The British Sten Machinegun was a simple and inexpensive machinegun built by the British during WWII. The British army started WWII with many high quality weapons but lacked a submachinegun. This was quickly realised to be a problem and so they started by buying Thompson submachineguns from america. However Thompson's had to come accross the atlantic and were EXPENSIVE. The british needed something cheaper. So they looked around and eventually decided to make tremendously cheaper copies of the german WWI MP18. Millions of sten guns were made by the end of the war. The Sten MK II was the MOST produced version. They were used heavily through the entire war. They are not precision instruments but they are simple, easy to shoot, mostly reliable, and have tons of historical value.