I got to fire one of these at a range in Vegas while I was at a bachelor party a couple of years ago (Everyone else went for the Desert Eagles and AR-15s things like that, but being a history buff I picked the Thompson just to see what it was like.) The first thing you notice when you pick it up is just how damn heavy it is - the thing is incredibly dense. The range owner explained that the weight of the thing was what made it so effective - especially in the hands of people with little training, the "kickback" of a normal gun would make it hard for someone without a lot of training to keep fire concentrated over a sufficiently small area, but the heft of the Thompson makes it "drop" back into place very nicely after the round is fired and the recoil kicks in. Sure enough, when we pulled the targets back, mine was the most accurately shot round-for-round (no one there was very experienced with firearms), which I found to be pretty impressive since everyone else was shooting modern weapons and I had this old brick - but the range owner said that was what made the thing so effective. You could put it in almost anyone's hands and make them fairly dangerous with little to no training.