Designed by Adolf Furrer, this carbine represents a very early experiment with intermediate power ammunition. It is a long recoil semiautomatic carbine with an under barrel tube magazine - quite the interesting combination of 19th and 20th centuries! The cartridge used was the experimental Swiss ...

For several decades, the Beretta company’s handguns and submachine guns were nearly all designed by the very talented Tulio Marengoni…but nothing can last forever. After World War 2, Beretta engineer Domenico Salza began working on a new SMG design, one which would be more compact and more contro...

After failing to acquire a license to produce the M16 rifle, Beretta worked with SIG from 1963 through 1968 to develop 5.56mm infantry rifles. When the companies parted ways, SIG went on to produce the SIG-540 and Beretta developed the AR-70. It was introduced on the market in 1972, and was adopt...

The Nambu Automatic Pistol Type B, or “Baby Nambu” as it is known in US collecting circles, is a scaled-down companion to the 1902 “Grandpa” Nambu pistol. It was intended as a private purchase option for officers who needed to carry a sidearm, but did not want or need a full size service pistol. ...

This is a reposting of a video from September 2016 with a new introduction. The recent publication of the new and expanded edition of Hans-Dieter Handrich's book "Sturmgewehr!" has revealed new information about the history of this rifle which I wanted to put into the video.

German arms develo...

We do have some great questions this time around! Specifically:

0:25 - Gain twist rifling, description and application
5:40 - The 6.5mm Arisaka compared to modern 6.5mm cartridges
7:44 - US abandonment of the M1917 Enfield in favor of the 1903 Springfield after WW1
12:02 - Guns I am hyped t...

Following up on yesterday's history and disassembly of the PSM, today we are taking it out to the range for some shooting. In addition, wehave some generic Level IIIA soft body armor to test. We will see if the vaunted PSM can do better than the 7.62x25mm Tokarev - another Soviet handgun widely r...

The PSM is a Soviet pistol from the late 1970s which has gotten itself quite the fanciful reputation here in the US, thanks to extreme rarity and some imaginative magazine articles. Common lore would have you believe that the PSM and its 5.45x18mm bottlenecked cartridge is capable of astounding f...

The Soviet PPSh-41 submachine gun is most distinctive for its very high rate of fire - approximately 1250 rounds/minute - and large drum magazine. What may come as a surprise to those who have not tried it is how this very high rate of fire does not actually make the weapon difficult to control o...

After making the decision to mass produce a submachine gun, the Soviet Union adopted the Degtyarev PPD-38 and PPD-40, but this design was too expensive for the huge scale of production that the USSR intended. A new design was needed, and was put into development almost as soon as the PPD was ente...

During the transition from Dutch colonial rule to independence, the Dutch government armed a group of Papuans to help defend the territory from Indonesian military incursion. This organization was the Papuan Vrijwiliger Korps (Papua Volunteer Corps), and the Dutch provided them with Mauser carbin...

If I could have any one machine gun (but only one), it would be a PKM - in my experience thus far, this is the best universal machine gun that has been designed. Kalashnikov's design team took the lessons of the MG42 and created a machine gun that does an excellent job of balancing the capabiliti...

The PK machine gun was developed by Mikhail Kalashnikov's engineering team right about the time they were putting the finishing touches on the AKM. The PK is in many ways an AK rifle action enlarged, flipped upside-down, and mated with a belt feed mechanism. It uses the same belt design as the pr...

The SIG PE-57 is the civilian semiauto version of the Stgw57, Switzerland's first self-loading service rifle. Developed from the German MG-42 but incorporating a substantial influence form the FG-42 as well, the PE-57 is a roller-delayed blowback action chambered for the 7.5x55mm Swiss cartridge....

Today we are looking at a unique rifle in the National Firearms Centre collection - at first glance it appears to be an AK in a full-length rifle cartridge, using a Bren gun magazine. A closer look will show that it is actually a bolt action rifle, and a careful inspection just makes things stran...

Today, we have a chance to take a look at a suppressed M3 "Grease Gun", as purchased and issued by the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS; predecessor to the CIA). Thanks to its readily removable barrel, the M3 (and M3A1) submachine gun was an easy gun to adapt to use with a suppressor (or as ...

Norinco is a huge consortium of manufacturing plants in China that make all manner of goods for export, including military hardware. One of Norinco's factories has been making copies of the American M14 rifle for export for some time, although they are not seen in the United States because Chines...

The MP40/I was an experimental modification of the MP-40 submachine gun developed by the Erma company (we think) in late 1942. It was presumably developed in response to complaints of Soviet fire superiority with SMGs because of their large drum magazines (and also the larger number of SMGs used ...

The MP40 is an iconic piece of World War 2 weaponry, and it's about time we took a closer look at its development...

Thanks to the Institute of Military Technology for allowing me to have access to these three examples so I can bring them to you! Check out the IMT at:

http://www.instmiltech...

The Mk18 Mod0 grenade launchers was developed by the Honeywell corporation in 1962, and was the first weapon in what would became a category of high volume grenade launchers used by the US military. The modern iterations are all self-loading, but this first example was fired by a manual crank han...

I ordered a copy of Damien Lewis' book on the exploits of British SOE in WWII expecting to find an overview of, well, what SOE had done during the war. That's not quite what this book is. Instead, Lewis has given us essentially a first-person view of SOE's work through the eyes of Danish commando...

The PM9 was an interesting an unique submachine gun designed by Louis Debuit for the French firm Merlin and Gerin (hence the MGD name – Merlin, Gerin, Debuit) in the late 1940s and early 50s. The design was intended to provide a very compact package, which it did with a very short action, folding...

France began experimenting with self-loading rifle designs in the late 1890s, although most of this work is mostly unknown today. The work was done by the State arsenals, and kept as military secrets, without patents being filed or commercial sales considered. All sorts of systems were developed ...

Hiram Maxim is obviously best known for the Maxim Machine Gun, but he and (most significantly) his assistant Louis Silverman also dabbled in handgun design. It appears that the work was primarily Silverman's, done with the tacit support of the Maxim company. A followup version was made with more ...