I handled one in the early ‘90s while in ROTC. It had been well cared for. The other cadets had never heard of them.
I would hope there’s a bunch of them in warehouses somewhere... if “Captain Crunch” at Anniston Army Depot hasn’t gotten ahold of them.
JMO, but what is so bad about the M3 series submachine gun? Seemed to work well enough over 60 years for us. Perhaps because it’s too cheap to manufacture?
The GM Guide Lamp division has been out of commission for almost two generations for one thing. The other issue with the M3 and M3A1 was its low cyclic rate and long travel open bolt action. Nobody is looking at a parkerized tube gun SMG as a solution and the M3 design couldn’t hold a candle to the best tube SMGs like the Swedish K.
I am still very fond of the UZI (especially the Mini converted to fire from a closed bolt) but IMI/IWI has said they have absolutely no tooling to produce the long-retired UZI anymore.
Man, everything about this whole topic is revisiting ideas that pretty much ended with the appearance of the Hk MP5. I don’t know why the Army is goofing around like this but they know what the answer is.