#American180

Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report! This ongoing series is all about the rimfire firearm world and all of the different types of guns, ammo, history, and shooting sports that this niche corner of the industry entails. A couple of years back I had the extremely rare opportunity to shoot one of my “grail guns” the American-180 .22LR submachine gun. This is a firearm I’ve been fascinated with for a long time, and it’s also one that’s always generated a lot of discussion in the firearm world for its extremely narrow focus on marketing directly to police agencies. Wouldn’t this relatively inexpensive, lightweight, small-caliber, machine gun, make the perfect weapon for the American soldier? Today we’re going to go through a bit of that discussion and take a look at both sides of the argument to see why perhaps the American-180 and other rimfire submachine guns like it just might not ever make practical sense on the battlefield.

The American-180 is a rare .22LR submachine gun developed in the 1960s which fires .22LR from a wind-up pan magazine. It originated with the Casull Model 290 that also used a flat pan magazine. Only 80 Casull M290s were built. The American-180 is an improved version of the Casull design. Today, James Reeves speaks with Brad of Blue Force Gear about this rare .22 SMG.

Hello and welcome to a special edition of  The Rimfire Report! As you can expect from the title of this article it will be on the American 180, specifically hands-on experience with the American 180 at TFB Gun Fest 2021. While at Gun Fest, Blue Force Gear  Director of Medical Programs Brad Gilpin brought his own personal American 180 to range day and a few of the TFB writers had a chance to shoot the elusive .22LR submachine gun. Today, I’ll detail our experiences and reactions to shooting the American 180 as well go over a few observations about the gun.

I’ve been familiar with the American 180 as a range toy since my early interest in NFA items began over 20 years ago, but I never knew that they were used in combat by anyone, not least foreign special forces units until recently.    Recently, Douw Steyn, formerly of South Africa’s 4th Reconnaissance Regiment, related their use in combat during a joint South African/Rhodesian special operation in Mozambique.  Suppressed, they proved effective at close range. More importantly for the clandestine and deniable missions they were carried on, they were not traceable back to the governments of South Africa or Rhodesia.

SilencerCo posted up this photo of an American-180 on their Instagram page.

So far in the Modern PDW Calibers series we’ve talked about small caliber, high velocity PDW rounds like the 5.7mm FN and 4.6mm HK, and we’ve tackled larger, punchier calibers like the 10mm Norma Auto and the 7.5mm FK. However, we still have not tackled the very extreme low end of the spectrum, that is rounds that are so small and impotent that many question their usefulness as antipersonnel rounds at all. However, small size brings with it some benefits in recoil and round weight, so it’s worth taking a closer look at this kind of round.