The Viper Mk I was an experimental submachine gun developed in the UK for use by military policemen in post-WW@ occupation West Germany. It was a simplified Sten gun (full-auto only, without the semiauto option normally included in the Sten trigger mechanism) put into a wooden housing.
It was intended to be carried slung over one shouldered fired under the arm with just one hand. To this end, it had neither sights nor trigger guard. The whole concept seems pretty questionable, and while multiple different Viper submachine guns were designed to fill this role, none were ever adopted.
Ian’s video [9:54]
The weapon is poorly designed but I doubt that wildly firing into crowds was the intent. I was trying to raise the discussion a little bit by thinking through what the the thought process could have been at the time rather than stating that it’s dumb and moving on.