1986. Geraldo Rivera as part of his Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault TV special, with a history of the tommy gun. The clip starts in the Lexington hotel, one of the rooms that gangsters had used as a shooting range in the 1920s. We learn how the gun became quite popular in the criminal underworld, before bringing in experts and conducting a live fire exercise.
The Thompson submachine gun was originally designed for use in WWI but didn’t arrive in time to make a large impact during that conflict. It has evolved over time and a large number of variants and replicas exist across the world today, and have been used in a wide range of conflicts.