The TEC-9: An immigrant’s tale
As anyone who was around in the 1980s will tell you, all the coolest guns were plastic (we mean polymer) 9mms. Some, like the Glock 17, were cooler than others. Still, if looks could kill and looks were your thing, in the 80s you turned to Miami, Florida and found the good old TEC9. The thing was, you really did have to depend on its looks because the gun itself often left you hanging.
In invasion-conscious 1970s Sweden, the military was looking around for replacements for its vaunted Carl Gustav M/45, better known as K-gun. The Swedish K was a weapon for issue to commando types as well as truck drivers, vehicle crews and the like. It was a 7.7-pound (unloaded) 22-inch long 9mm burp gun that could chew out 600 rounds per minute. The local firm of Interdynamic AB of Stockholm put one of their designers on the task, a young man named George Kellgren.
His soultion was a gun that became infamous in the US as the TEC-9.
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com
