The submachine gun (SMG) class has been a cornerstone of the Grand Theft Auto arsenal since the franchise's earliest 2D incarnations, occupying the tactical niche between sidearm and rifle. With Grand Theft Auto VI set in Leonida — a fictionalised Florida built around a re-imagined Vice City — the SMG roster carries the heaviest symbolic burden of any weapon category. It must reconcile two distinct cultural memories: the cocaine-soaked, pastel-saturated 1980s Miami of Vice City (1986) and Vice City Stories (1984), and the contemporary trap-era Florida of cartel runners, street-gang affiliates and convenience-store stick-up crews. This report examines the four archetypal submachine guns most likely to anchor that roster — the IMI Uzi (especially in Micro form), the Heckler & Koch MP5, the Ingram MAC-10, and the Czech vz. 61 Škorpion — tracing their franchise heritage, evaluating rate-of-fire versus accuracy trade-offs, considering akimbo and concealment mechanics, and aligning each weapon with the narrative aesthetic Rockstar appears to be pursuing.
Submachine guns have been featured as a discrete inventory slot since Grand Theft Auto III (2001), where the Uzi served as the primary drive-by tool. Vice City (2002) elevated the Micro Uzi into a defining icon, granting it one-handed firing animations from inside vehicles and turning it into shorthand for Tommy Vercetti's rise. San Andreas (2004) introduced akimbo Tec-9 and Micro SMG handling at the highest weapon-skill tier, cementing the dual-wield drive-by as a defining mechanic. GTA IV (2008) shifted the tonal register, replacing the MAC-10 silhouette with the more law-enforcement-coded Uzi and MP10, while GTA V (2013) gave the player the "Micro SMG" (Uzi clone), the "SMG" (MP5 clone), the "Assault SMG" (Magpul PDR analogue) and later the "Combat PDW" and "Machine Pistol" (Škorpion clone). The fan consensus on community wikis is that GTA VI will retain a four-to-five-weapon SMG bracket structured along similar lines (Fandom, n.d.).
The Uzi was designed by Israeli officer Uziel Gal in the years after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and adopted by the IDF in 1951; it has since been exported to over ninety countries, with more than two million units produced (Wikipedia, 2024a). The full-size weapon fires from an open bolt at roughly 600 rounds per minute, but the Micro Uzi variant introduced in 1986 sees cyclic rates climb to 1,200 rpm in a package weighing little more than 1.5 kg (Wikipedia, 2024a). That combination — pistol-sized footprint, extreme rate of fire, single-handed operability — is precisely what made the Micro Uzi the canonical GTA drive-by weapon. In gameplay terms it represents the "spray and pray" extreme of the accuracy/RoF curve: bullets hose out faster than the player can correct for recoil climb, but at the close ranges typical of vehicle ambushes that imprecision is irrelevant. For GTA VI's Florida setting, the Micro Uzi maps cleanly onto both the historical record (Miami's 1980s drug war saw extensive Uzi proliferation among Colombian importers) and the contemporary one, where the platform persists in cartel armouries.
The Heckler & Koch MP5 occupies the opposite pole. Developed in West Germany between 1964 and 1966, it pairs a closed-bolt, roller-delayed blowback action with a 9×19mm chambering, yielding 800 rpm in the standard MP5A2 and 900 rpm in the compact MP5K (Wikipedia, 2024b). The closed-bolt design produces notably better first-shot accuracy than open-bolt rivals, and the MP5 became globally synonymous with counter-terror professionalism after the SAS used it during the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege (Wikipedia, 2024b). In GTA terms, the MP5 (or its MP5K compact variant) is the police/SWAT silhouette — accurate, controllable, suited to stash-house defence rather than drive-bys. Expect GTA VI to issue MP5 analogues to Leonida State Police tactical units and high-tier private-security NPCs, while letting the player acquire one from raided armouries or Ammu-Nation analogues at higher in-game progression tiers.
