Bernhard Müller designed this locked-breech pistol in 1902, seemingly a hybrid of the Luger and P38 (of course, the P38 did not exist at that time). It appears to use a modified Luger magazine and is chambered for the 7.65mm Luger cartridge. The grip is very much Luger-like, in part because the u...

George Hyde was a gun designer who is due substantial credit, but whose name is rarely heard, because he did not end up with his name on an iconic firearm. Hyde was a German immigrant to the United States in 1927 who formed the Hyde Arms Company and started designing submachine guns. His first wa...

The Ohio Ordnance HCAR (Heavy Counter Assault Rifle - a rather fanciful name) is what happens when you take the US military development track of the Browning Automatic Rifle, and bring up to the present day. Why would someone choose this particular product to modernize? Well, because eOhio Ordnan...

Century International Arms has imported a quantity of Ethiopian ammunition, and asked me to do a video on it. So, I have a three-part evaluation here: appearance and packaging, live fire testing (including velocity and consistency), and teardown and bullet weight consistency. This ammunition was ...

The Spanish military, like many others, was quite interested in developing a new semiautomatic or selective fire combat rifle after World War II. Franco's political ties to Germany (combined with Spanish neutrality in the war) gave them unusually good access to German arms designs, and the Spanis...

America's first assault rifle? Well, it does meet all the requirements - select-fire, intermediate cartridge, and shoulder-fired. It was never actually fielded, though.

The Burton Light Machine Rifle was developed during World War One, with the firing model completed in 1917. It was intended as ...

Niels Bjorgum was a Norwegian artist-turned-gun-designer who decided to try his hand at handguns for the Norwegian military. His design work ran from 1894 until 1921 or so, starting with long guns but later turning to handguns. He was able to convince the Norwegian government to sponsor his work,...

Sorry about the sound quality! I did my best to clean it up, but the air conditioning system in the museum had a more significant impact on the video that I had anticipated.

https://centerofthewest.org/explore/firearms/

Ashley Hlebinsky is the Curator of the Cody Firearms Museum, and today we a...

In discussion with a friend recently, the topic of early automatic pistol cartridges came up. Specifically, looking at the context of which cartridges were actually available at which times, and how this might provide helpful context for understanding why particular cartridges were adopted (or co...

The M1C was an M1 Garand with a telescopic sight, using a mounting system developed by the Griffin & Howe company of New York. It utilized a rail pinned and screwed to the left side of the receiver, coupled with a quick-release scope on top. The rails had to be installed prior to heat treating th...

The Charlton automatic rifle is one of very, very few examples of a conversion from bolt action to self-loading rifle actually working reasonably well. Typically this sort of project founders in expense and unreliability. Charlton, however, was able to take his vision for providing the New Zealan...

Breechloading firearms did not become commonplace until the 1800s, but talented gunsmiths were experimenting with the concept and building custom breechloaders since virtually the very invention of firearms in the West. This is a magnificent example of an advanced German gun commissioned by a buy...

Henry Nock was a highly respected and very talented British gunsmith, who manufactured a wide variety of arms including military muskets for the British Army. He is probably best known on the internet for his 7-barreled volley gun (which fires all seven charges simultaneously), intended for naval...

The 1970s were a period with epidemic levels of airline hijackings, and this revolver was designed by Colt at the request of Eastern Airlines to arm pilots. To address concerns about over-penetration of aircraft skin or windows (or of a potential target), a projectile made form plaster of Paris w...

The Mauser brothers’ first attempt at a commercial or military handgun was this, the C77 (Construktion 1877) model of single shot pistol. Why a single-shot sidearm in 1877, well into the age of centerfire military revolvers? That is a good question. By the time the design was complete, the Mauser...

During the development of the 1860 Army revolver, Colt did consider mechanical options other than simply scaling up the 1851 Navy pattern. One of these, as evidenced by this Colt prototype, was an enlarged version of the 1855 Pocket, aka Root, revolver. That 1855 design used a solid frame and had...

Robert F Hudson developed a series of machine guns for the US Navy during the 1920s and 1930s, including this .30 caliber example as well as .50 caliber and 1.1 inch versions. What makes these guns unusual is both the attempted use of a counter-balanced system to eliminate felt recoil and also th...

The Bergmann 1896 Number 2 pistol was a relatively successful compact pocket gun for its day, but quickly became obsolete as semiautomatic handguns developed and improved. Bergman and his chief engineer Schmeisser spent the late 1890s developing and improved version of the Bergmann automatics, pi...

The C96 Mauser was a very popular handgun in China in the 1920s and 30s, which naturally led to a substantial number of domestically-produced copies of it. These ran the full range of quality, from dangerous to excellent. This particular example falls into the middle, appearing to be a pretty fai...

This is a fascinating experimental Remington Keene rifle, build in an attempt to alleviate concerns about magazine tube detonation. With centerfire ammunition in a linear tube magazine, there was an ever-present (if very slim) risk of a bullet detonating the primer ahead that it was resting again...

Is it "GUH-rand" or "GAIR-end"? Well, let's find out by asking John Cantius himself...

When the US military released a request for what would become the M1 Carbine in 1940, the Auto-Ordnance Corporation offered up a Thompson submachine gun simply rechambered for the new .30 Carbine cartridge. This entailed a new magazine, a receiver modified for the longer magazine, and a new barre...

Some high-speed footage of a Roth-Steyr M1907 pistol here for you - these are rotating-barrel, locked breech pistols with trigger lockwork much akin to a Glock. Namely, the action cycling puts the striker at half cock, and the first stage of the trigger press fully cocks the striker before releas...

The Bär pistol was designed as a compact gentleman’s defensive arm with a number of interesting features. These include twin barrels and a “cylinder” or chamber block, which held 4 cartridges in a single column, thus giving the pistol a smooth-sided shape easy to conceal while also giving it doub...