Today we are looking at a uniquely Ethiopian carbine, a hybrid M90/95 Mannlicher. It began life as an Austrian-issue M90 carbine proofed in 1892. It served through World War One, and was probably given to Italy as war reparations in the early 1920s. Italy then sent it to East Africa, where is ser...

Today we are looking at an interesting sub-type of Ethiopian Lebel short rifle. When InterOrdnance brought in the surviving Lebels from Ethiopian storage, eleven of one hundred were in this configuration, with barrels shortened to about 25 inches. Each rifle is a bit different - especially in fro...

This rifle began life as a German Gewehr 88 rifle in German military service. It was sent to Ethiopia, marked in Amharic, and then at some point cut down to carbine length. The shortened gun retains the infantry-type side bayonet lug and front sight, but has a slightly bent bolt handle and no rea...

Sorry for the poor audio quality - I am back at the Cody Firearms Museum talking to Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries in the UK. Jonathan has written a new book on the history of British bullpup firearms, which Headstamp is very proud to be publishing!

To...

Thanks to Jonathan Ferguson and Royal Armouries Archivist Philip Abbott, we have a compilation of some archival video of the E.M. 2 testing circa 1951/1952. This is mostly high speed video clips showing reliability testing, plus drop tests and other "rough handling". At the end, there are a serie...

There was a fair amount of small arms production in Croatia during the breakup of Yugoslavia, but most of it was not particularly high quality. After the government of Croatia had become established, it looked to arm a formal military, and turned to the Elmech company to produce a sniper's rifle....

In 1960, Elbonia set out an RFP for a new carbine for a fledgling paratroop brigade. They wanted a rifle to provide a higher volume of firepower for these troops, rather like the intention of the FG42 in German WW2 service. What they got was actually based on surplus Czech vz52 rifles, adapted to...

Elbonia had a brief partnership with Egypt in the mid 1950s through which they acquired some early-production Hakim rifles. These were used along with Israeli surplus MG-34 machine gun barrel jackets to build an experimental Hakim LMG for Elbonian service. The gun was fed by adapted German MG-13 ...

Today I am out at the range with Matt Haught of Symtac Consulting to test out a duckbill choke. Also known as a spreader, this was a muzzle device used briefly by SEALs in Vietnam – the idea is to spread shot in a horizontal oval pattern instead of a circular pattern. This improves the likelihood...

Darne was a French gunmaker best known for sporting shotguns, but they entered the military arms field during World War One. The Lewis Gun was one of the best Entente aircraft guns, and Darne put a licensed copy into production in 1915, making a bit more than 3,000 of them by the end of the war. ...

Sorry for the poor audio quality - today I am back at the Cody Firearms Museum talking to Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries in the UK. Jonathan has written a new book on the history of British bullpup firearms, which Headstamp is very proud to be publishing!...

Some people put a lot of weight on the fact that the 1911 has a grip safety and a thumb safety...but I don't think many folk understand how it ended up that way. John Browning's first self-loading pistols had very different safeties...and often, no safety at all. So today, let's look at the guns ...

I recently had a chance to take a .36 caliber Colt Model 1855 revolving rifle our to the range. It was pretty interesting to shoot, but unfortunately the video ended up rather sub-par and I didn't realize it until after we had left the range and I didn't have a chance to redo it. Rather than toss...

In 2015, the CMMG company decided to develop a pistol-caliber AR carbine firing .45 ACP. Such things were becoming common in 9mm, but .45 was a more open market opportunity. They spent substantial time trying to perfect a simple blowback system, only to find that the recoil impulse was causing oc...

In our continuing series on the development of the British Lee Enfield rifles, we are looking at the CLLE conversions today. In 1907 the British adopted a new universal short rifle (the SMLE) that used charger (aka stripper) clips. Previous models of the Lee in British service had to be loaded on...

During World War Two, Canada supplied some 73,000 Sten guns (made by the Long Branch arsenal) to Chinese Nationalist forces in an effort to help them fight the Japanese. These Stens were standard MkII pattern guns, chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge. However, many of these were eventua...

Possibly the coolest small arm used by the United States in the Vietnam War was the China Lake 40mm pump action grenade launcher. Only 24 of these were made, each fitted by hand. Of those, 2 went to MACVSOG, 2 to Army Force Recon, and the remaining 20 the the Navy SEALS. They were used as an ambu...

Today we are taking a look at a very unusual prototype rifle, courtesy of Legacy Collectibles. I suspect - but have no direct evidence - that this was designed by one Francis K. Young, a man who patented several very similar systems. What makes it unusual is that it operates by having the cartrid...

"Special Troops" does not mean Special Forces; it means all the various service branches that need neither a full length rifle nor a permanently attached bayonet. This included artillery, engineers, naval troops, and more. The Moschetto 91 TS was basically a carbine-length Carcano rifle, albeit w...

Today we start a series looking at the evolution of the Carcano series of rifles. Starting with the M91 rifle adopted in 1892, the Carcano would be the workhorse of the Italian military through two world wars and many colonial expeditions. The rifle is a simple but durable and reliable system wit...

Following rapidly on the heels of the M91 rifle, the Italian military adopted the Moschetto M91 in 1893 as a carbine to equip a variety of forces. They were issued to cavalry, Bersaglieri, Carabinieri, and others who needed handier weapon with an attached bayonet. This is a remarkably light and h...

In my opinion, the M38 Carcano as a very insightfully designed infantry rifle for World War Two, acknowledging the real-world use conditions of such weapons. With the M91/41 (aka M41), Italy took a step back from that. Originally designed as the M40 in 1940 with a new rear sight design adjustable...

During the 1920s, Italy was concerned about insufficient lethality with their 6.5x52mm cartridge, and began experimenting with larger bore diameters. By the late 1930s they settled on a new 7.35x51mm round, based closely on the existing 6.5mm cartridge case. They also planned to replace the origi...

After I started getting malfunctions last time, I gave the Calico a good (and much-needed) cleaning, and also replaced the striker spring. Hopefully this brings it back to a state of reliability...