The Ingram Model 10, designed by Gordon Ingram in 1964 and produced by the Military Armament Corporation from 1970, is the platform most overtly tied to the 1980s gangster mythos that Vice City trades on (Wikipedia, 2024c). Cyclic rates reach roughly 1,090 rpm in .45 ACP and 1,200–1,500 rpm in 9mm, with an effective range of just 50–70 metres — a police researcher famously described the MAC series as "fit only for combat in a phone booth" (Wikipedia, 2024c). Crucially, the MAC-10 saw heavy use in the Miami drug war and the Crips–Bloods gang conflicts (Wikipedia, 2024c), giving it a documented Floridian cultural lineage that Rockstar's writers are likely to mine. Aesthetically, the boxy steel-stamped silhouette with its distinctive stepped Sionics suppressor is pure neon-and-Ferrari 80s. The MAC-10 is also the platform that best justifies an akimbo drive-by mechanic — its pistol-grip-housed magazine and forward sling-loop encourage one-handed firing in a way the MP5 does not.
The Czechoslovak Samopal vz. 61 Škorpion, fielded from 1961 in .32 ACP (7.65×17mm), is technically a machine pistol rather than a true SMG, but it is consistently classified within the SMG slot in GTA. It became notorious as a concealment weapon for organised crime — most infamously the Red Brigades' assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 — and remains a staple of Latin American cartel iconography. Rockstar has previously included a Škorpion analogue ("Machine Pistol") in GTA Online, where it functions as the in-vehicle weapon par excellence. For GTA VI, the Škorpion silhouette is the natural fit for cartel-connected antagonists operating between Leonida and a fictionalised Latin America, paralleling the trafficking corridors the game's promotional materials have suggested.
The four-weapon bracket described above produces a clean design space for Rockstar's weapon-tuning team. On one axis sits raw rate of fire, where the MAC-10 and Micro Uzi sit at the extreme (1,000+ rpm), the Škorpion in the middle (~850 rpm) and the MP5 at the conservative end (800 rpm). On the other axis sits practical accuracy under sustained fire, where the closed-bolt, roller-delayed MP5 dominates, the Škorpion's wire stock provides modest stabilisation, and the MAC-10 and Micro Uzi are effectively bullet hoses. This produces clear in-game role differentiation: the MP5 for room-clearing and stash-house defence, the Škorpion for vehicle-cabin self-defence, and the Micro Uzi or MAC-10 for offensive drive-bys.
Akimbo (dual-wield) SMG handling was last meaningfully present in San Andreas, and community speculation suggests Rockstar may revive it for GTA VI given the franchise's renewed interest in expressive action animation. The Micro Uzi, MAC-10 and Škorpion are all viable akimbo candidates because their magazines feed through the pistol grip rather than via a forward-mounted well — a feature directly inherited from the Uzi's telescoping bolt patent, which routed the magazine through the grip to balance the weapon over the firing hand (Wikipedia, 2024a). The MP5 is unsuitable for akimbo handling owing to its forward magazine well and substantial weight. Concealment for drive-by use favours the Škorpion (which folds to roughly 270 mm) and the MP5K (325 mm), both of which could plausibly be drawn from beneath a jacket or from a vehicle door pocket within the game's animation system.
Should GTA VI offer flashback or period-coded missions referencing the Vice City era — as rumour has consistently suggested — the MAC-10 and full-size Uzi anchor the 80s register, both having featured prominently in Miami's documented drug-war arsenals. The modern-day Florida register, by contrast, suits the Škorpion (cartel) and MP5 (law-enforcement opposition), with the Micro Uzi bridging both periods as a timeless street weapon. The depth of the franchise's SMG legacy makes this category arguably the most narratively loaded of any weapon class, and Rockstar's selection will signal a great deal about the game's tonal balance between nostalgia and contemporary critique.
Fandom (n.d.) Submachine Guns – GTA Wiki. Available at: https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/SMG (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2024a) Uzi. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzi (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2024b) Heckler & Koch MP5. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_MP5 (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2024c) MAC-10. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC-10 (Accessed: 14 May 2026).