laststandonzombieisland

Ever since 1975, the world has come to know and love the sleek and downright elegant CZ75 combat pistol. This Czech designed and produced firearm has been cloned probably more than any other modern gun with the exception of the M1911 so chances are you are familiar. One variant you probably haven’t gotten your grubby little hands on though is the full auto one, and that’s a shame.

Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) always had a more Western tilt than other Soviet satellite states. This can be seem clearly in their history of firearms manufacturing.

The Czech firearms super factory of Česká zbrojovka Uherský Brod (best known simply as CZ) had long been a maker of top shelf firearms that earned the old Communist State of Czechoslovakia hard foreign currency. By 1991, with the end of the cold war and the coming of capitalist freedom to the region, the Czech Republic divested itself of the CZ munitions works and the company began life on its own two feet, as a private entity.

Looking to help push new products out into the world, that could include Western countries without import restrictions, the company looked at two of its bestselling products, the CZ75 pistol and the Skorpion vz61 submachine gun and came up with a novel way to have the first become a new and improved version of the latter. In the early 1990s there was a certain niche market out there for high speed 9mm machine pistols such as the Glock 18 and Beretta 93R, but the CZ’s dated Skorpion design was chambered from the ground up for .32ACP.

Hence: a CZ75 that could sting like a Skorpion.

Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com