What is it about H&K? Does any other mainstream gunmaker have their legendary reputation? Just think about it. The full-page ads of the ’80s with the Tier 1 operator coming out of the water with his piece of Teutonic steel. The first company to build a plastic wonder-nine, beating Gaston to the punch. (Yes, look it up.)
And how about the legendary mystique of “The Gray Room?” No other company has a sacred place of prototypes whose fans would give their left nut to visit. (Been there, and both my boys are intact.)
And then there’s the MP5. ’Nuff said.
Sure, there are other iconic submachine guns. I love my Sterling SMG, in large part because I carried one in the British Territorial Army. It’s a superb submachine gun — whether it’s the regular version made famous by Star Wars Stormtroopers who can’t shoot, the integrally silenced version favored by our Argentine opponents during the Falklands conflict, or the cute little Para 7 with its Black & Decker foregrip (not kidding, you can look that up too).
Then, of course, the venerable Tommy gun is legendary, especially when fitted with the remarkable Cutts Compensator. As is the OG Hebrew Hammer, the Uzi. Just the image of Secret Service Agent Robert Wanko magically whipping out his Uzi when another president was shot is iconic in and of itself.
But when it comes to giggle-switch equipped pistol-caliber shoulder weapons, nothing can touch the Heckler & Koch’s maschinenpistole nummer funf. Or can it?
From the iconic SAS Operation Nimrod raid broadcast live on TV, to the ultimate ’80s action movie, Die Hard, this svelte gat has cemented itself as not only the counterterrorism weapon of choice of elite operators for decades, it’s also the Hollywood subgun, challenged in its popularity on screen perhaps only by the Deagle.
The MP5 and its variants have dominated the whole SMG and PDW class for more than half a century. The original HK54 was first designed in 1964 and deployed as the MP5 in 1966. That means that the gun, which is still so influential that even clones sell like hot cakes today, is 60 years old. Impressive.
But has the MP5 been usurped by another piece of HK unobtanium? And are we finally able to own the SMG that’s even sexier than officer John McClane’s great equalizer? Enter the MP7, or rather the T7 from Tommy Bostic.
It’s hard to deny that the original MP7 has secured a place for itself as the gun that most users wanted but couldn’t have. Why? For a couple of reasons. Firstly, its looks. The MP7 looks like it’s from a next age of firearms development.
Unlike the Sterling, you don’t need to slap an OEG Single Point red dot on it, or an MG81 muzzle device to make it look at home on the Death Star or Han Solo’s belt. It is the future. Then, there’s the fact that it’s associated with the most elite military units, such as DevGru or SEAL Team Six, and popularized in just about every first-person shooter video game.
If they use it, it must be uber-cool, right? And lastly, it was impossible for mere mortals to obtain. Until now.
Why the anemic 4.6mm weapon was deployed with our Tier 1 operators still eludes me. I get the original NATO spec sheet from 1989 was for a PDW for support troops and drivers that could defeat soft Soviet body armor, but HK took a whole decade to design and deploy it, by which time the Cold War was over and soft body armor wasn’t an issue on the battlefield.
Then, there’s the logic of a weapons loadout for a SEAL Team on GWOT deployment in Afghanistan or Iraq, pursuing Al-Qaeda HVTs. All would be armed with a main weapon and maybe a breacher or an abbreviated SAW, plus a sidearm.
So where does a PDW fit in that’s much bulkier than the sidearm of choice and less effective on body armor than the operator’s main weapon? It is possible the tiptoe boys are also susceptible to “acquisition by cool factor?” Maybe someone can ask Oakley or Gatorz. But I did reach out to a former SEAL to ask where the MP7 fitted in originally for the boys from Dam Neck. He may, or may not be, the best-selling author of a phenomenal series of books that became The Terminal List TV series.
The great Jack Carr, who did not get to deploy with the 4.6mm, did however tell me that his fellow frogmen did have a specific niche for the subgun, and that was house clearing, loaded with subsonic ammo.
Yes, the small fast round is available in a load from RWS, with almost twice the bullet weight and designed for use with the excellent, dedicated B&T can. However, that role was super niche, and the gun became a sexy ornament once outside a Jihadi compound and when you needed a platform that has “legs,” so shorter M4 platforms with suppressors, like the MK18, would prevail.
That’s all history now. As is the unobtanium status of the MP7, and all thanks to one extraordinary Star Wars fan.
I first connected with Tommy Bostic via social media. I think I’d seen his life-size, Star Wars Land Speeder and I just had to know more. Since then, I’ve gotten to know this lovely man, had him on my radio show more than once and bought several of his guns. You see, building astrodroids and immaculate replicas of vehicles from the greatest sci-fi series wasn’t enough for Tommy.
If HK and the German government didn’t want to please the civilian market by allowing Americans to buy neutered semi-auto version of their coolest gats, TommyBuilt would create them for us here in America using OEM parts where possible and manufacturing the rest from scratch. That’s how I’ve ended up with several of Tommy’s UMPs and G36s, including a special one Tommy made for me in .300BLK. But that’s for another day.
During the last SHOT Show, I was at the Brugger & Thomet booth, chatting with Karl Brugger himself. Full disclosure, I love B&T because Karl’s attitude is: “No one’s doing it? So what? I’ll do it!” And there it was — a perfect clone of the MP7, but made in the U.S. and civilian legal, and there was the man responsible. After so many phone calls, texts, and emails, I finally got to meet the man who loves the coolest HK kit and Star Wars. (A man who is so dedicated to the guns he builds, that when I gouged my TB G36 in the gun safe, he refinished it and refused to even charge me postage.)
Thus, the pestering began, and recently paid off, as the Gorka collection was expanded with another TommyBuilt.
In fact, the hardest decision was what color to order my T7 in. I wanted black to be as original as possible, but couldn’t commit, so I asked my young son, who for years carried his full-weight Umarex airsoft MP7 everywhere, and he made the right choice: “Of course, you have to go with FDE, dad!” Check out Tommy’s website for all the amazing and crazy finishes he has done. Need a Flecktarn G36, or maybe a Mandalorian-themed UMP? He’s your guy.
Let me be clear, my T7 isn’t my new truck gun. And it probably shouldn’t be yours either. Original MP7s do not have a good rep. The stocks are cruddy, the polymer is too thin in places and can break, and the round is defunct by today’s standards — remember this was a PDW for radio operators and Intell REMFs. But that’s not the point.
For decades, no one could buy an MP7 unless they could drop the price of a Raptor and had all the special papers. Thanks to amateur astro-mechanic and master fabricator, that time is over. I never thought I’d have a 4.6 PDW, especially in FDE. And now I do, and my T7 is taking its privileged place in my safe next to my Bren Ten, my TT Pit Viper, and my Seventrees ASP. Unobtanium no more.
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