The SIG SAUER MPX and CZ Scorpion may be the latest and greatest, but the MP5 is 100% classic cool. Seriously, who doesn’t want an MP5? Heck, it should probably only be sold with an Arnold Schwarzenegger approved cigar and an Armani suit. But for those of us here in the US, getting your hands on an MP5 can be difficult. Zenith Firearms is looking to change that by importing a civilian legal version of the MP5 family of firearms, produced in Turkey on German-made machines.
The Z5 series has been in the US before under a different guise, but didn’t do so hot. They changed a lot of things to make it ATF acceptable, and that didn’t make the MP5 collectors very happy. When you want an MP5, you want as close to the original MP5 as possible, not a neutered version. So the Turkish arms manufacturer went back to the original blueprints, changed only as much as they needed to keep the gun legal, and are now about to release the closest thing to an actual H&K MP5 that you could buy.
The first wave of imports is coming in next month, and while the guns are going to be about $100 to $200 above what’s coming in from POF they say that the quality will be evident. Models available will include the Z-5P (MP5), Z-5RS (stretched MP5), and Z-5K (MP5K) pistols, as well as the Z-5 rifle (MP5 rifle, 16.15″ barrel). The pistols all take standard MP5 magazines, and the rifle version only takes special 10-round magazines.
All guns come with a rail section on the top of the receiver for optics right out of the box, and threaded for silencers. Oh, and they take standard MP5 accessories.