MAC-10 Guide (2026): History, Legality and the Semi-Auto Clones You Can Buy

Last updated September 24th 2026

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MAC-Style Pistols You Can Buy in 2026 at a Glance

Table of Contents

Introduction: The MAC-10 in 2026

The MAC-10 is the boxy little submachine gun Gordon Ingram designed in 1964 and Military Armament Corporation built in Powder Springs, Georgia, from 1970 to 1973. It’s mostly steel stampings, it fires from an open bolt, and it empties a magazine faster than almost anything its size. Hollywood made it famous. Counter-Strike made it famous all over again for a generation that has never held one.

Here’s the catch. You can’t walk into a gun shop and buy a MAC-10. The real thing is a machine gun, and federal law froze the supply of civilian-legal machine guns in 1986. What you can buy is the semi-automatic descendant, and one Georgia company, Masterpiece Arms, still builds it.

I’ve shot the Masterpiece Defender pistols a lot, and I’ve been lucky enough to put a few magazines through a registered MAC-10 at a machine gun shoot. This guide covers the history, the law in plain English, what a transferable gun really costs, and the five semi-auto versions worth buying today. If you’re after other famous submachine guns, our Tommy Gun buying guide and best MP5 clones cover the other two icons.

Prices below are what the retailers we track were asking on September 24, 2026. Every pick has a live price card that refreshes through the day, so trust the card over any number frozen into the text.

What a MAC-10 Actually Is

Military Armament Corporation called it the Model 10, or M10. The company never used “MAC-10” in its own catalogs. Dealers, collectors and gun writers did, and the name stuck.

The design is clever in a blunt way. The bolt telescopes forward around the back of the barrel, so the gun is short and the weight sits over the pistol grip, which is also where the magazine goes. Ingram saved money everywhere he could. The magazine design came from the M3 Grease Gun, the receiver is folded sheet metal, and the unit cost at launch was about $120. Rotate the cocking handle on top 90 degrees and it locks the bolt, which also tells you at a glance the gun can’t fire.

It came in two chamberings, .45 ACP and 9mm. The smaller MAC-11 is a scaled-down version in .380 ACP, and the later M-11/9 stretched that receiver to take 9mm. Most semi-auto guns sold today, including the Masterpiece Defenders, are descendants of the M-11/9 layout rather than the big .45 gun. Search for a MAC 11 today and that 9mm pattern is mostly what you will find.

The rate of fire is the whole story

The original M10 is select-fire, so it shoots semi or full auto. A .45 MAC-10 runs at roughly 1,090 rounds per minute on full auto. The 9mm gun is closer to 1,250, and the little .380 MAC-11 is quoted at about 1,500. Do the math on a 30-round magazine and you get under two seconds of trigger time. The registered .45 I shot felt less like a burst and more like a single long cough, and the muzzle climbed the whole way. A line credited to police weapons researcher David Steele says the MAC was “fit only for combat in a phone booth,” and after that magazine I understood exactly what he meant.

That’s why the suppressor mattered so much. Mitchell WerBell III of Sionics designed a two-stage can for it, about 11.4 inches long and 2.1 inches wide, and the Army suggested it double as a front grip. With subsonic .45 ammo it’s quiet enough that you hear the bolt slamming more than the shot. The can also made the gun far easier to hold on target, which says a lot about how hard it was without one.

Who made MACs after MAC

Military Armament Corporation stopped production in 1973 and filed for bankruptcy in 1975. Its leftover receiver flats and parts went to RPB Industries, and from there the design passed through a string of small makers. You’ll see these names on used guns and in auction listings:

• Military Armament Corp. (MAC), Powder Springs, GA: the originals, 1970 to 1973. Collectors pay the most for these.
• RPB Industries: finished the bankrupt company’s parts and built open-bolt semi-autos until ATF stepped in. We cover that ruling below.
• SWD, for Sylvia and Wayne Daniel, and Cobray: the M-11/9 in 9mm and a closed-bolt semi-auto design. Most used “MAC” pistols on the market wear an SWD or Cobray stamp.
• Leinad and Vulcan: later SWD successors. Leinad also built the PM11/9, a 10-round version made to comply with the 1994 ban.
• Masterpiece Arms, Comer, GA: the current maker, and the only one still building MAC-pattern pistols in real volume.

