The Uzi is an early Cold War era sub machine gun of Israeli origin. It is one of the world's most famous firearms as it has been adopted by many nations and used in many conflicts. Nowadays some variants remain in production, but its 50 year old design suffers competition from newer designs.

The design of the Uzi was inspired by the Czechoslovak Vz 23 sub machine gun. The Uzi uses a similar blowback design with wrap around telescoping bolt. This makes the overall length of the weapon much shorter and allows for a relatively long barrel. The Uzi consists mostly of stamped sheet metal. The receiver has grooves in which sand and dirt can settle to improve reliability. The magazine is housed in the pistol grip and a grip safety is fitted to prevent accidental firing. The full size variants fire from the open bolt, while the smaller versions use a closed bolt design.

The Uzi fires the 9x19mm round from a 25 or 32 round magazine. All Uzi's are capable of semi-automatic and automatic fire. The cyclic rate of fire is 600 rounds per minute for the Uzi and as high as 1.200 rounds per minute for the Micro Uzi. The maximum effective range is 150 meters for the standard Uzi and less for the smaller versions.

The first and foremost user of the Uzi was Israel. Additionally the Uzi was adopted by over 90 nations and was common in Europe, Africa and South America. The Uzi remains in use with many non-Western nations. The Mini and Micro Uzi are often used by non-Western special forces units.