By 1939, Auto-Ordnance was thoroughly bankrupt, having about $400 in assets and a debt of more than $1.2 million to the estate of the late Thomas Ryan, it's original financier. Ryan had died in 1929, but the company shareholders had prevented his estate from forcing the sale of the company for a ...

The USMC had acquired a few hundred early 1921 model Thompson submachine guns in 1926, and prompted the US Navy to formally test the guns. The Navy requested a reduction in the rate of fire, in order to improve controllability and reduce ammunition consumption (20 round magazines go quickly at 90...

The Order of St John - the Knights of Malta - began as an order to protect Christian pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem, but transformed into an organization dedicated to corsairing in the Mediterranean Sea. Basically, legally justified pirates. For about 300 years they were based on the island of...

Military Historical Tours is a company specializing in guided tours of battlefields and war memorials, for the historical enthusiast and veteran alike. I spent about 10 days with them visiting WW1 American battlefields in France this spring, and had an excellent time - their offerings are a great...

I have been getting a lot of comments asking when there will be a shooting video with my MAS-38 submachine gun. If has cleared the NFA transfer process, so it's not actually in my possession. So, the next hurdle is finding ammunition. The 7.65 French Long cartridge it uses has been out of product...

The Mamba was originally conceived in a 1970s Salisbury, Rhodesia barroom bull session about the best elements of semiauto pistols. The project would wind up being pushed by an American expat named Joe Hale, and production of parts was contracted out to a South African engineering firm.

The Ma...

During World War Two, the Grand Harbor in Malta was the most-bombed place in the world, under aerial bombardment for two full years because of its position as a central Mediterranean base for British air and sea forces. While these attacks were focused on the harbor facilities, most of the island...

The largest muzzleloading black powder cannons ever built were the Armstrong 100-ton guns which saw service with the Italian Navy and with British coastal fortifications on Malta and Gibraltar. They were purchased by the Italians first, to outfit a pair of new super battleships, each vessel havin...

A while back I filmed some shooting with a Techno Arms MAG-7 shotgun in the US. It had been set up in the American non-NFA configuration, with a terrible wooden stock and long barrel, and I had not been able to find the appropriate mid-length shells for it. Well, on a trip to South Africa I had a...

Today we have Part 2 of machine gun terminology - the small caliber guns. Specifically, submachine guns, personal defense weapons, and machine pistols.

Submachine Gun: Pistol caliber, fully automatic, and fitted with a shoulder stock. For example, Thompson, MP40, MAS-38.

Machine pistol: Han...

Today I am testing out a new .30-06 Chauchat magazine converted from a Johnson M1941 machine gun magazine. The workmanship on this new mag is excellent, and much more extensive than I had initially realized would be necessary. This had the side effect of also making is a very expensive magazine t...

This M1918 Chauchat is still awaiting NFA transfer, but my dealer was able to bring it out to a public range where I could do some initial testing on it. I was expecting to get extraction problems as soon as it got warm, as that is what the literature suggests will happen. The .30-06 American Cha...

Everyone knows, of course, that the Chauchat is the worst gun ever, and can't normally get through an entire magazine without malfunctioning. Well, let's try that out...and with an even worse culprit; an M1918 Chauchat made for the AEF in .30-06.

After World War Two, Luxembourg was one of the nations which opted to purchase new FN-49 rifles. It bought a total of 6,203 of them for the military - an initial purchase of 4,000 semiauto SAFN rifles and a followup purchase of 2,000 AFN select-fire rifles and 203 semiauto rifles fitted with Belg...

Eugene Golubtsov, aka LugerMan, is manufacturing reproduction .45ACP caliber Luger pistols, based on the original blueprints of the 1907 pattern US Army trials guns. When he offered to send me one to try out, how could I say no?

I have had some rather unimpressive experiences trying to shoot s...

When Finland decided to replace the Luger as its service handgun, they turned to Finland's most famous arms designer, Aimo Lahti. After a few iterations, Lahti devised a short recoil semiautomatic pistol with a vertically traveling locking block, not too different from a Bergmann 1910 or Type 94 ...

The Spanish firm of Garate Anitua y Cia manufactured this copy of the Mannlicher 1901/1905 pistol for just a brief period around 1910. It is not a straight copy, as the Mannlicher was chambered for its own 7.63mm Mannlicher cartridge and fed using stripper clips and a fixed internal magazine whil...

The Kommando was a semiauto SMG-type carbine designed by Alex du Plessis in Salisbury Rhodesia in the late 1970s. It was manufactured by a company called Lacoste Engineering, and financed by a man named Hubert Ponter - and those initials were the name of the initial production version of the gun;...

This modern Hungarian submachine gun bears a remarkable similarity to the AKM rifle in many aspects, from the pistol grip to many of the manufacturing practices. In fact, the more we did into the gun, the more Kalashnikov influence we can see in it. This particular example is semiautomatic only, ...

As usual, I have a recap today of the final prices of the guns I filmed from the most recent Julia auction (spring of 2018). Once again, I focussed on machine guns, as well as high end sporting arms and Civil War rifles.

This was the last auction being held in Maine by James Julia, as the comp...

The Valmet M71 was introduced as a commercial export rifle in 1971, and was the first AK available on the commercial market in the United States and Europe. It was offered in both .223 and 7.62x39mm calibers, because the 7.62x39mm cartridge was rare and expensive at the time outside of Finland an...

The Israeli Uzi has become a truly iconic submachine gun through both its military use and its Hollywood stunts - but how effective is it really?

I found this fully automatic Uzi Model A to be actually rather better than I had expected. Despite the uncomfortable sharp metal stock, the rate of ...

The Stoner 63 was a remarkably advanced and clever modular firearm designed by Eugene Stoner (along with Bob Fremont and Jim Sullivan) after he left Armalite. The was tested by DARPA and the uS Marine Corps in 1963, and showed significant potential - enough that the US Navy SEALs adopted it and k...

During World War Two, the British spent several years developing a silenced version of the Sten gun for special operations commandos and for dropping to mainland European resistance units. This is a recreation of one of the experimental types, based on a MkII Sten with the receiver lengthened int...