Is a MAC-10 Legal to Own?

A semi-automatic MAC-style pistol is legal in most of the country and sells like any other handgun, through an FFL dealer with a background check. A fully automatic MAC-10 is legal to own too, but only if it’s one of the machine guns already on the federal registry before 1986. There are three rules that decide which is which.

Rule 1: the 1986 machine gun freeze

Federal law, 18 U.S.C. 922(o), says “it shall be unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun.” The exception is any machine gun that was lawfully possessed before that subsection took effect on May 19, 1986. It was added by the Firearm Owners Protection Act, and the provision is known as the Hughes Amendment. So the pool of full-auto MAC-10s a civilian can buy is fixed. No new ones will ever join it, which is why the price only goes one way.

Rule 2: ATF Ruling 82-8 and the open-bolt problem

This is the part most MAC pages skip, and it’s the one that can put a buyer in prison. In the early 1980s RPB and others sold semi-auto MAC pistols, the SM10 and SM11A1, that still fired from an open bolt. ATF re-examined them in 1982 and found that a “simple modification” to the disconnector or trip, “such as cutting, filing, or grinding,” would make them fire automatically. Its ruling, ATF Rul. 82-8, held that these guns are machine guns under the National Firearms Act.

The ruling was not applied to guns “manufactured or assembled before June 21, 1982.” An SM10, SM11A1 or SAC carbine made on or after that date is a machine gun in the eyes of the law, semi-auto or not. That’s why every MAC-style pistol built since then fires from a closed bolt.

What that means for you: if you’re offered an open-bolt semi-auto MAC, walk away unless the seller can prove it was made before June 21, 1982. A bolt with a fixed firing pin sticking out of its face is the tell. Buy closed-bolt guns from a dealer, and never buy “conversion” parts or drawings for your own gun. Possessing an unregistered machine gun is a federal felony whatever the seller told you.

Rule 3: the tax that didn’t go away

The July 2025 tax bill cut the National Firearms Act transfer tax to $0 for suppressors and short-barreled rifles starting January 1, 2026. Machine guns were left out. The statute, 26 U.S.C. 5811, now reads “$200 for each firearm transferred in the case of a machinegun or a destructive device” and “$0” for everything else on the list. So a transferable MAC-10 still costs you a $200 stamp, plus a Form 4, fingerprints and the wait. Our $0 tax stamp explainer covers what changed for cans and SBRs.

State lines matter too

Even the semi-auto versions are off limits in some states. Masterpiece Arms prints its own do-not-ship lists, and they’re a good starting point:

• MPA30T and MPA30T Grim Reaper: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Washington and Puerto Rico.
• MPA30SST, MPA30DMG and MPA57DMG: the same, plus New York and New Jersey.
• Defender 30K: the longest list, adding Maryland, Massachusetts, Delaware, Hawaii and Virginia.

A maker’s shipping list isn’t legal advice, and local rules can be stricter than state law. Check with your dealer before you order.

What a Real MAC-10 Costs Today

A transferable MAC-10 is one of the more affordable ways into full-auto ownership, but affordable is relative. At LSB Auctions, a Powder Springs .45 marked “INGRAM M10, CAL .45 AUTO / MILITARY ARMAMENT CORP / POWDER SPRINGS, GA, USA,” with a 17-inch extended barrel, sold for $9,025. That’s for a machine gun whose launch price was about $120.

Budget around $9,000 to buy in, then add the $200 stamp and a dealer’s transfer fee, and expect months on a Form 4. Original Powder Springs guns bring more than later RPB or SWD registered receivers, and a matching original suppressor adds to it. If you’re comparing machine guns as an investment, a transferable Thompson costs far more for the same paperwork.

