Thanks to H&K and Trijicon, I have a chance to do some shooting with an MP7A1 PWD today. The MP7 is unusual for a gun of its size and configuration in having a fully locked operating system; essentially a G36 scaled down to 4.6x30mm. This allows the gun to be lighter, as the action is not depende...

A while back, I visited @CanadianGunLover, and we did a bit of shooting with an 1866 Chassepot. I lost track of the footage and only just now found where I had put it - so today is some Chassepot shooting! A couple things to note; the rifle sounds very quiet because my microphone was clipping it ...

The HK21 is a the belt-fed iteration of the H&K roller-delayed blowback mechanism. H&K built a wide range of firearms around that system, including submachine guns (MP5), rifles (HK33, HK91), precision rifles (PSG-1), and machine guns. Originally they made a version in 5.56mm and one in 7.62mm, b...

This the fairly modern Chinese CS/LS2 - the 9mm Parabellum export model of the 5.8mm QCW-05 submachine gun. It takes most of its design cues form the QBZ-95 rifle, as you can see form the grip layout. It is a bullpup, with a right-ride ejection port that cannot be swapped. It is a bullpup style d...

The Sanna 77 was a semiauto copy of the Czech Sa 25 submachine gun. It was first produced in Rhodesia by the GM Steel company for the Rhodesian military. In this form, it was the GM-15 and GM-16 (available as either civilian semiauto or military full auto), and was made without and licensing agre...

In South African military service, the R1 was the FN FAL and was the preferred infantry combat rifle until the adoption of the Galil as the R4 rifle. So what were the guns in between? Well, the R2 was a South African adaptation of the G3. A large number of rifles were needed as a reserve, and als...

In April 1940, the US Ordnance Department circulated a request for a new light machine gun to replace the Browning M1919A4. It was to be shorter and lighter than the Browning, and was not to be based on the Browning system (presumably the Department wanted to move on from the bulky and heavy 1919...

The French Model 1917 RSC rifle has a rather unusual gas system, and without some experience it can be difficult to know what one is looking at in one. So today, we're taking a quick look at how to be sure all the essential parts are in place in an RSC.

While the MkII (1905) iteration of the Ross rifle had resolved most of the major mechanical problems form the MkI, it retained a number of characteristics that the Canadian (and British) military was not fond of. In particular, it was not suited to the use of stripper clips. Starting with experim...

The many significant problems with the Model 1903 / MkI Ross rifle had quickly led to the development of the improved MkII design. This strengthened many parts, including the sights, nosecap, bolt latch, and more. The receiver was made thicker, and an extra set of cams added to make the bolt thro...

Sir Charles Ross was heir to a very wealthy Scottish family, and was a talented if temperamental engineer. He took an interest in firearms and their design, and worked with American and English connections to produce a line of his own straight--pull sporting rifles. Upon returning from the Boer W...

One of the very early clients of the Ross Rifle Company was the Royal North West Mounted Police (later merged with the Dominion Police to form the RCMP). The Mounties purchased 500 Ross MkI carbines, which were actually the only factory-made Ross carbines ever produced. The guns were made in 1904...

Emile and Leon Nagant set up their manufacturing company in Liege, Belgium in 1859, and it would become one of the most prominent in the city. The brothers worked with a variety of other patent holders, including striking a deal with the Remington company. This would lead to Nagant production of ...

Time for another recap of a Rock Island Premier event - what did that Powell Cartridge Counter Luger go for? And what's up with the weird shotguns?

Webley introduced the WS model revolver in 1902, combining the square grip of the earlier WG model with the mechanical system of the Mark IV government revolver. The new WS pattern was available in both Army (6” barrel and fixed sights) and Target (7.5” barrel and adjustable sights) patterns. In ...

Valkyrie Arms was formed in 1993 to produce semiautomatic copies of classic military machine guns, and in 2004 they introduced a semiauto M3A1 “Grease Gun”. The M3 and M3A1 are particularly rare guns as registered full autos, and no other semiauto copy has been made, as parts kits are also quite ...

In 1983, Dennis Tippman formed a company to manufacture half-scale functional replicas of Browning machine guns - the 1919 and 1917 specifically. He built these as both fully automatic and semiautomatic (the semiauto design being approved by ATF in 1984) as new machine guns could still be registe...

This capping breechloader was patented in the UK by William Terry in 1856, and adopted (in limited numbers) by the British military in 1860. Approved for cavalry use, it was issued to the 18th Hussars, and also bought by a variety of colonial organizations in New Zealand, South Africa, and elsewh...

After World War One, the British looked at how to apply the lessons of the war to development of a new infantry rifle. Even before the war, a decision had been made to move to an aperture type rear sight - which would have been used on the Pattern 1913 Enfield, had the war no interrupted adoption...

The US military experimented with a wide variety of breechloading carbines during the Civil War. One of these that got a bit of a head start on the others was the Smith carbine, patented in 1855-57 by Gilbert Smith, a physician from New York. He contracted with Poultny & Trimble of Baltimore - a ...

In 1884, High Silver and Walther Fletcher patented a system to rapidly unload a gate-style revolver. They negotiated an agreement to have their system integrated into Webley revolvers (specifically the New Model RIC) as an option, and sold about 350 of them, including some to both he Royal Irish ...

When the FN FAL was first being sold, many militaries that bought it opted to mount optics on a small percentage of their rifles. These military setups used a variety of different optics and mounts, and led FN to develop their own OEM solution. By the 1970s, the FN industrial conglomerate includi...

In the early 1990s, the Brazilian Imbel factory made a small run of FAL rifles converted to 5.56mm using AR magazines. They used standard FAL receivers and bolt carriers, with a boltface cut for 5.56x45mm and a magazine well insert with a new magazine release compatible with the AR magazines. Abo...

Having gained independence after World War One, Czechoslovakia looked to standardize and improve its armaments. Václav Holek went to work for the Zbrojovka Praga factory in Prague in 1918, and they introduced the Model 1919 pistol the next year. It was purchased by both Czech military and police ...