PAWS ZX-7: An American Sterling in .45 ACP

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! An American entrepreneur named Bob Imel found the Sterling SMG particularly interesting, and wanted to import them into the United States. He reached out to Sterling in 1967, but was unable to work out a deal before the 1968 Gun Control Act prohibited importation of machine guns. So instead, Imel decided to make them in the US. He tried to arrange a license with Sterling to do this, and finally gave up in the mid 1970s. Instead, he began making his own copy instead, under the company Police Automatic Weapons Systems (PAWS). Imel made a number of simplifications to the design, and also offered it in .45ACP (as the ZX-7, using M3 Grease Gun magazines) as well as 9mm Parabellum ( as the ZX-5, with variations using several different magazines, including Sten and Uzi). Imel’s work was again cut short in 1986, when the Hughes Amendment closed the machine