gun open like that.
You definitely don't want to be walking around with it cocked.
You really want to be able to close the bolt.
Now police officers have a history, no offence to anyone out there who is a police officer,
but the safety reputation of police forces with firearms is not great.
And there are a bunch of examples in firearms development history
where there are special safeties added for police issued weapons.
The Luger is a particularly good example where a safety was added.
... If you leave a round in the chamber and take the ... slide off a Luger,
it can fire without the bottom end of the gun attached.
And there were more than a few German police officers who
accidentally shot themselves while cleaning their guns.
That's normally a euphemism, but in the case of the Luger it was an actual real possibility.
And so a special safety was added to ... prevent that from happening.
This is along the same lines.
So this safety is a lever that when you lift it upward into the "S" or safe position
("S" and "F" conveniently stand for safe and fire in English and French and German and Spanish,
it's kind of somewhat universal among Latin ... and Germanic languages),
anyway, what the police could do is carry the gun with the bolt closed,
a magazine in it, engage this safety, and that locks the bolt in the forward position.
And that was more conducive to ... how the police wanted to operate.
So in order to use the gun you just flip it down, cock the bolt and it's ready to fire.
Now these were added to the guns after they came out of the factory,
and they're just screwed on with these three screws.
So I can actually take this one off quite easily.
There we go, three screws removed and this just lifts right off the gun.
So in order to add these on they just cut a slot in the receiver tube there,
drilled and threaded three holes.
This is the mechanism, so in this position
this cutout allows the bolt to slide back and forth without any interference.
And when I change it to safe, we're just going to rotate this lug, which is going to lock the bolt.
Because the other element of installation of this device
was to cut a slot in the bolt right there that lines up with this slot.
So that this thing can sit in the bolt like that, and that's what holds it in place.
It's a very simple little mechanism, easy to install.
Unfortunately no one that I'm aware of has been able to dig up a patent for this,
or any documentation relating to exactly who ... installed them or when.
But we do know that they show up on police-issued submachine guns.
So as I mentioned at the beginning, this style of safety
can be found on basically any pattern of German submachine gun.
Police agencies used a little bit of everything.
So I've seen documented examples of this safety on
literally everything from the MP18,I with the original Trommel drum magazines,
all the way through MP40s, and everything in between.
Definitely MP35s, and of course this Erma EMP.
Now the lack of this safety definitely does not mean that the gun wasn't in police service,
because they haven't been universally applied.
We don't know exactly when, where, or who applied these safeties,
but we do know pretty well that they show up on German police-use submachine guns.
So I think this is a cool little extra detail, extra feature, for the collector and the historian.
Pretty cool to have a chance to take a look at this one.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this little video.
Thanks for watching.