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...

When the Allies occupied German at the end of World War Two, the Walther factory at Zella Mehlis was initially garrisoned by American soldiers (who did a pretty thorough job liberating all the guns they could find there) but eventually ended up in the Soviet occupation zone (and later East German...

When Colt decided to sell a semiauto-only civilian version of its AR-15 rifle, it had to make a number of changes to the design of the lower receiver to prevent full-auto fire control parts from being used. These changes would make a semiauto AR receiver legally distinct form a full-auto one, and...

For this month's BackUp Gun Match, I decided to bring out the CZ38 - one of the top contenders for ugliest service pistol ever adopted. It's a single-stack, double-action-only .380 with a weirdly bulky grip, so it's not winning any ergonomic awards either...

I was first introduced to the Tinck Arms Perun X16 at Lynx Brutality 2022 in Slovenia, and it is an interesting system emphasizing modularity and simple disassembly. I opted to use one (a 5.56mm carbine) at Lynx Brutality 2023 this year, and it ran perfectly for me. So I figured we should take a ...

The Lange Pistole 08 (long pistol), or Artillery Luger as it is commonly known today, has an interesting history. It was originally developed as a personal defense weapon for German field artillery and air crews. While the foot artillery had been issued carbines, the field artillery were mounted ...

The Netflix film "The Siege of Jadotville" recounts the fighting between Katanga soldiers and mercenaries and Company A of the 35th Irish Infantry Battalion, who were deployed to the Katanga province of Congo in 1961 as part of the UN peacekeeping mission there. The Irish soldiers fought valiantl...

Patented by Alejandro Obregon in Mexico in 1934 and in the US in 1938, this pistol is an adaptation of the classic Browning 1911 to use a rotating barrel locking system. In addition, Obregon integrated a couple other clever elements. The safety lever and bolt stop were combined into a single part...

The Owen Gun is one of the really good submachine guns fielded during the Second World War, but is a very scarce gun to find today. I had a chance to briefly shoot one year ago, and when I had the opportunity to try one out at Morphy's, I jumped at it. Feeding from the top and ejecting out the bo...

In 1993, Olympic Arms introduced an AR-15 with a side folding stock, as well as a stockless - and buffer-tube-less - pistol version. They did this by relocating the recoil spring of the AR to a tube running above the barrel and receiver. It was a clever modification (although the execution left s...

In the mid to late 1970s, several different Rhodesian arms designers were basically racing to be the first to come to market with a domestically produced civilian carbine type weapon. Northwood Developments would be the first, designed by former RAF engineer Roger Mansfield and manufactured in Sa...

Initially intended to be used only by the British Army (the Land Service), in 1950 the No8 rifle’s role was expanded to cover all three services. Unlike the other trainers made up to this point, the No8 MkI was designed as a target and competition rifle, instead of a service rifle reduced in cali...

Developed by BSA immediately after World War Two, the No7 MkI training rifle was the only one of the British Enfield trainers to use a magazine. Only 2500 of these rifles were produced, contracted by the Royal Air Force and delivered in 1948. Their magazine is a commercial BSA 5-round magazine mo...

The main British sniper rifle of World War Two, and arguably one of the best looking military sniper rifles of all time, the No4 MkI (T) was something the British military knew they would want even before the No4 MkI rifle had gone into real production. The first No4 snipers were built on leftove...

The British military started using training rifles in 1883, with the .297/.230 Morris cartridge in adapted Martini rifles. This would give way to the .22 rimfire cartridge for training shortly after the Boer War, and a substantial variety of rifles converted to .22 rimfire. Standardization would ...