The pinfire system was a popular type of early self-contained metallic cartridge in Europe, but didn't find much use in the United States. Pinfire revolvers were made in a variety of calibers from 5mm up to 15mm, and a much smaller number of revolving rifle and carbines were also made. This parti...

Wall guns are the philosophical predecessor to today's anti-material rifles - large-caliber, high power rifles heavy enough that they cannot be fired from the shoulder realistically. Traditionally, they were used for defending walls or ramparts, as the name implies. They would allow defenders to ...

The FN Model D (“demontage”, or detachable) was the last and best evolution of the Browning Automatic Rifle. FN acquired a license to make the BAR in 1920 from Colt, and made its first major sale to Poland in 1928. Using that income to finance its production tooling, FN would introduce its Model ...

The Belgian Army was the second to adopt the Chauchat automatic rifle, after the French. Almost all of Belgium was under German occupation during World War One, leaving Belgium significantly dependent on French aid for arms during the war. The initial Belgium purchases were standard 8mm Lebel CSR...

The B25 was introduced by FN in 1925; the last of John Browning's designs and the first successful over/under sporting shotgun. The one we are looking at today was created as a presentation piece for the celebrations in 1939 for the inauguration of the Albert Canal between Liege and Antwerp. As p...

The Grande Puissance - High Power - was John Browning's last firearms design. In fact, he only began the design; it was taken to completion by his protege Dieudonné Saive at FN in Belgium. It was the best military handgun of the time, with a double-stack 13-round magazine capacity, and chambered ...

When John Browning licensed his handgun patents, the North American rights were granted to Colt, and the Western European rights to FN in Belgium. Browning provided the patents and patent model guns to the companies, and they were then free to interpret the design however they thought best. In th...

When the Belgian military decided to adopt a new rifle in the late 1880s, they attached a wide variety of competitors. The best of the batch were Mauser and Mannlicher, with Mauser ultimately winning - but among the other entrants was Belgian Captain Uldarique Marga and his bolt action rifle desi...

When the FN FAL was first being sold, many militaries that bought it opted to mount optics on a small percentage of their rifles. These military setups used a variety of different optics and mounts, and led FN to develop their own OEM solution. By the 1970s, the FN industrial conglomerate includi...

Emile and Leon Nagant set up their manufacturing company in Liege, Belgium in 1859, and it would become one of the most prominent in the city. The brothers worked with a variety of other patent holders, including striking a deal with the Remington company. This would lead to Nagant production of ...

The Tirmax is a handy little carbine made between 1909 and 1914 in Liege by a German company. It is a semiauto action using a 5-round detachable magazine. The guns are quite scarce today because only a fairly small number appear to have been produced before World War One ended its manufacture.
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After World War Two, the new NATO defense alliance held a series of trials to adopt a standard cartridge and infantry rifle. This would eventually devolve and the goal of a standardized rifle would be abandoned, but during the early trials there were three main contenders: the British EM-2, the A...

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Today we're looking at an example of a cheap pocket pistol from a century ago - a 6-shot Belgian revolver chambered for .22 Short (sometimes called a Velodog revolver because of their use by cyclists to ward off dogs). Scads of these type of guns were made, often with no markings beyond the lega...

This is a Belgian-made Schulhof bolt action rifle. It is notable for its 9-round rotary magazine, and this same model of rifle was tested by the US Army in 1889. The magazine and overall design of the rifle was found to be quite good, but the bolt was too weak for Army approval. Regardless, it is...

The Belgian Army held rifle trials in the late 1880s to choose a new infantry rifle, and the winner was the Model 1889 Belgian Mauser. Quite a few different guns were involved in the competition though, including this Engh-patent rifle made by Liegeoise. It's a pretty unusual bolt action that is ...

The FN Model 1903 was a Belgian-made scaled-up version of John Browning's model 1903 pocket hammerless pistol. The pocket hammerless was made in .32 ACP and .380 calibers for (primarily) the civilian market in the US by Colt, and the FN model was chambered for the more powerful 9x20mm Browning Lo...

The FN FNC carbine was developed for military trials in the 70s and 80s, and saw some limited success.

The FS2000 is the semiauto civilian version of FN's F2000 bullpup rifle. It was designed for military use, but contracts have been well below FN's hopes - only Slovenia has decided to adopt it as a standard service weapon (several other nations have bought small quantities for specialized uses). ...

The FN CAL (Carabine Automatique Legere) was Fabrique Nationale's first attempt at a 5.56mm rifle, and it was not successful. They replaced it with the FNC, which saw much wider success. The CAL is quite scarce today, and it was a very cool opportunity to take one out to the range! It performed r...

FN began developing the P90 in the late 1980s, actually preceding the NATO requirement that it would eventually compete for. The idea of the P90 was to develop a weapon for secondary troops to replace 9mm pistols and SMGs. There was an anticipated threat of Russian paratroops wearing armor that c...

Having taken a look at the history and mechanics of the P90 yesterday, I'm taking it out to the range today. I wasn't sure how I would feel about the progressive trigger...

After World War Two, FN put the BAR back into production. This was initially the FN-D version with a quick-change barrel, but with NATO's adoption of the 7.62mm cartridge, there was a demand for the BAR in that chambering. The Belgian Army adopted this new round, and plenty of other nations did a...

The FN MAG (Mitrailleuse d’Appui Général – General Purpose Machine Gun) was designed by Ernest Vervier, who took over from Dieudonné Saive as FN’s lead military arms designer in 1954. The Swedish government approached FN about building a belt-fed version of the BAR, which they had been unsuccessf...