Israel: Terror Attack Fails with Jammed Improvised Submachine gun

By Dean Weingarten

Dean Weingarten
Dean Weingarten

Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)-
On 9 February 2017, in Israel at the city of Petah Tikva, a Palestinian identified as Sadeq Nasser Abu Mazen, attempted a terror attack. The attack was not very successful.  One man was shot in the leg, and a couple of others were hit by bullet fragments or shards of material fragmented by bullets. The weapon that failed in this attack was a small shop produced submachine gun.

The Israeli term for improvised submachine guns is a “Carlo”.  The term derives from the similarity to the Carl Gustav M/45 9mm submachine gun.  The Carl Gustav was made under license for a time in Egypt. It was the inspiration for the small shop/improvised weapons. The gun jammed several times. From timesofisrael.com:

Just before 5:00 p.m., the gunman, opened fire at a bus near the Petah Tikva market on Baron Hirsch Street. One a man in his 50s was shot in the leg, while two women — one in her 50s, the other in her 30s — were hit by shrapnel, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.

He was identified by Palestinian media as Sadeq Nasser Abu Mazen, 18, from Beita al-Foka, a village south of Nablus.

The Palestinian teenager used a Carlo-style submachine gun, a comparatively cheap improvised firearm, which is prevalent in the West Bank. Carlos, which are often cobbled together from water pipes and spare parts, are notoriously unreliable, and the weapon used in the attack apparently jammed multiple times.

What is normally an automatic weapon was only able to fire a shot every few seconds, according to videos from the scene. An eyewitness told Walla news that the gunmen also entered a shop and tried to open fire, but his gun wouldn’t work at all.

Six people were wounded, one stabbed by the terrorist with a screw driver.  Three are in moderate condition in the hospital. It appears the worst gunshot wound was a shot to the leg.

The black market prices for the guns and ammunition in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, are very high.  They rather remind me of the prices that are commonly quoted for drugs in the U.S. They may be highly inflated. From haaretz.com:

However, over the years, as the illegal market for standard weapons became more and more expensive – Kalashnikov and Tavor rifles can cost between 60,000 to 80,000 shekels ($15,400-$20,500) – the Carlo was improved and became more widespread. Today, almost anyone can pick up the weapon from a starting price of around 3,000 shekels, up to northward of 17,000 shekels for an especially high-quality version. 

As much as this black market submachine gun failed, the Israelis are lucky the terrorist did not use a simple slam fire 12 gauge shotgun. They are much easier to make, and are simple to use. Loaded with improvised buckshot, the 12 gauge could have been more deadly. It is likely more shots would have been fired. Perhaps 12 gauge shells are harder to obtain than 9mm on the black market in Israel.

The Israeli forces have learned that they cannot stop the manufacture of small shop submachine guns. They are too easily made with a small investment in tools. It is a lesson that gun control advocates everywhere should heed.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.

Link to Gun Watch

About Dean Weingarten;

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

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SeaRick

There is one simple solution to quell the gun control insanity of the Blumenthal Grubers out there. Solution: Hold every single politician criminally liable and incarcerate them immediately for every homicide by firearm in those locales that ban firearms. Once they are behind bars you will have accomplished two things: 1) One less control-freak libertird that can vote as a felon; and 2) saved our 2nd Amendment from attack by these left-wing seditionists – Yes fellow Patriots, SEDITION.is defined as: Conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch. In this case inciting people… Read more »

Ricochet007

Dan’L — The writer’s intended audience is not the perp’s sympathizers, but rather those politicians in the U.S. who think gun control could possibly work, as this message is one their constituents can share with them to show the fallacy of gun control arguments. I appreciate that you don’t want the writer to give ideas to the enemy (perp’s sympathizers), but I doubt this article will make it into their hands, nor would it likely be news to them. Similarly, I sometimes cringe when “too much” is given as details on crime shows on TV, movies, etc. One of the… Read more »

Tionico

I like the term “Certified Defenseless Victim Zone”.

Dan'L

I can appreciate the “reporting of the facts” portion of almost all journalistic efforts, but maybe a real journalist would opt for the inclusion of an opinion or two about the reduced mental state of a perpetrator in order to increase the word count, rather than making suggestions to said perpetrator’s sympathizers regarding improvements to equipment and/or methodologies.