Minebea PM-9 (M9)

Japan's 9 mm machine pistol, told from the Ministry of Defense's own specification, Diet records, budget tables and contract disclosures: why paratroopers got it, the 266 guns the Ground Self-Defense Force bought, how it works, how to tell it from the Uzi family, and why no American can own one.

Firearms

Minebea PM-9 (M9) · Deep Dive

Minebea PM-9 (M9)

The Uzi licence every English source repeats appears in no Japanese government record: the contracts that name foreign licences for other weapons name none for the M9, and its six-groove barrel is not a Mini-Uzi's.

Japan's 9 mm machine pistol, told from the Ministry of Defense's own specification, Diet records, budget tables and contract disclosures: why paratroopers got it, the 266 guns the Ground Self-Defense Force bought, how it works, how to tell it from the Uzi family, and why no American can own one.

Photo: Minebea 9mm submachine gun 20120408 by Los688 · CC0 1.0

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 Origins: From the Grease Gun to the M9 Why Japan's Self-Defense Forces wanted a machine pistol in the 1990s, how a bearing maker came to build it, what the government told the Diet about it, and what the record says about the Uzi licence that every English-language account repeats
    2. Vol 2 In Service: Who Carries the M9, How Many Were Bought, and What They Cost The users the government named, the 266 guns of the Ground Self-Defense Force's five-year buy, the Navy's specification and the later contracts at four times the price, and the imported submachine guns that followed
    3. Vol 3 Telling Them Apart: The M9, Its Prototype, the Uzi Family and the Replicas Reading an M9 from the outside, from the specification's own drawings and photographs of service guns; what separates it from the Uzi, Mini-Uzi, Micro-Uzi and UZI PRO; and how to recognise the airsoft copies that carry its markings
    4. Vol 4 How It Works, How It Is Kept, and How It Shoots The M9 as the Ministry of Defense's specification describes it: four assemblies, an open-bolt blowback action with a telescoping bolt and no rate reducer, the safety functions, the field kit, the acceptance tests that are the only published reliability data, and its ammunition
    5. Vol 5 Can a Private Citizen Own One? The Law, and the Lawful Lookalikes Why no M9 can be owned in the United States, why none has ever been offered, and what a private buyer can have instead: semi-automatic Uzi-pattern pistols from IWI's own catalogue, licensed Uzi airsoft and the Japanese custom replicas, with dated prices from the sellers' pages