Wather introduced its first pistol in 1908, creatively named the Model 1. With the outbreak of World War One, the company was offering the Model 4 pistol for military use. This was a .32 ACP simple blowback action, and it proved quite popular and successful. However, the German military was prima...

With no markings or provenance at all, the origins of this revolver are a mystery. Its features all point to the 1880s or 1890s, and someone clearly spent a lot of time working on it - but we don't know who. What makes it interesting is the very unusual operating mechanism. It is similar to a "zi...

This rifle is pretty much a big mystery - I have virtually no good information on it. Through inspection, we know it is a mechanical copy of the Soviet SVT 38 or 40 - it shares the same exact bolt, locking system, and gas system. Even many aesthetic features like the metal front handguard, muzzle...

The Danish artillery was an early adopter of metallic-case handguns, taking on this pinfire 6-shot solid-frame revolver in 1865 - when most of the world was still using percussion firearms. The thousand guns made served well for many decades, until in 1897 they finally were recognized as obsolete...

With the development of the Model 1931, Beretta had nearly arrived at the first really popular pistol (the 1934/5). The 1931 was the result of taking the exposed-hammer 1923 design, shrinking the frame down to a more compact size and changing the caliber to .32 ACP (7.65mm Browning). This smaller...

The Galand was an innovative revolver design created by Frenchman Charles Francois Galand and patented in 1868. It is most notable for using a long lever system to eject cartridges by throwing the cylinder and a separate cartridge retention plate forward. It was also one of the early adopters of ...

David Marshall Williams was hired by the Winchester company in 1939, and would have a hand in a number of major projects during his 10-year stint with the company, although best known for the M1 Carbine. The Carbine was an offshoot of the Winchester G30 and G30M rifles, which would also evolve in...

When someone makes a "fake" historical gun, they can do so with the intent to deceive or be up-front with the gun's new manufacture. Those acknowledged reproductions are a great option to have - guns like Uberti reproduction revolvers give us an excellent opportunity to shoot antique designs with...

Aren't these 19th century little pocket pistols cute? This is another palm-type hideout gun, named the "Little All Right" and patented in 1876. It's actually a pretty basic revolver mechanism, just put into an unusual style of body with a strange trigger. It holds 5 rounds of .22 Short, and fires...

Edit: I mistakenly referenced North Korea in the video, when I should have said South Korea, as Pusan in well within the South of the country. Sorry!

During (and probably for a short time after) the Korean War, a Korean facility called the Pusan Iron Works did fabrication and repair of 1911-styl...

One of the rarest models of LeMat grapeshot revolver is this, the “Baby” LeMat. This is a substantially smaller gun than the normal LeMat, although it retains a 9-shot cylinder and a central barrel. In the Baby, however, the cylinder is in .32 caliber (rather than the standard .42) and the centra...

Star Firearms: http://amzn.to/2c29MyS
Astra Firearms: http://amzn.to/2c29OXw

Leonardo Antaris has written massive and excellent volumes on two of the major companies in the Spanish firearms industry, Star and Astra. Both of these companies made a wide range of military and commercial handguns, a...

This scoped C96 carbine is serial number 12 of the original run of just 30 large-ring C96 carbines. It has the long barrel and detachable stock (in place of the standard pistol grip) of the C96 carbine. The most obvious feature, however, is the telescopic sight mounted on the piece. This was not ...

Beretta offered its first semiautomatic pistols during World War One, with the Model 1915 chambered in 9mm Glisenti. This was quickly supplemented by the 1915/17 scaled down to the .32ACP cartridge, which was both handier to carry and less expensive to make. After the end of the war, Beretta look...

A 7-shot repeating handgun before cartridges had been invented? Yep, long before. These two pistols are London-made examples of the Lorenzoni system, in which a gun was made with internal magazines of powder and projectiles and a rotating central loading spindle like a modern reloading powder thr...

While most major pistols made before the 1930s had some type of shoulder stock available as an option, the Luger had much more variety of stocks than most others. In addition to the several types of wooden stocks made on military contract, there were also several commercial types of folding stock...

The M1D was the final adopted form of John Garands sniper M1 rifle, originally the M1E8. It was intended to be a kit issued in the field to add optical sights to any rifle deemed worthy, and retained that capability in a slightly different form than originally intended. Garland’s initial plan was...

The Spanish company Gabilondo y Urresti, later to become known as Llama, introduced this locked-breech .45 ACP copy of the Colt 1911 in 1924. It was not a slavish copy, however, and introduced a captive recoil spring which would be the inspiration for that feature in the Polish Vis-35 and many la...

The SL-8 was Heckler & Koch’s civilianized version of the G36 military rifle. There was, unsurprisingly, a major interest in semiautomatic civilian copies of the G36, but H&K was in a difficult position to meet the demand. At the time (mid-1990s) such a rifle was subject to both the 1989 assault ...

The CheyTac M200 Intervention is a massive precision rifle chambered for the .408 CheyTac cartridge (although it can also be had in .375 CheyTac). It uses an action made by EDM Arms, and is capable of sub-MOA accuracy out to 2200-2500 yards (2000-2300 meters). There are other rifles that fulfill ...

This Winchester M70 was a rifle owned by the Captain of the Camp Pendleton rifle team, and as such it is an excellent authentic example of the US sniper rifle of the early Vietnam era. It is chambered for the .30-06 cartridge, with a Winchester heavy target barrel and shorter stock. The scope is ...

The Remington Model 8 was one of the first successful self-loading rifles introduced to the commercial market, and it was designed by none other than John Browning. It was an expensive rifle, but popular for its power and reliability. In the 1920s, an entrepreneur founded the Peace Officer Equipm...

The Model 1918/30 is a semiauto-only carbine made by Beretta in between the early Model 1918 submachine guns and the excellent Model 38 family. It was marketed (well, sold) primarily to security and police forces, for whom the semiautomatic limitation was not a particular hindrance. It is chamber...

The Smith-Jennings rifles are one of the evolutionary steps towards the revolutionary Henry and Winchester lever-action rifles. Here is the rifle that brought together the ideas of Hunt (who invented the rocket ball cartridge) and Jennings with the men who would go on to develop the gun into its ...