The Varan pistol was developed by two Rhodesian designers, Tony Blackshaw and Stewart Beecham, and was originally designated the PMX-80. Development would take nearly a full decade, however, and mostly took place in South Africa. The goal was simply to create a good domestic service handgun, as s...

In 1952, Czechoslovakia adopted a whole new family of small arms, including the vz.52 pistol, vz.52 rifle, and vz.52 light machine gun. The rifle and LMG were both chambered in the Czech 7.62x45mm cartridge, and both would be adapted to the Soviet standard 7.62x39mm a few years later, in 1957. Ve...

In 1952, Czechoslovakia adopted a whole new family of small arms, including the vz.52 pistol, vz.52 rifle, and vz.52 light machine gun. The rifle and LMG were both chambered in the Czech 7.62x45mm cartridge, and both would be adapted to the Soviet standard 7.62x39mm a few years later, in 1957. Ve...

Updated to fix errors in nomenclature and production dates.

With recognition of the production problems of the original Type 1 AK, an alternative was needed. Russian engineer Valeriy Kharkov led a team of engineers who designed a replacement drop-forged and machined receiver for the AK. This n...

Updated to fix errors of nomenclature and production dates.

The AK was formally adopted in 1947, and went into production in 1948. In this very first form, it used a stamped receiver with front and rear trunnions riveted in place. Unfortunately, while the hand-fitted preproduction guns were qu...

In the mid 1930s, Turkey updated and overhauled the bolt action rifles in its inventory, to bring them all up to that same standard for sights, ammunition, sling configuration, etc. Most of the rifles overhauled were Mausers of various vintages, but some were other designs, like Gewehr 88s...and ...

Thanks to a friend in South Africa, we have a chance today to take a look at one of the five prototypes of Tommy Steele's TS V semiauto carbine. This thing is completely ambidextrous (including swappable ejection ports), has an abundance of safety mechanisms, and an integral suppressor complete w...

Tony Neophytou is the South African designer of several very interesting and innovative firearms: the Neostead 2000 pump shotgun, the NTW-20 anti-material rifle, the NeoPup/Inkunzi PAW, and most recently the NeoStrike/Inkunzi Strike machine gun. He was generous enough to spare some time to sit do...

Most of the guns made by Cobray are pretty awful, but one can at least understand the market they were made for. The Terminator is different, because it really is rather incomprehensible who would have actually thought that a single shot, open bolt 12 gauge shotgun with a terrible stock would be ...

Today I am joined by Larry Vickers to take a look at his original H&R T48 FAL. The Harrington & Richardson company was awarded a contract to produce a pre-production series of 500 of these rifles in the mid 1950s when the United States was conduction trials to choose a new combat rifle. The Belgi...

Today I am joined by my friend Kristoffer to speak briefly about gun laws in Sweden while we take a break from the competition at Finnish Brutality 2018. As always, this is not intended to be legal advice for Swedish viewers, but just a basic overview for the edification of folks in other countries.

Harald Sunngård was Norwegian inventor in the early years of the 20th century who noticed a common perceived weakness of automatic pistols: reloads under stress were often bungled by shooters, leaving them vulnerable to return fire without being able to shoot back. Doing the classic inventor thin...

The Stopper is a simple 37mm single shot riot control gun designed by Andries Piek in 1980. The South African police services were at that time using 37mm guns made by Federal Labs in the US, dating back to the 1930s, and the international embargo on South Africa made it impossible to get parts a...

The Stoner 63 is a firearm surrounded by a tremendous amount of mythology. It was Eugene Stoner's big project following on the AR-15, and it was a brilliant piece of engineering - a single modular receiver which could be assembled into a half dozen different configurations:

Carbine
Rifle
Aut...

s the Stoner 63 really as good of a gun as everyone says? Today is my first opportunity to try one out on the range, and I'm going to look at it in three different configurations: the Mk23 SEAL light machine gun, the "Bren" style automatic rifle, and the carbine. Let's see how it handles!

I ow...

During World War Two, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) was the primary US clandestine operations organization. It was responsible for making all sorts of unique weapons, including these "Stinger" cigarette guns. They were single shot disposable .22 Short pistols.

The first pattern was co...

Today's rifle is not quite an Austrian military StG-77, but it is virtually identical. This is one of the commemorative rifles sold by Steyr, which has been rebuilt with military parts and is a registered dealer sample machine gun (which is why I can show you the complete full-auto functionality ...

After the Mp44/StG44 Sturmgewehr was starting to see substantial production and field use, the German military and the Mauser company began working on a way to simplify production of the weapon. The design for the Gerät 06H actually began with the Gerät 03, an attempt to make a roller-locked G43 ...

Today we are looking at a unique military trials Steyr-Hahn M1911 pistol which has been fitted with an adjustable tangent rear sight. The standard model of the Steyr-Hahn has a fixed rear notch, but it seems that a potential client requested (or Steyr anticipated that someone would request) and a...

The US Army ACR (Advanced Combat Rifle) program was an effort to find a new type of infantry rifle which could increase the practical accuracy of the M16 by a whopping 100% in the early 1990s. Building on a legacy of similar programs like SALVO and SPIW, the basic idea being tried were extremely ...

Today we are looking at a pair of Steyr 1893 trials revolvers. Only about 100 of these were made, primarily for Austro-Hungarian military trials. These two are early pattern examples, with Pieper-type gas seal systems in which the cylinder is cammed forward upon firing and an extra-long cartridge...

I have been curious to try shooting a Stechkin machine pistol for a while, and now thanks to Movie Armaments Group in Toronto, I have a chance to!

I hate to be a downer, but my takeaway from this experience is that the Stechkin is little more than a range toy, at least in fully automatic. With...

Sorry, slight mistake on my part - the arsenal mark on this is Molot, not Tula!

The APS is a machine pistol developed by Igor Stechkin in the late 1940s and adopted by the Soviet Union in 1951, basically at the same time as the Makarov pistol. The Stechkin and Makarov share many characteristic...

The Star Z-70B was an incremental improvement on the earlier Z-62 and Z-63 submachine guns adopted by the Spanish military and security services. It remains an open bolt, selective fire design, with an underfolding stock. The trigger has changed from a progressive type to a standard trigger with ...