For contrast, the in-game MAC-10 in Counter-Strike 2 costs $1,050, it’s a Terrorist-side weapon, and it carries 30 rounds. The magazine count is about the only part the game got right.

Why the MAC-10 Got Its Reputation

The US military looked hard at the MAC-10, and some special operations units carried it in Vietnam, but it never won a big contract. Export limits on the suppressor killed several foreign orders, which helped sink the company. Then the guns leaked into the civilian market just as the drug trade of the late 1970s and 1980s took off.

Small, cheap, easy to hide and loud on the evening news, the MAC became the cartel gun and the gang gun. Movies picked it up as shorthand for a bad guy with money. It’s on the counter in Butch’s apartment in Pulp Fiction, it’s Manny’s gun in the chainsaw rescue in Scarface, and it turns up all through Miami Vice. That reputation is why it still gets so many searches, and why it still makes some people nervous at the range.

The semi-auto versions got caught up in it too. The 1994 federal assault weapons ban hit the civilian MAC pistols with a threaded barrel and a weight over 50 ounces, and new guns in that form couldn’t be sold until the ban expired in 2004. The 10-round PM11/9, with no threaded barrel, was the workaround during those years.

The Semi-Auto MAC Pistols You Can Buy

Masterpiece Arms started in 2000, changed hands in 2008, and runs a 20,000 square foot shop on six acres in Comer, Georgia, the same state where the first MACs were built. It’s better known these days for precision rifle chassis and double-stack 1911s, but the Defender line is still its bread and butter. Masterpiece says its Defender bolt has more than 150,000 units in operation.

All five picks below are closed-bolt, semi-auto only, and sold through a dealer. Four are 9mm or 5.7, and one keeps the original .45 ACP. Here’s how they break down.

1. Masterpiece Arms MPA30T: Best Overall

• Caliber: 9mm
• Cocking: top-mounted knob
• Magazine: one 30-round MPA polymer magazine included
• Muzzle: threaded 1/2×28
• Sights: adjustable front and rear
• Maker’s price: $540

This is the one that looks the most like the gun people picture. It’s the top-cocker, with the charging knob riding on top of the receiver exactly where Ingram put it, and it’s the cheapest MAC you can buy new. Masterpiece lists it at $540, and Palmetto State Armory had it at $399.99 on September 24, with Classic Firearms at $429.99.

I’ve put about 600 rounds through mine over three range trips: 350 rounds of Blazer Brass 115-grain FMJ, 150 of Federal American Eagle 124-grain FMJ and 100 of Hornady Critical Defense 115-grain FTX. It had four failures to feed in the first 150 rounds, all with the 30-round magazine loaded to the top, and none after that. Two more came with the Critical Defense, whose flat-ish nose doesn’t love the feed ramp. Round-nose FMJ ran clean.

The trigger averaged 7 pounds 4 ounces on my Lyman gauge, with a long creep before the break. Off a rest at 10 yards my best five-shot group was 2.4 inches. Standing, with one hand on the grip and the other clamped around the magazine, I shot 4 to 5 inches, which is honest for a gun this shape. It weighs just under three and a half pounds empty on my scale, so holding it out at arm’s length gets old fast.

The newer version has a machined aluminum lower instead of the old one, and it’s a real improvement. The grip is more comfortable, there’s a QD flush cup for a single-point sling, and there’s an interface at the back for a stock or brace. If you like the look, Masterpiece also sells the MPA30T Grim Reaper with a skull Cerakote design for $568; Classic Firearms had one at $492.51.

2. Masterpiece Arms MPA30SST: Best for Optics

• Caliber: 9mm
• Cocking: side
• Magazine: one 30-round MPA polymer magazine included
• Rails: full-length top scope mount plus a short lower rail
• Muzzle: threaded 1/2×28
• Maker’s price: $609

The top-cocker has one problem if you want a red dot: the charging knob is exactly where the optic wants to go. The MPA30SST fixes that by moving the charging handle to the side and running a Picatinny rail down the top of the receiver. It’s the version I’d buy if I planned to shoot it more than a few times a year.

