THE ARMOURY
Their mission was to
rescue more than 100
hostages held from Air
France flight 139.
The second iconic
moment was the attempted
assassination of US President Ronald Reagan
in 1981. Amid the chaotic scenes after
John Hinckley Jnr. shot Reagan outside the
Washington Hilton Hotel, Secret Service agent
Robert Wanko was seen to draw his Uzi from
an attaché case to keep the bystanders back as
colleagues bundled Hinckley into a squad car.
Given the real-steel history behind it, does
the Mini Uzi from Taiwanese manufacturer
KWC manage to hit the mark?
Build Quality
The first thing to note is that this gas
blowback replica – designated KCB07HN by
KWC, which does not hold the license to
use the real name or markings – is a faithful
reproduction of the IMI Mini UZI. It is almost
entirely full-metal (just the small foregrips,
pistol grips and positive safety grip are
plastic). The remainder of the body and nearly
all the internals are metal – and they need
to be. A bit of advice: when firing the Uzi for
the first time hold on tight as this little atom
packs a hell of a kick – I’ve fired .22 rimfire
rifles that had less recoil! The working parts
really snap back and forth flawlessly, feeding
BBs from the magazine at a frightening rate.
In full-auto it will empty a magazine in less
than five seconds of jaw-jangling vibration.
But this high rate of fire does have its
drawbacks; you will struggle to get much
more than a magazines’ worth of BBs (38
rounds) out of each CO2 cartridge, and
secondly the rate of fire and velocity will
decrease dramatically if you just stand there
with your finger welded to the trigger.
This means that unless you ‘use the force’
wisely (or buy a dozen magazines) you will
be sat reloading mags and taking hits as one
thing is for sure – the enemy will have heard
“In full-auto it will empty a
magazine in less than five seconds
of jaw-jangling vibration”
exactly where you were shooting from.
With its slender steel stock folded the Mini
Uzi lives up to its name and measures in at
just over 14in, with the butt now forming
a handy foregrip that makes the weapon
very manoeuvrable and excellent for CQB.
For more control in full-auto, and for more
accurate semi-auto shooting, the stock
is swivelled around (it does not lock) and
extends the length to 23in. Both front and
rear sight are adjustable – the front sight
has a small tool to wind up or down and I’d
recommend sorting this out before heading
into the field.
Once in game any field stripping required
is simple. The main working parts (of which
there aren’t many) can be accessed within
about three seconds as there is only a latch
that holds the top cover in place. All the
bolt components come out as one and then
any potential problem, such as a jammed or
misfed BB, can be easily cleared.
The hop-up is beautifully simple: the barrel
nut is rotated against a ratchet clockwise for
more hop and anti-clockwise for less, and
takes a matter of seconds to adjust it to suit
the conditions.
Centre mass target results
For the accuracy test we used a human-sized
target with a centre mass cut out to take A3size paper, so it is easy to record hits. What
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