This CZ Model S rifle is one of many prototypes made between the world wars in Czechoslovakia in an effort to develop a military semiautomatic rifle. Similar efforts were underway in most other countries at the same time (basically every place that had a mature arms industry), and a huge variety ...

The Little Tom pistols designed by Alois Tomiška are notable for two particular features: their unusual reloading system and for being the first commercial DAO automatic pistols. Made in both .25ACP and .32 ACP in the 1920s (the .25 versions are much more common than the .32s), these beat out the...

This really neat compact PDW prototype was developed by Ladislav Findorak in the 1990s for a Czech military program, although nothing was adopted as a result. The lever-delayed system allows it to have a much lighter bolt and carrier than a typical blowback action, while also remaining very compa...

Introduced in 1997, the CZ-97B is a .45ACP caliber addition to CZ’s line of globally popular handguns. However, the 97 has some substantial mechanical differences from the CZ-75 line. Most significantly, it locks on the front of the chamber and the ejection port instead of having locking lugs cut...

The SS41 was a bullpup, bolt action antitank rifle manufactured in small numbers by CZ for the SS. contrary to common assumption, the SS were not a part of the standard German military arms procurement system, and were forced to scrounge for their weapons from other sources. Czech factories were ...

Having gained independence after World War One, Czechoslovakia looked to standardize and improve its armaments. Václav Holek went to work for the Zbrojovka Praga factory in Prague in 1918, and they introduced the Model 1919 pistol the next year. It was purchased by both Czech military and police ...

Czechoslovakia adopted the 7.62x45mm cartridge after World War Two, introducing both a vz.52 rifle and vz.52 light machine gun using the round. It was about 200 fps faster than the Soviet standard 7.62x39mm. It was marginally more effective in the LMG, but not so much that the Czechs put up a big...

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...

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,...

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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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...

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...

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...

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 (...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...