A small dot changes this gun. Irons on a MAC are short and hard to see. With a dot I kept five shots inside about 3 inches standing at 10 yards, down from 4 to 5 inches with the top-cocker’s irons. Everything else feels the same, including the trigger. Masterpiece lists it at $609, and the only listing we track had it at $546.99 on September 24.

If you’d rather run Glock magazines, the MPA30DMG is the same side-cocker with a machined grip that takes Glock mags. Masterpiece says it accepts “17 and 33rd mags only,” so check what you already own. It lists at $750, and Classic Firearms had one at $646.13.

3. Masterpiece Arms Defender .45 ACP: The Original Caliber

• Caliber: .45 ACP
• Cocking: top-mounted knob
• Why it matters: the caliber the first MAC-10s were built around
• Availability: not in Masterpiece’s current online catalog, still at retail

If the point is to own something as close to a real MAC-10 as the law allows, it should be a .45. The original M10 was a .45 ACP gun first, and nearly all .45 ball is subsonic already, which is why the Sionics can worked so well. A heavy, slow bullet out of a gun this heavy makes the recoil more of a shove than a snap.

Masterpiece’s online store currently lists only 9mm and 5.7×28 Defenders, so the .45 top-cocker is getting harder to find. One retailer we track still had a new one at $414.99 on September 24. If you want one, I wouldn’t wait.

4. Masterpiece Arms Defender 30K: Best Modern Upgrade

• Caliber: 9mm
• Magazine: Glock 17 and 19 pattern, shipped with a 34-round Amend2 or a 17-round Magpul
• Trigger: Rise Armament AR-15 fire control group
• Barrel: 4.5 inches, threaded 1/2×28
• Weight: 67.05 oz without magazine or brace
• Length: 12.52 inches

The 30K is what a MAC looks like when you rebuild it for people who shoot pistol caliber carbines. It keeps the Defender bolt but adds a steel upper, an aluminum lower, a non-reciprocating charging handle, Glock magazines and a standard AR-15 trigger group. It also ships with a side-folding hinge and a buffer tube adapter, so it’s ready for a brace.

The trigger is the big win. The Rise Armament unit in mine breaks at about 4 pounds 8 ounces, and after the MPA30T’s long creep it feels like a different kind of gun. I ran 400 rounds through it with Blazer Brass and Magpul and Glock factory magazines, and it didn’t hiccup once. At 67 ounces before you add a magazine it’s heavy, but that weight soaks up recoil.

Masterpiece lists the 30K from $899.99 up to $1,269.99 depending on the package. Palmetto State Armory had the black and gray version at $798.99 on September 24. There’s also a smaller 930DMG Mini with a 3.5-inch barrel; Classic Firearms had it at $679.

One more thing. Since January 1, 2026 the federal tax on a short-barreled rifle is $0, so registering a 30K as an SBR with a real stock costs you a Form 1 and some patience, not $200. You still have to register it, and some states ban SBRs outright. Check the current state of the pistol brace rules before you pick a brace over a stock.

5. Masterpiece Arms MPA57DMG: The 5.7×28 MAC

• Caliber: 5.7x28mm
• Magazine: FN Five-seveN, 20 or 30 rounds, one 20-round included
• Barrel: 5 inches, threaded 1/2×28
• Cocking: side, with a scope mount on top
• Maker’s price: $750

This is the odd one, and it’s more fun than it has any right to be. Masterpiece put a machined aluminum lower and grip on the side-cocker and made the grip take standard FN Five-seveN magazines. The little 5.7 round barely moves a gun this heavy, so you can see your hits through the dot at 25 yards without the muzzle jumping off target.

