During World War Two, the Swiss had adopted Adolf Furrer's toggle-locked MP41 submachine gun, and they found it too fragile, complex, and expensive. Looking for an alternative, one easy choice was the Finnish Suomi. Used and appreciated by the Finns, Danes, and Swedes it was reliable and availabl...

During the 1930s, SIG Neuhausen made a series of really beautiful submachine guns. They were the MK series, offered in either 500mm / 19.7 inch barrels for military use or 300mm / 11.8 inch for police use. The first pattern was the MK-O, which had a rate-reducing system built into the action (whi...

Military interest in a submachine gun was late in Czechoslovakia, but by the late 1930s a development program was put into place. Interestingly, the main use case for an SMG was seen as being a replacement for a rifle-caliber LMG in fortification mounts. The thought process seems to have been tha...

The "Kevin" (sometimes called a ZP-98) was developed by Czech gunsmith Antonín Zendl and introduced at the IWA show in 2007. It was a micro-compact pocket pistol chambered for either .380 ACP or 9mm Makarov (the Kevin M). It held six rounds in its magazine, and the most notable feature is a pair...

Today we are looking at the entire scope of Aimpoint's firearms development division...which is actually just this one firearm. Aimpoint was founded in 1975 as a partnership between Arne Ekstrand (a Swedish inventor with an idea for a brand new "red dot" type of optic) and Gunnar Sandberg (a weal...

The Type 56C is the final iteration of Chinese Kalashnikov, originally intended for export but primarily used by Chinese police and special forces. It is a short-barreled carbine with a folding stock, and remarkably few standard AK parts. The receiver takes a number of cues from the Type 81 rifle...

When the Swiss military went to make a short version of its M1896 rifle for cavalry, it realized that the early Schmidt-Rubin action had a problem: it was really, really long. With locking lugs all the way to the rear of the receiver, the system was just not an efficient use of space for a carbin...

The Israeli Negev machine gun had a rather long development cycle, beginning in 1985 but not seeing final completion and issue until 1997. Once on the market, it proved to be a pretty successful weapon, used by the Israeli military and also a number of export client around the world. In 2012, IMI...

Heckler & Koch released the MG4, a new 5.56mm squad machine gun in 2001. It was adopted by the German army in 2005, and then by the Spanish and Portuguese armies in 2007. Alongside its sister weapon the 7.62mm MG5, it is H&K's current export machine gun.

The MG4 fires from an open bolt, with a 2...

Various militias existed on the Falkland Islands since its earliest settlement, but the Falkland Islands Defense Force of today traces its roots to the 1892 Falkland Islands Volunteer Corps. This force was equipped with Martini Henry rifles. With the outbreak of World War One, the Falklands were ...

You can get Outdoor Solutions' ebook and companion videos along with their whole upcoming class schedule at:

https://www.fromfieldtotable.com

My freezer is getting low, so it was time to refill it - and I chose to do that this year at one of Outdoor Solutions' "Field to Table" classes. Set up w...

The Mamba was a pistol that had a pretty decent design, but failed because of incompetent manufacturing. Today we are taking a look at a handful of surviving Mambas including the only know Green Mamba, courtesy of Val Forgett at Navy Arms. In addition, we have the minutes of a June 13, 1978 meeti...

Now in stock and shipping! Order your copy here:
https://www.headstamppublishing.com/ww2-soviet-union

Please note: we will do our best to get as many preorders as possible out before Christmas, but we cannot guarantee everyone's arrival date. New orders should not be expected to arrive before Ch...

https://practiscore.com/moons-out-25/register

Moons Out 2025 is a Brutality-style night vision rifle match. It consists of 10 stages physically and mentally challenging stages over two nights, all shot in the dark with night vision equipment (Gen 3 highly recommended).

For details on the Polena...

The ZB47 was developed at Brno as a contender for Czech military submachine gun adoption in the late 1940s. The Czech Army had technically adopted a submachine gun prior to World War Two (the vz.38; video on that is coming a bit later) but production did not begin before the arrival of German tro...

In the early 1930s, the Estonian military and Estonia Defense League had a rather eclectic mix of small arms. The Army had three divisions, and split different types of weapons between them to simplify logistics. Thus, there was one division equipped with rifles and machine guns in 7.62x54R, and ...

The B&T GL06 (Grenade Launcher 2006) was developed in response to a French tender for a riot-control less-lethal weapon in 2006. B&T had actually already been working on a less-lethal projectile system, which they call SIR (Safe Impact Round). It is a rubber projectile with a hard plastic base an...

Let me first mention something that I didn't cover in the video: what does "COA" stand for? Well, nothing. They just wanted a name that they could trademark that wasn't already in use. So go ahead and make up your own acronym.

It may be hard to see how a pistol red dot sight could be exciting, b...

The Estonian War Museum (Eesti Sõjamuuseum) is located at Mõisa tee 1, 74001 Viimsi, Estonia (just outside the capital Tallinn). For opening hours and entry fees, please check their web site:

https://esm.ee

The museum is housed in what used to be the residence of the Estonian Army commander, co...

During the Latvian War of Independence, the nationalist forces receiver a fair bit of support form the British, including some 20,000 P14 Enfield rifles. These were great for the Latvian infantry, but the Latvian cavalry wanted something shorter. So in the early 1920s, they ordered 2200-2350 (the...

Sweden developed, adopted, and produced a new self-loading rifle during World War Two. The process began in 1938, with an attempt by the state rifle factory to convert Swedish Mauser bolt actions into semiautomatic; that did not go well. Trials for a ground-up semiauto followed shortly thereafter...

In 1953, the Swedish military launched a program to refurbish and refit all of the Ag m/42 rifles in inventory. Aside from replacing broken parts and worn barrels, the program also made a number of improvements to the rifles:

* Auxiliary front magazine catch added
* Large gripping lugs added to ...

These two revolvers were developed for competitive sport shooting in the Soviet Union. They are usually described as variants of the Model 1895 Nagant, but they actually work on a different mechanism, despite both being gas-seal designs. The TOZ-36 was designed in 1962, and it was a single action...

The Falkland Islands Defense Force is a small organization independent of the British military, run directly by the Falkland Islands government. When it decided to update its small arms form the L1A1 SLR (aka British FAL) in the early 1990s, the British assumed they would purchase the new L85A1 r...