German monster
Name: Heckler & Koch

Current: The police images of the liquidation of professional crime boss Stanley Hillis, February 2011, are now legendary. We see a hit man get out of a VW Transporter, nervously approach the side of a Mitsubishi parked across the street and then fire. No fewer than 37 bullets then fly out of the semi-automatic Heckler & Koch that the shooter uses.

History: During the Second World War, the engineers of the German Mauser Werk developed a submachine gun with the name StG44 (or: Sturmgewehr model 1944). At the end of the war they introduced a new model of the same weapon: the StG45. The three engineers behind this Mauser weapon – Edmund Heckler, Theodor Koch and Alexis Seidel – developed a weapon that has killed hundreds of thousands of Allied and Russian soldiers. After the war, these three Germans were prohibited from devising and manufacturing weapons for their own national army. After many detours and alliances with foreign arms factories, the three engineers finally - when the spirit of the times allowed it - founded their own arms factory, Heckler and Koch, near Oberndorf am Neckar in the south of what was then West Germany. This company released the legendary MP5 in 1964. In other words, the 9 millimeter Machine Pistole 5.

Most commonly used type: The HK MP5 is a household name in the arms world. It is the submachine gun that arrest teams of the Dutch police have been equipped with for years. The Royal Military Police also works with this type of Heckler and Koch. Although it seems to be a huge job to build such a beast in no time.