[ Reising M50 at the Range ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and we are out here at the range today,
courtesy of Morphy's, with a Reising M50.
This is a very early Marine Corps contract Reising.
Yesterday we took a look at some of the history of the Reising, how it got its reputation.
And whether it really deserves its reputation, which, well - spoiler - it kind of does.
But today we're going to do a little bit of shooting with it, and see how it actually is.
I've previously shot an M55 Reising,
which is the version with the really awful wire folding stock.
This has a nice (if unfortunately lacquered) solid wood stock.
So let's see if I can get a little more controllability with it.
We're going to start in semi-auto, and of course the charging handle is up here.
The Reising fires from a closed bolt, this should be really easy to get hits with.
A little bit of a longer trigger than I was expecting, but that seems to work OK.
Let's flip it into fun mode.
OK. I am completely out of ammunition.
Standard magazines on these are just 20 rounds.
And you'd think, "You know, 20 rounds doesn't seem really all that great.
I wonder if the Marine Corps came up with an alternative?"
And they did actually, the alternative that the Marine Corps came up with was
a single-stack version of the magazine that holds 12 rounds.
And that was done, ... I hear varying stories, either literally to reduce ammunition consumption,
or to increase magazine reliability by getting rid of the double feed to single feed conversion.
Both of those effects are true,
I don't know for sure which one was more of the motivator for the Marine Corps.
But ...
There we go.
Oh, ... I think I loaded actually 13 into that instead of 12,
and that's what put a lot of pressure on the bolt
and it didn't want to cycle the first round. Alright.
Huh. One little malfunction there, but I'm also completely out of ammo.
That's how fast a 12 round mag in a submachine gun goes.
So I need to reload these, but overall thoughts on this at this point ... are
it's a really controllable, pleasant gun to shoot. It doesn't climb that much.
It doesn't climb that much (perhaps the truck disagrees with me)
especially given the weight of the gun, which is way less than a Thompson.
Which is largely part of the point of the Reising.
So let me reload these mags, and let's do a little bit more shooting.
Alright. This time I actually only loaded 12 so it should be easy. Yep, there we go.
Now for - I say that - now it racks nice and easily.
You can cram an extra round in, too much pressure on the bolt, hard to charge it.
But, 12 rounds again.
Wow, man. 12 rounds just goes really, really quickly.
I would not want to be issued 12 round mags in a submachine gun,
unless I was just leaving the thing on semi-auto only, and to be fair,
the Reising's a really good semi-auto carbine, because it does fire from a closed bolt.
So while the trigger is a little bit heavy,
you don't have that kerchunk of the bolt closing when you pull the trigger.
And that's what the Marine Corps found in its original trials against the Thompson
is that the Reising was a much more accurate gun.
In fact, if I switch this back to semi.
Maybe. Charge it. There we go, switch it back to semi.
OK, it's accurate when it's zeroed. I don't know exactly where I've got the zero on this one.
But you've got a nice aperture sight. I'm going to put this back on full.
Even 20 rounds goes pretty quickly.
So a couple of overall thoughts about the Reising. This has long been
like an introductory collector's NFA item as a machine gun.
And for good reason, they've always been relatively inexpensive.
Partly because of the poor reputation they got in the early Pacific campaigns of World War Two.
But also because there were a lot of them available.
At the end of World War Two the military surplused these out,
they sold them cheaply to police departments.
And from police departments many of them ended up in the collector market.
They're a gun that doesn't look like a machine gun.
... Frankly, they were great as a police, or a Coast Guard,
or generally a not quite front-line combat sort of gun.
Now for the collector today, I think they remain a pretty cool item.
I think ... they're undervalued as a very legitimate US military combat submachine gun.
And people look at this and ... they don't see Guadalcanal,
but that's where these were used, that and the other Pacific islands.
And ... the historical relevance of something like that is really cool.
They also make a really good shootable gun because they are closed bolt,
and they have a very good solid semi-auto feature.
One of the things you run into on a lot of public shooting ranges these days
is a prohibition on full-auto. Well if you can run this in semi-auto very easily,
it's something you can still take out and shoot nicely.
You'll go through a little bit less ammo. You can shoot it on lots of public ranges.
You can take it to competitions. I have a lot of two gun matches and similar things that I go to
where machine guns just aren't permitted by the range.
And if a submachine gun doesn't have a semi-auto selector it really limits
the number of places you can shoot it outside of private land in formal competition.
Something like this works great as a semi-auto short-barrelled .45 calibre carbine.
Good sights, not a great trigger, but a great historical authenticity.
So a big thanks to Morphy's for letting me bring this guy out to the range.
Let's go ahead and empty a full 20 rounder,
see how many I can keep on that steel target.
... You ready?
OK, I think I kept like none on the target,
they were all just off to the left of the target, but it's a fun gun.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. Thanks for watching.