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Kohout & Spol 7.65mm Mars Pistol
The “MARS” pistols made in Czechoslovakia began with the “Slavia” line, designed by one Antonin Vilímec in 1920 or 1921. Those were basically simple copies of the vest-pocket Browning pistols, and were made until 1935. At that point the factory (shop?) was acquired by the Kohout & Spol company, w...
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Czechoslovakia Recycles Mosins: The vz.54 Sniper
Czechoslovakia adopted a whole new slate of small arms in the 1950s, including the vz.52 pistol vz.52 rifle, and vz.52 light machine gun. They also adopted a new sniper rifle, developed by a Moravian designed names Otakar Galaš. Galaš was a skilled competitive shooter as well as an arms designer,...
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Samopal vz.58: The Czechoslovakian Answer to the AK
Among the nations of the Warsaw Pact, only Czechoslovakia designed and produced its own infantry assault rifle - everyone else used the Kalashnikov. The Czech vz.58 is often mistaken for an AK because it has the same basic layout, but is in reality a completely different gun mechanically and has ...
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Rare Czech Walther PP and CZ Model 27 | Military and Police Pistols
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Prototype CZ-38 Trials Rifle
Like most other nations with modern military forces. Czechoslovakia was interested in developing a semiautomatic infantry rifle in the 1920s and 1930s. The most successful such rifle to come out of Czech factory during this time was The ZH-29, but it did have competition. A major series of trials...
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Ethiopian ZH-29 and Czech Experimental Z-37
The ZH-29 was an influential early semiautomatic military rifle, although not one that saw any significant adoption. As best I can tell, only two countries purchased them in any quantity: China and Ethiopia. This ZH-29 is an Ethiopian contract example, with an Ethiopian Lion of Judah on the recei...
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Czech Sa vz. 26 SMG
The Czech Samopal vz. 26 was one of a family of submachine guns (the vz 23-26) that pioneered the use of bolts telescoped out forward over the barrel, allowing guns to have much better ratios of barrel to receiver length than before. The guns actually have quite a few interesting mechanical detai...
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Holek Automat
The Holek Automat was a semiautomatic sporting rifle designed by Emmanuel Holek. Emmanuel was also the designer of the ZH-29 rifle, and brother of Vaclav and Franticek Holek, who developed the ZB-26 and ZB-53 machine guns. Emmanuel left the Brno factory to run his own gun shop, where he offered (...
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Czech CZ-52 Pistol
The CZ-52 really isn't a forgotten weapons yet, but it is a pretty interesting gun mechanically, and well worth taking a look at. About 200,000 of them were made in Czechoslovakia from 1952 to 1954, and they served as that country's standard military sidearm for several decades (which the rest of...
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Czech vz.54 Sniper Rifle
While Czechoslovakia was a part of the eastern bloc, it did a pretty thorough job of developing its own weapons rather than use standard Russian designs. For example, the vz52 pistol, vz52, 52/57, and 58 rifles, the uk59 light machine gun, and more. Well, their military sniper rifle was closer to...
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Nickl Prototype M1916/22 Pistol
Josef Nickl was one of the chief R&D designers at Mauser after the Federle brothers, and one of his pet projects was a rotating barrel military pistol developed from the Steyr-Hahn M1912 pistol. He built a number of prototypes of it while at Mauser, but the company never put it into production be...
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Alien vs Spinner: Round 2 (Now With Less Fail!)
Time for another practice session on the spinner...I am improving!
This time, I stopped trying to make double taps, and focused instead on getting a single properly timed hit at each presentation. Hitting twice is good, but not if it causes me to miss a following shot - perfect consistency is ...
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9x19 Skorpion on the Range
Yesterday we looked at the development of the Skorpion PDW/SMG in 9x19mm Parabellum both in the 1960s and then when it was revisited in the 1990s at CZ. Today I have the chance to take one of the 1990s Skorpion 9×19 models out the the range for some firing. I was expecting it to be a fairly viole...
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Ugly Pistol Day at the BUG Match: CZ38
For this month's BackUp Gun Match, I decided to bring out the CZ38 - one of the top contenders for ugliest service pistol ever adopted. It's a single-stack, double-action-only .380 with a weirdly bulky grip, so it's not winning any ergonomic awards either...
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Semiauto ZK-383 on the Range
The Czech ZK-383 is a magnificent submachine gun, but sadly very scarce in the United States. So when I saw the semiauto example, I wanted to take it out to the range for some plinking. It has some magazine issues (as one might expect form a one-off semiauto made by a hobbyist here in the US), bu...
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CZ-2000 "Lada" - AK Czechnology in 5.56mm
Development of the CZ-2000 began in the 1970s as a replacement for the vz.58 rifle. The project was named "Lada", and was essentially an improved AK-74 rifle chambered for the 5.45x39mm cartridge. The new rifle was mechanically an AK, but had a number improved features including a thumb-operated ...
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Bren 2: Every Aspect of the 805 Refined
Launched in 2016, the Bren 2 was a significant upgrade program over the original Bren 805 rifle. In addition to being offered in both 5.56mm and 7.62x39mm with user-changeable barrels, the Bren 2 was both simpler and lighter than the 805. virtually every part of the rifle was improved, from remov...
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Bren 807: An Economy Model Hybrid of the 805 and Bren 2
The Bren 807 is an interesting hybrid of the Bren 805 and Bren 2. It was introduced by CZ in 2016 as a lower-priced model than the Bren 2. It was offered in both 5.56mm and 7.62x39mm, although it was not intended to be user-changeable between calibers. Its introduction was done in part with hopes...
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CZ Bren 2 "PDW" at the Range
After a lot of requests from law enforcement and military organizations, CZ developed a collapsing buttstock for the Bren 2 rifle. It requires a different upper receiver than the standard Bren 2, although that upper will become standard in future production. Combined with a short barrel, the coll...
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Bigger is Better? The Bren 2 Battle Rifle (BR)
CZ has taken the Bren 2 design, and scaled it up to 7.62mm NATO as the Bren 2 BR (Battle Rifle). A decent number of military and security organizations are still interested in the larger cartridge, including the Hungarian military and Kenyan game rangers. Essentially this is the same mechanism as...
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The CZ-2000 as a 9mm SMG Prototype
There have been several examples of the AK being used as the basis for a pistol-caliber SMG or PDW. The Russians made the Vityaz, the Hungarians made the KGPF-9…and the Czechs actually made a version form the CZ-2000. This was the attempt to make a 5.56mm AK family of rifles form the roots of the...
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The Czech Unicorn LMG: A Squad Support CZ-2000
The CZ-2000 project in the Czech Republic (derived from the Lada developed in the late years of Czechoslovakia) envisioned a full suite of infantry arms, much like the AK as used by other countries. There would be an SMG-type compact weapon (akin to the AKS-74U "Krinkov"), a standard infantry rif...
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The Compact CZ-2000 "Krinkov" Variant
We have previously looked at the development of the CZ 2000 and Lada rifle programs in Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic, and today we are taking a close look at one specific variant. This is the SMG pattern CZ 2000, although by current nomenclature it would not be called an SMG because ...
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CZ's Embarrassing Volkspistoles: The CZ100 and CZ101
Developed in the 1990s and entering production in 1996, the CZ100 and CZ101 were CZ's first polymer-framed pistols. They were offered in both 9mm and .40S&W, with the CZ100 being a double stack design (magazine capacity 10 or 13 rounds) and the CZ101 being single stack (magazine capacity 7 or 8 r...