The Reibel Modele M31 was the variation of the French Chatellerault M24/29 light machine gun made for use in vehicles and fortifications. In accordance with that role, it lacked a buttstock or sights (these were integrated into the vehicle or fortress mounts), was fitted with a very heavy barrel ...

When South Africa decided to replace the R1 rifle (a metric FAL), they chose to adopt the Israeli Galil. Both nations had similar environmental issues with blowing sand (in northwestern South Africa particularly), and Israel was one of the few nations willing to trade arms with South Africa in th...

Today we are looking at - and shooting - a one of a kind .22 rimfire conversion kit for the Galil developed by South African designer Tony Neophytou (better known for the Neostead shotgun, Neopup grenade launcher, and NTW-20 anti-material rifle). The idea here is to convert a standard R4 Galil se...

I think this is the longest Q&A to date...and as usual, I had far more questions submitted by you awesome Patrons than I could answer, so if yours didn't get in this time please submit it again next time.

0:00:37 - The Stoner 63 and value of modular platforms
0:03:37 - Forgotten Weapons on In...

On to our questions...

0:50 - Berthier type iron sights on military rifles
2:15 - Books covering all US military small arms
3:25 - 4.85mm British compared to its contemporaries
4:19 - Alternative history: PMC armament in the 20s and 30s
8:19 - What gun do I dislike the most?
8:40 - How to...

00:30 - Belts or links, and why?
04:53 - What determines locations of gun manufacturing centers?
06:40 - Why did France not use 7.62 NATO?
09:38 - CMMG Guard, yea or nay?
12:32 - How do/did proof houses actually work?
15:45 - History of the 6mm Lee Navy (to be expanded into a standalone vide...

Who will win? One big spring, or two dedicated gun nerds?

The Soviet Union had originally eschewed the use of large numbers of antitank rifles, anticipating that any potential combat use of them would be largely against tanks impervious to AT rifle cartridges. However, when German forces came flooding across the border in 1941, the Soviet Union found th...

This pistol is one of just a couple surviving from a development project run by Walther in the mid to late 1930s. The goal was to produce a compact sidearm for pilots and officers using a more potent cartridge than the .32ACP or .380. To do this, Walther split the dimensional difference on case l...

Today's Special Presentation is an overview of all the semiautomatic pistols that were actually put into serial production before the year 1900. We have looked at these individually before, but I think it is worthwhile to examine them together in context, to gain a better understanding of what th...

Poland was one of the states which manufactured the Soviet PPS-43 submachine gun under license, but they decided to make a change to is in 1952. Where the original PPS-43 used a top-folding metal stock, the Poles decided to instead add a fixed wooden buttstock. This made the gun substantially mor...

I had a chance to visit Hire Arms in Johannesburg - a movie arms supply company. Among many other things in their collection, they had an assortment of extremely crude handmade firearms confiscated from poachers in Zimbabwe. As something we don't see much of here in the US, I thought they were pr...

Since I had the opportunity to do some shooting with both a Yugoslav PKM and a Czech vz.59 general-purpose machine gun, I thought it would be interesting to compare them side by side. Which is better as a proper machine gun? And, to make things interesting, which is better as a semiauto-only fire...

Developed in 1978 and produced by Llama until 1995, the Pressin was a two-shot derringer made to be disguised as a pair of glasses. It was intended for use by politicians, military officers, and other potential victims of kidnapping by groups like the ETA. It held two rounds of a special 7.65mm E...

Some collectors hunt for firearms which look perfectly new form the factory, and others prefer arms that show lots of evidence of use and history. Well, this is definitely one of the latter type - this 1943 production MP40 submachine gun has a terrible finish, most likely as a result of being bur...

The Kommando semiauto carbine was designed in 1975 by Alexis du Plessis in Rhodesia, and went on the be manufactured in South Africa a few years later by the Maxim Parabellum company. The final iteration of the design came in 1980/81 with this, the Paramax. The molded lower housing of the Kommand...

When looking at P-49 (aka SIG 210) pistols used by the Swiss military, there are five distinct groups, with different characteristics. Today we will be showing you these differences, as well as a few features of the Swiss military holster for the P49. For reference:

Type 1: 100001-103200
Hig...

Developed in the 1980s in response to a need for new West German police sidearms, the H&K P7 is one of the most mechanically unusual pistols to have been commercially successful in recent decades. It incorporates a number of features which are rather polarizing; brilliantly innovative to some, an...

The original Villar Perosa machine gun was a rather odd combination of features; a double-barreled gun in 9mm Glisenti with spade grips and a blistering rate of fire. This proved to be of limited practical utility, and the Officine Di Villar Perosa went back to the drawing board in response to an...

The OICW - Objective Individual Combat Weapon - was part of a program in the 1980s and 1990s to replace the whole lineup of uS small arms with a consolidated group of new high-tech ones. The M4, M16, and M203 would be replaced by the OICW, the M240, M2, and Mk 19 would be replaced by the Objectiv...

Developed in the mid 1990s by South African designer Tony Neophytou, the Neostead 2000 is a pump action shotgun with a substantial cult following. It was the first truly high-capacity shotgun put into production, with two magazine tubes over a single barrel (a concept which was independently impl...

When I filmed yesterday's video on the MP-41/44, and did not know I would have a chance to actually do some live fire with it. But we snuck off to a little shooting range to have a try (sorry for the poor lighting!). The question going in for me was whether the locking system and the weight of th...

The Swiss military discovered an urgent need for submachine guns in the early years of World War II, and sent out a very short-notice request for SMG designs. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for the SIG concern, which had been development a very good line of submachine guns through the 1...

In the aftermath of World War One, the Treaty of Versailles strictly limited the number of machine guns that the German military could keep in inventory. The main type that the Germans chose to keep was the MG08/15 (although a substantial number of MG08 guns were kept as well). Through the 1920s ...