Last year American Tactical Imports was forced to take their GSG-5, a .22 MP5 patterned pistol and rifle, off the market after they were successfully sued by H&K for trade dress infringement. You can imagine my surprise when I saw them on display at SHOT only a couple of months after the lawsuit.

It turns out H&K had initially sued them over a long list of complaints. Most of these, the trade dress infringement being the sole exception, were thrown out of court. By simply making some design changes to avoid the GSG-5 being confused with the H&K MP5, ATI has been able to bring the gun back into the market under the GSG-522 name. The GSG-522 design was signed off by H&K and no royalties are required to be paid.

The GSG-522 has many subtle design changes. The biggest changes are …

• Textured pistol grip
• Redesigned selector switch
• Picatinny rail on top
• Square “open” front sight rather than the classic H&K ring front sight.
• Integrated sling bracket (on trigger guard … looks a bit flimsy to me)

It still retains the MP5 style but is much less likely to mistaken for a real MP5 (although in reality the original GSG-5 would also not have been confused with the real deal).

The joke is that ATI will offer “upgrade” kits that will allow you to retrofit a GSG-522 to look like the original GSG-5.

The GSG-522 will be available in many configurations:

• GSG-522 Carbine with 16.25″ barrel
• GSG-522 SD Carbine with 16.25″ barrel (MP5-SD style)
• GSG-522 Pistol with 9″ barrel
• GSG-522PK Pistol (MP5K style) with 4.25″ barrel

The carbines will be available in black, nickel and camo finish. Each model will ship with either a 10 round or 22 round magazine.

One of the coolest features of the new GSG-522 line is the 110 round drum magazine.

The drum does not need to be wound. This is a plus, although I imagine after 75 rounds your fingers are going to be very tired (a mag loader is not yet available). An adapter will be offered at a later time which will allow the magazine to be used with the ATI GSG Kalashnikov.

As soon as this drum goes on sale you can be sure that in no time Youtube will be filled with videos of people dumping 100 rounds as quickly as possible 🙂

I do not yet have pricing info for the drum or GSG-5 firearms.