Before Samuel Colt popularized the mechanical connection between the revolver hammer and cylinder, the revolvers being made were manually operated. This example is a copy of a third type Collier (that is to say, a gun made originally for percussion caps). After firing, one pulls the cylinder back...

Lionfish are a scourge on reef habitats in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico from the eastern coast of South American as far north as New York. They are a species native to the Indian Ocean and Polynesia, and in their native habitat they have competition and predators, and exist as a ba...

How does full automatic effect a gun's time on the PCC Cours of Fire? Well, let's find out with a Lage Max31A Mk2 on a M11A1. I've got a red dot optic on the gun to simplify aiming, and so the question is how semiauto compares to bursts.

My hypothesis was that automatic fire would offer no rea...

An American entrepreneur named Bob Imel found the Sterling SMG particularly interesting, and wanted to import them into the United States. He reached out to Sterling in 1967, but was unable to work out a deal before the 1968 Gun Control Act prohibited importation of machine guns. So instead, Imel...

In July of 1918, the British military formally adopted a Parker-Hale system of adapting .303-caliber arms to .22 rimfire for short range training. The system involved lining standard barrels with .22 caliber blanks that were machined with full size .303 chambers. Special cartridge inserts were us...

William Dodge and his brother were inventors in Washington DC who in the 1870s patented a bunch of different improvements to the Remington Rolling Block, among other guns. This particular one I cannot identify with a specific patent, but to my eye it is a way to give the Rolling Block system a sa...

Today we are taking an original Sten MkII(S) out to the range - something I am excited to be able to do! The suppressor on this Sten is all original, and about 80 years old...and I'm very curious to see how effective it really is.

The HK51 is not a gun that was ever actually produced by Heckler & Koch. It is instead a variation on the G3/HK91 originally developed by American H&K specialist Bill Fleming. He was contracted by a UK-based company called FR Ordnance to produce a submachine gun sized version of the G3 for Britis...

While Colt put significant effort into developing a revolving rifle design, Remington chose to simply use their existing New Model revolver architecture. Remington introduced it's Revolving Rifle (it had no other model name) in 1865, and a total of about 800 were made by 1880 when it was gone fro...

Most people think about the Remington Rolling Block as a purpose-built rifle, but it was also used as a way to transform muzzleloaders into more modern breechloaders. Remington did this commercially, and small gunsmiths did it as well. Essentially any old rifle could contribute a barrel, stock, a...

This is a very unusual single-shot muzzleloading rifle. It is devoid of markings that might identify it, but appears (to my eye, anyway) to have been built from what was originally intended to be a turret rifle. It has a central puck-shaped block with a single chamber drilled in it. This puck sit...

In the mid 1950s, the Nationalist government on Taiwan was in serious need of small arms, and decided to set up production of the Sten gun. They had the facilities of the 44th Arsenal outside Taipei, which had been relocated there from the mainland in 1948. For some assistance, the government hir...

Just how concussive is the HK51? And how hard is it to control? Let's find out!

We have previously looked at the original MP-18, the System Schmeisser improvement, and the followup MP-28,II design on the table - but we have not taken the MP-28 out to the range. So, that's what we are doing today - how does it compare to its Schmeisser-magazine predecessor?

Today we are taking the ZX-7 (essentially a Sterling SMG in .45 ACP) out to the range. It runs rather faster than I initially expected, but isn't too hard to handle...

When the British began developing a shortened version of the No4 Lee Enfield in 1943 (which would become the No5 MkI "Jungle Carbine"), the development process included work with some rather older rifles. What we have here is a 1922 production No1 MkV rifle cut down as a trials prototype for the ...

Today, we're taking the FN FNC out to the range to see how it handles...

When I posted my video last week about some of the problems with museum firearms collections, I touched on issues that Danny Michael and Ashley Hlebinsky deal with on a daily basis. They invited me onto their weekly podcast to discuss the subject, and we decided to record the discussion on video ...

Note: When I say the double magazine pouch is unique for this model, I was not thinking about those issued with LP-08 Artillery Lugers.

While the Dutch Army dithered over new pistol adoption, the Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) took more decisive action and adopted the Luger as the M11 in 1911 a...

Mauser did not limit their Model 1912 and 1912/14 pistols to just being chambered in 9mm - they also developed a number of prototypes in .45ACP. Today we have a series of three such prototypes showing the sequence of changes in the operating Mechanism used by Mauser. The first uses a friction lev...

While I have filmed a MAT-49, I have not had a chance to actually try one out at the range until today. But today I don't just have a normal example; I have one rebarreled to 7.62x25mm Tokarev by the Vietnamese! So let's see how it handles...

While the French military adopted a .22 rimfire training version of the MAS-36, that rifle (the "Tir Réduit 5.5mm") was intended for military training, and not for formal competition. During World War Two, the design shop as MAS continued working on rimfire designs, and developed an experimental ...

The Austro-Hungarian Empire went into World War One with the Steyr M95 straight-pull rifle as its standard infantry arm. Heavy losses in just the first few months of the war made it clear that the existing stockpiles of those M95 rifles would not suffice, however. Older guns were pulled out of in...