The story of the development of the Barrett M82 .50 BMG semiauto rifle is really a neat story - much more interesting than most people probably expect, and reminiscent of many firearms development stories of the 1800s. Ronnie Barrett was working as a photographer in the late 70s, and became inter...

During the 1920s, a lot of experimental rifle development work was being done in the US. The military was interested in finding a semiautomatic rifle, and plenty of inventors were eager to get that valuable military contract. One particular item of interest to the military was the possibility of ...

When the German military finally could no longer tolerate the expense of the P.08 Luger in the late 1930s, they held a trial of possible replacements. The three main entrants were BSW with a gas-operated pistol, Walther with what would ultimately be accepted as the P.38, and Mauser with it's expe...

After Jonathan Edward "Ed" Browning had his 1929 rifle dropped form US military testing, he took the design back to his shop in Utah and kept working on it. By 1938 he had made enough improvements that he was ready to present the gun to Winchester, hoping they would be interested in purchasing th...

The Japanese military experimented with self-loading rifle designs through the 1930s, and had 4 major rifles in testing during that period. One was a new design by Kijiro Nambu, one was a Pedersen copy made by the Tokyo Army Arsenal, one was a gas operated toggle locking rifle by the Nippon Speci...

The United States had two primary types of sniper rifles during World War One, although both were based on the M1903 Springfield rifle.

The most common optic used was the Warner & Swasey "Telescopic Musket Sight", a rather clumsy prismatic optic mounted on the left side of the rifle, on a detach...

The RPD was the first belt-fed light machine gun (or squad automatic weapon) developed by the Soviet Union. It was designed in 1944 for the then-new M43 cartridge (7.62x39mm), although wartime exigencies followed by post-war rebuilding prevented it from being issued until the 1950s. It is a fairl...

The primary sniper rifle used by the United States in World War II was the M1903A4 Springfield, a version of the exisiting 1903A3 with the iron sights removed and replaced with a Weaver 330C scope (adopted by the military as the M73B1). This was a low-power optic, but was centrally mounted on the...

The 1855 “Root” pocket revolver was a reasonably successful design for the Colt company, although it was not the best mechanical design. The side hammer design used the cylinder axis to rotate and lock in place instead of using the rear face of the cylinder, which resulted in several small and de...

The ZH-29 was an influential early semiautomatic military rifle, although not one that saw any significant adoption. As best I can tell, only two countries purchased them in any quantity: China and Ethiopia. This ZH-29 is an Ethiopian contract example, with an Ethiopian Lion of Judah on the recei...

In 1855, Prussian customs officials in Antwerp discovered a shipment of 3,000 Colt 1851 Navy model revolvers (and their accouterments) hidden in bales of cotton being shipped from New York to Russia. Prussia was a neutral power in the ongoing Crimean War, but had prohibited transit of arms across...

The Browning M2 heavy machine gun is one of the longest serving firearms in US military service, and still going strong. Let's take this one out to the range and find out why!

In 1974, the British Royal Army Ordnance Corps purchased about 3,000 .22lr caliber Walther PP pistols to issue as Personal Defense Weapons to service members of the Ulster Defense Regiment. These were to be issued to servicemen (and women) who faced personal threats to their lives. the choice of ...

After World War Two, Colombia adopted the .30-06 cartridge as standard, purchasing a thousand .30-06 FN49 rifles and 19,000 surplus American M1 Garand rifles. With the subsequent development of the 7.62mm NATO cartridge, Colombia experimented briefly with converting their existing Garand rifles t...

August Coenders was an independent arms designer in Germany. During the 1930s he spent several years working in England and at the French Puteaux Arsenal, which contributed to a general lack of trust and interest in his designs by the German high command (the man's generally adversarial nature di...

In the days when market hunting was a normal practice, hunters would use pretty huge shotguns to harvest large numbers of waterfowl. These were called punt guns, named after the small shallow-draft boats which they were used on - punts. The largest punt guns had bores of up to 50mm (2 inches) and...

The Boys Anti-Tank Rifle was adopted by the British military in 1937, and remained in production until 1943 when it was replaced by the PIAT. During that time more than 114,000 were made, both in the UK and in Canada. Canadian engineers at the John Inglis company devised a number of improvements ...

The Beretta 38A is not a gun that comes to mind for many people today when discussing World War Two submachine guns, but at the time it was one of the most desirable guns of its type. So - does it live up to that reputation?

Sport Systeme Dittrich in Germany is a manufacturer of a remarkably wide range of reproduction German World War Two small arms (including the FG42, StG-44, G43, MP-3008, MP-35, and VG1-5 as well as the MP-38). They have a mixed reputation, as they are magnificently accurate looking reproductions,...

The Armstrong & Taylor carbine is a neat single shot breechloading carbine patented in 1862. It operates by way of a button on the top of the rear tang, which allows the barrel assembly to rotate open around a pin located below the barrel. An extractor is mechanically camel to the pin, and pushes...

The AVS-36 was the first self-loading rifle adopted by the Soviet Union to be a standard infantry rifle, and it was not just semiautomatic, but also capable of fully automatic fire. Designed by Sergei Simonov over the course of about ten years, it would only last a short time in service before be...

There were probably less than a hundred of these Pryse-Patent break-action .577 revolvers made in total, and this one has managed to maintain an excellent nickel finish. Pushing approximately a 400 grain bullet at about 725 fps, these 5-shot revolvers were made as last-ditch “stopping” guns in ca...

This is a very interesting WW1 heavy machine gun. It is a Russian M1910 Maxim that was repaired at some point using the brass jacket from a 1905 Russian Maxim. This may have been done by Russians or buy Germans, as the gun was also captured by German forces at some point and refitted to use Germa...

This 4mm “Zimmerstutzen” conversion kit was patented by one Karl Weiss in 1921, and produced by the RWS company in Germany. Versions were made for several different types of pistol, but the Mauser 1914 was a particularly suitable base thanks to its very easy removed barrel. The kit consists of a ...