History Lesson of the Classic M-10 Submachine Gun

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It was a crisp February Tuesday in 1987 in the Mississippi Delta. I recall that the sky was clear, and the weather was pretty. It was my 21st birthday, and I was finally legal. I’ve never smoked a cigarette, and I don’t know what beer tastes like. None of that stuff ever held much allure for me. However, I was still nonetheless rabid to turn 21. That was the day I could drop the Form 4 for my first registered machinegun.

Back then you had to get the local chief law enforcement officer to sign off. I presented to his office at 0800. This was a small town, and he was a family friend. After a little unrelated small talk, I got the signatures. I drove straight from there to the post office.

I had purchased the gun, a lightly-used RPB M-10 in 9mm, a couple months before from a Class III dealer in Jackson who operated out of his auto body shop. It had taken months of toil to accumulate the $650 purchase price along with the onerous $200 transfer tax. Three months of fevered waiting later, my best friend and I drove the 2.5 hours down to Jackson to pick it up. I got him to drive on the way home, just so I could drool over it. That pre-owned MAC-10 was the gateway drug to a lifetime’s worth of chasing these things.

Origin Story

The M-10 was the brainchild of the legendary Gordon Ingram while in the employ of the Military Armament Corporation. The company never used the term “MAC-10.” We gun geeks came up with that.

Ingram was a WW2 veteran and a gifted gun designer. His first commercially-successful effort was the Ingram Model 6, an open bolt .45ACP SMG with vaguely Thompson-esque lines. The Model 6 was built around an inexpensive drawn steel receiver and sported a curious two-stage fire selector built into the trigger akin to that of the Steyr AUG assault rifle. The M-6 found some modest success with police departments and prisons, but the SMG market was saturated back then. 23,000 copies were produced over three years before the gun burned itself out. However, the Model 6 laid the foundation for Gordon Ingram’s masterwork.

M-10 SMG

Ingram began work on the M-10 in 1964. His intention was to produce a reliable, compact, pistol-caliber submachine gun as cheaply as possible. The original M-10 was offered in either 9mm Para or .45ACP. It incorporated some remarkably prescient engineering for its day.

For starters, the M-10 fired from the open bolt via advanced primer ignition. The bolt telescoped over the barrel in the manner of the Uzi, the most-
produced submachine gun in history with more than ten million copies in service. The MAC magazine fed through the pistol grip, and the gun was selective fire via a rotating lever on the front left of the receiver. The end result was heavy at 6.3 pounds empty, but it collapsed down to a paltry 11.6 inches.

Trigger Time

The M-10 is indeed an acquired taste. Little about the gun is comfortable, though it has a certain undeniable sex appeal. The front sight is a pressed steel tab. The rear is a hole drilled through the back of the frame. They’re just there for looks. You fire a MAC simply by aiming roughly over the top of the gun and paying close attention to trigger control.

On semiauto, the open-bolt design is clunky and awkward. Fire maybe three rounds on semiauto out of a full auto MAC, and you’ll never do it again. On rock and roll, the gun is both fast and vigorous. The trigger rates a solid decent. Lean into it, always run the gun with the stock deployed, and pay attention to the trigger. Do so, and you can keep your rounds on a pie plate at across-the-room ranges so long as you limit your bursts to four or five rounds. Anything past that is just going to ventilate the countryside. The MAC is, however, a blast to shoot so long as you have plenty of ammo.

Hitting Above Its Weight

The M-10 is really a specialist’s weapon, not a general-purpose SMG. This nifty little bullet hose should have come and gone without making much of a splash. Original production run wrapped up in the 70’s. Given its narrow niche, you really shouldn’t be able to find an M-10 outside of a museum.The MAC company tried and failed to sell the M-10 to the US Army as a replacement for its aging M1911A1 pistols. Thank the Lord they were not successful. There’s no telling how many defingered former Army Privates would be wandering about had they pulled that one off.

MAC filed for bankruptcy in December of 1975, and their assets were liquidated at the most epic gun auction in human history. One pallet of one hundred M-10 submachine guns sold for $600. Tragically, I was nine years old at the time. Sigh… RPB Industries rose from the ashes and sold a pile of M-10 SMGs using original MAC parts until they also went defunct. Smaller companies located in New Jersey, and Stephensville, Texas, sold a few as well. Nowadays, the price of a MAC is driven by its parentage.

MAC SMGs were available and very cheap during the critical years prior to the accursed 1986 machinegun ban. The M-10 subsequently formed the foundational bedrock of the quirky world of transferable machineguns in America. Most everybody who is into this ungodly expensive hobby starts with a “MAC.” Editor-in-Chief of Firearms News, Vincent L. DeNiro, did and bought two used consecutive serial-numbered RPB M-10 sub machineguns in 1988, both came with Cobray two-stage suppressors. The price? Only $500 each WITH the silencers included (he was licensed dealer at the time).

Original Powder Springs MACs are the most desirable, followed closely by the RPB parts guns. The Jersey and Texas MACs are at the bottom of the food chain. However, a cheap Rolls Royce still costs a fortune. According to MachinegunPriceGuide.com, as of the 2nd quarter 2024, actual selling prices for MAC-10 SMGs ranged from a low of $8,200 to a high of $15,800. They averaged about $12,500. Prices on transferable machineguns never go down. They will be more expensive by the time you read these words. Second only to my wife, that $650 MAC I bought back in 1987 has turned out to be the arguably best investment I have ever made. 

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