The Walther A115 was one of the semiauto rifles developed in pre-WWII Germany. Apparently only three were made, and it uses a neat combination of sheet metal construction with a rotating bolt and annular gas piston like the later G41 rifles. This particular example was examined by Aberdeen Provin...

The Johnson light machine gun is one of the lesser-known US military machine guns of WWII, although it seems to have been very popular with all those who used it in combat. Melvin Johnson made a commendable attempt to get his rifles adopted by the US military, but was unable to unseat the M1 Gara...

Questions in today's Q&A:

1:04 - What was Rollin White's revolver like?
7:09 - Why did pan magazines disappear?
10:14 - Why no pointed pistol bullets?
13:24 - Funky rounds like Trounds or Gyrojet rockets
17:47 - Current US MHS trials
19:55 - Underappreciated designers
24:17 - Import mark...

In the early 1960s, an influential but little-known (today) firearms designer by the name of Robert Hillberg came up with an idea for a cheap-but-effective armament for the masses. With encouragement from DARPA, the Winchester company took up manufacture and development of the design, under the n...

Another set of questions from my awesome Patreon contributors!
0:43 - Guns flexing in slow motion
3:41 - Destructives Devices - the guns vs the ammo
9:54 - What makes some stocked pistols exempt from the NFA?
14:41 - Unusual things build into rifle stocks
17:36 - Best rifle/pistol that neve...

The Whitney-Scharf was the final rifle manufactured by the Whitney company before it was bought out and closed down by Winchester in 1888. Only about 2,000 of these rifles were made before that time.

The General Electric M134 "Minigun" is essentially an electrically-powered Gatling gun - the conceptual operation of the gun is identical to Dr. Gatling's original creation. What has changed, however, is the chambering (it's in 7.62 NATO), the power source (an electric motor), and the feed mechan...

In this month's Q&A video, I take on more questions from my wonderful Patreon supporters, including:

* Would we still have Browning pistols if the 1911 had not been adopted?
* Gun designs from non-industrialized places
* British .303 Conversions of the Martini
* Weapons best left forgotten
...

The MAG-7 is an unusual shotgun made in South Africa in the 1990s, and imported to the US in small numbers. The idea of the gun was to offer maximum firepower in the smallest package possible, and to this end the gun had no buttstock and a 12.6 inch (320mm) barrel. It was chambered for 60mm 12 ga...

The Mauser Selbstlader M1915 was the result of many years of work by the Mauser brothers to develop a semiautomatic rifle suitable for military use. They tried many different types of operating systems, and this one is a particularly unusual recoil-operated mechanism.

Only about 600 of these r...

The Hamada was one of very few Japanese military weapons made by a private commercial firm. Designed and introduced in 1940, the basic Type Hamada pistol was a blowback .32ACP handgun similar in style to the Browning model 1910. About 5000 of them were manufactured during WWII, although most of t...

The 4-bore (approximately 1"/25mm bore diameter) is the largest shoulder-fired rifle actually used for hunting. Developed in the days of black powder muzzleloaders, it was intended to be the ultimate rifle of last resort, to stop a charging elephant, rhinoceros, or other angry behemoth by sheer s...

Note: This video was filmed over a year ago, but I have been holding it in anticipation of the rifle going to auction. That doesn't seem to be happening, so I'm posting the video now.

Only three example of this 1925 prototype rifle from MBT (Metallurgica Brescia gia Tempini) were ever made, an...

In the aftermath of WWI the newly-united Poland had a military equipped with a mishmash of leftover light machine guns, from Chauchats to MG 08/15s. They wanted to adopt a new standardized weapon, and trials in the 1920s found the FN BAR to be the best option. Unlike the American military BAR, th...

Sold at auction for $172,500.

By 1932, the competition for the new US semiautomatic service rifle had been narrowed down to just two designs: John Pedersen's delayed blowback toggle action and John Garand's gas-operated action. Both rifles were chambered for Pedersen's .276 caliber cartridge, ...

The Le Français was a staple of Manufrance production, being first designed in 1912 and produced until the late 1960s. This example is in .32ACP caliber, which was only made for the commercial market in the 1950s and 60s (after the cartridge was out of service with the French military and thus ci...

Lazar Yovanovitch was a Serbian native of Yugoslavia, born in Belgrade. He left engineering school to design firearms, and developed a couple .22 and .380 caliber pistols. None were adopted by the Yugoslav military, but he did use his .380 in international competition at the 1933 ISSF 25m rapid f...

The Japanese military was interested in finding a new self-loading rifle to adopt in the 1930s. The development project began with a request to retired General Kijiro Nambu who designed a gas-operate,d rotating bolt rifle but could not bring it up to the standards demanded by the military and opt...

Colt, like all the other manufacturers in the US, was prevented from making cartridge revolvers by the Rollin white patent, which finally expired in 1869. This left them limited to their percussion revolvers, the 1849, 1851, 1860, and 1862 models in particular. These were phenomenally popular gun...

In the late 1920s, German Ordnance hinted at an interest in replacing the P.08 Luger pistols with a less expensive handgun design. This prompted a number of submissions from hopeful companies, including this design from the Simson company of Suhl. It is chambered for the 9x19 Parabellum cartridge...

The Walther P38 was adopted by Germany in 1938 as a replacement for the P08 Luger - not really because the Luger was a bad pistol, but because it was an expensive pistol. Walther began development of its replacement in 1932 with two different development tracks - one was a scaled-up Model PP blow...

The Puckle Gun is probably best known as that thing that had round bullets for Christians and square bullets for Turks, but there is much more to it than just that (and in addition, the square bullet version was never actually built). James Puckle designed it in 1718 as a naval defensive weapon t...

A lot of people think that the US was the only country in World War II to mass-issue a semiautomatic infantry rifle, but that isn't true. While the US was the only country to issue everyone a semi auto, both the Soviet Union and Germany produced large numbers of them. The Soviet rifle in particul...

Wheel locks are one of the less common types of early firearm ignition systems, as the were much more expensive as the contemporary flintlocks. The wheel lock had a major advantage in reliability, though. Many surviving wheel locks are quite ornate guns, as they were valuable enough to be kept aw...