Masterpiece lists it at $750 and quotes 8 to 12 weeks from order. Classic Firearms had one in stock at $646.79 on September 24. If you already own an FN Five-seveN, it takes the same magazines. A Ruger 5.7 uses its own, so check before you buy spares, and our best 5.7mm pistols list covers the rest of the field. Shared magazines are a bigger deal than they sound, since MAC-specific magazines are the weak point on the 9mm guns.

How to Choose Between Them

For most buyers the MPA30T is the pick, since it’s the cheapest classic top-cocker you can buy new. Each of the other four solves one specific need.

• You want the look for the least money: the MPA30T. It’s the classic top-cocker and it costs about what a new striker-fired pistol does.
• Planning to run a red dot: the MPA30SST, or the MPA30DMG if you already own Glock 17 magazines.
• You want the most authentic MAC-10 you can own without a stamp: the .45, while you can still find one.
• Shooting it as a PCC: the 30K. The trigger alone justifies the price.
• You already shoot 5.7: the MPA57DMG, for the shared magazines.

Who Should Skip a MAC Entirely

A MAC-style pistol is a heavy, loud, high-capacity range gun first, and that is where it earns its price. I love shooting mine, but I’d be lying if I told you it’s the best tool for any serious job. Skip it if you’re one of these buyers:

• You want a home defense gun: a braced or SBR’d pistol caliber carbine is easier to shoot well under stress. Our best PCCs for home defense are a better place to start.
• You want a submachine-gun look with a better gun under it: the CZ Scorpion Evo 3 is lighter and has a better trigger.
• Chasing accuracy on a budget: a 9mm AR pistol gives you a real stock interface, a better trigger and a huge parts market.
• You want to carry it: don’t. At three and a half pounds and change, it’s not a carry gun.

Buying a Used MAC: What to Check

Used SWD, Cobray and Leinad pistols show up on the used racks and online all the time, often cheaper than a new Masterpiece. Some are fine. Some are trouble. Check these before you pay:

• Open or closed bolt: lock the bolt back and look at its face. A fixed firing pin standing proud means open bolt, and unless it provably predates June 21, 1982, the law treats it as a machine gun.
• Receiver markings: maker, model, caliber and serial should be clear and consistent. Ground-off or restamped markings are a hard no.
• Magazines: old M-11/9 and Cobray mags are hit or miss, and plenty are cracked or weak. Budget for new ones and test before you trust them.
• Signs of tinkering: file marks on the sear, disconnector or trip are a red flag. Walk away.

Our police trade-in guide explains how used-gun grading works at the big online sellers, which applies here too.

How I Tested and Priced These Guns

I shot the MPA30T, MPA30SST, 30K and MPA57DMG over several range sessions, mostly with Blazer Brass 115-grain and Federal American Eagle 124-grain FMJ in the 9mm guns and Federal American Eagle 40-grain FMJ in the 5.7. I measured trigger pulls with a Lyman digital gauge, shot groups off a bag and standing at 10 and 25 yards, and logged every stoppage. The registered .45 MAC-10 was a range day at a machine gun shoot, not a formal test. Prices are what readers saw on our live price cards on September 24, 2026. Specs came from Masterpiece Arms’ own product pages, and the legal quotes come straight from ATF Rul. 82-8 and the US Code.

Final Verdict

A real MAC-10 is a roughly $9,000 machine gun with a $200 stamp and a months-long wait, and there will never be any more of them. For everyone else, the Masterpiece Arms MPA30T is the MAC you can buy today for about $400, and it’s a riot on the range. Get the MPA30SST if you want a dot, the .45 if you want the original caliber, and the 30K if you want the one that shoots best. Whatever you buy, keep it closed-bolt, keep the paperwork, and never touch the fire control parts.

If a MAC makes you want a suppressor to go with it, our best suppressors guide covers the 9mm and .45 cans, and how to buy a suppressor walks through the now tax-free paperwork.

FAQ: The MAC-10