The rare MR-64 “Guerrilla Gun”
The MR-64 submachine gun was designed by a Peruvian, Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe, with some assistance from Gordon Ingram. It took design cues from the STEN and shared the same magazines. Not a lot is known about the MR-64, other than about 1000 were made during the mid-60’s at the Erquiaga Arms Company, California. The designer had to flee the USA shortly afterwards because he was suspected of supplying weapons to the Cuban government.
In the end some 373 of these guns and 100,000 rounds of ammunition were seized in 1965 by authorities at the California factory. In the end most of those, as they were unserialized, were destroyed although 2 are in the ATF’s vault. One is believed to be in a private collection in Georgia.
In the late 1950s, Gordon Ingram (designer of the MAC-10) visited Peru for a year on business terms, setting up manufacture for his Model 6 submachine gun. He met Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe, a Peruvian army officer, who was very interested in Ingram’s work. Ingram specialized in designing cheap submachine guns and Erquiaga wanted to capitalize on this by selling such weapons to guerrilla paramilitaries.
Some years later, Erquiaga went to the United States and collaborated with Ingram in designing the MR-64. It was not a particularly special design; it was more or less a copy of the STEN gun with modified aesthetics. But it was extremely simple to manufacture, as well as cheap. Erquiaga set up the Erquiaga Arms Company in the City of Industry in California. From there, the MR-64 was manufactured in the thousands, and sold to Cuban anti-Castro guerrillas.
Understandably, when the FBI learned of Erquiaga’s actions, they feared it would threaten already poor US-Cuban relations and raided Erquiaga’s factory, confiscating the weapons being manufactured there. Erquiaga himself managed to flee the country and avoid arrest.