The Type 92 was the final iteration of a machine gun that began as the Model 1897 Hotchkiss HMG made in France. The Japanese army purchased many of these guns, and then produced their own slightly refined version. These in turn were replaced by the updated Type 3 (1914) heavy machine gun, and fin...

The official issue sidearm for the Iraqi Army (and many of its police agencies) is the Tariq, a domestically-manufactured copy of the Beretta M1951 pistol. The Beretta is a pretty decent pistol, mechanically fine and comfortable to shoot but hampered by an awkwardly-placed magazine release and sa...

This is a recording of a workshop given at the 2014 AFTE (Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners) conference in Seattle, on the subject of proof marks and other identifying marks on firearms, specifically arms made between roughly 1880 and 1945.

I am available to present classes on this...

This is a recording of a workshop given at the 2014 AFTE (Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners) conference in Seattle, on the subject of magazines and clips as firearms feeding devices, including their history, development, function, and application.

I am available to present classes ...

Harmonica guns were a short-lived type of firearm that was developed in an effort to have reliable repeating weapons prior to the the modern centerfire cartridge. They were made in both muzzleloading and cartridge varieties, and one notable (and renowned) American maker of such guns was Jonathan ...

As the self-contained metallic cartridge because popular, a niche industry developed in converting percussion revolvers to use the new cartridges. One of the first of these conversions was designed by F. Alexander Thuer and marketed by the Colt company itself. Thuer's conversion was put into prod...

This very odd one-off pistol first appeared in a 1958 Golden State Arms catalog, with no description of its history or mechanical design. I have often seen it referred to as an automatic revolver, but this is a misconception - what appears to be a cylinder is actually a rotary magazine, akin to a...

The M1819 Hall rifle was the first breechloader adopted on a wide scale by a military force (the British Ferguson predated it, but was only made in small numbers). The Hall stayed in production on and off for several decades, being made in many configurations. This particular one is an 1836 patte...

The Gyrojet was the closest thing to a commercially successful rocket pistol, although not many were sold before the company went out of business. This is the 13mm pistol version (the most common type of Gyrojet), and fires a 180 grain rocket projectile.

The Girardoni (also spelled Girandoni) air rifle was a very advanced design adopted in 1780 by the Austrian Army. While the standard arm of the day was a single-shot flintlock, the Girardoni offered a massive firepower advantage to the men who carried it. The guns (designed by Bartholomäus Girard...

Before the invention of the roller-delayed system which would become the H&K G3, Mauser engineers in late World War Two built a small number of prototype roller-locked, gas piston operated rifles in 8x33mm, designated the Gerät 06. This would be followed by the Gerät 06(H) for "half-locked", whic...

The Gaulois (Gallic) was a compact squeeze-type palm pistol made by the Manufrance concern in St. Etienne in the 1890s. It held 5 rounds of 8mm ammunition (similar to the .32 Extra-Short used in other types of palm pistols) and was fired by squeezing the rear grip into the body of the gun.

As ...

The M1 Garand really doesn't need an introduction, does it? The first semiauto service rifle issued in mass quantities, and the mainstay of US Army infantry in the Second World War.

I've been meaning to put this video together for a while, and finally have it - a detailed look at the mechanics and internal workings of the Frommer 1910. This was the third major iteration of Rudolf Frommer's long-recoil locked-breech pistol design, and the most successful up to it's time (alth...

Days at the range don't always go as planned.

After over a year of looking, I finally managed to recently find a box of 7.65mm Frommer (Short) ammo that I could use to test-fire my Frommer 1910. Huzzah! It sure is tiny little stuff...and I was able to get is for a great price because the selle...

Today's item is a rather unusual percussion pistol. It began life as an underhammer gun, and was rebuilt by an unknown gunsmith as a percussion gun that fired four superposed charges with a creative repeating action.

My first experience shooting a Lahti AT gun. Just using it as a single shot; no magazine and the gas system turned off. It kicks like a mule! The skis allow it to slide back on recoil, and push me right along with it. The Solothurn S18/1000 is a much nicer gun...but also much more expensive to buy.

The Swedish Bofors company developed a sophisticated and very high-quality light anti-tank gun in the early 1930s, and found significant commercial success with it. A variety of countries either purchased the guns outright from Bofors or paid for licenses to produce them domestically. These count...

A bunch of people requested that I post the sale prices items at the Rock Island September 2014 Premier Auction - so I put together this brief piece with the final sale prices.

For this month's 2-Gun Action Challenge Match, we had a loaner .308 FG-42 from SMG Guns, which I handed off to my friend Karl to shoot. I went up against him with an M1 Garand, to see if e could get an idea of how these two rifles would have fared against each other in WWII. The match had a good ...

By popular request, this month we are doing a head-to-head match of the awesome FG-42 (second model, in 8mm, made by SMG Guns) and the much-revered Browning BAR (M1918A3, in .30-06, made by Ohio Ordnance). Lots of people suggested that this would be a fair match, since both guns were intended to ...

Only a few dozen of these are in private hands in the US, and they are an extremely advanced design for WWII.

We have often touched on the series of US magazine rifle trials that took place through the late 1800s - those trials brought out a slew of interesting new ideas and clever (or not so clever) designs. However, the trials were also responsible for an experimental version of the old standby Allin c...

Here I present the developmental history of the 1911.