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...

When I ran my Calico carbine through the PCC course of fire last month, I was rather surprised to see it run through 150 rounds without any malfunctions. I plan to continue shooting it without any cleaning or lubrication, to see how long it will go before it stops working. In. follow-up range tri...

The Calico family of firearms was developed in the late 1980s, and put on the market just in time to be squashed by the 1994 Omnibus Crime Act. The heart of the Calico system was a design for a double-stack helical magazine, which was made in 50- and 100-round versions in both ,22 rimfire and 9mm...

The Mauser brothers' first handgun was the single shot C77, which they quickly followed with the C78 "zig zag" revolver, so named for the cam grooves on the circumference of its cylinder. What we are looking at today is the patent model submitted for the brothers' patent on the hinged-frame versi...

Today, I'm taking the AJ ordnance "Thomas" .45 to the Backup Gun Match to try it out on the clock. The Thomas was designed as a concealed carry pistol, with no external controls and a long revolver-like double action trigger in lieu of a safety. It actually performed better than I expected, espec...

The Type 94 Nambu pistol is best known for the exposed sear that allows it to be fired by pressing on the side of the gun. This is actually not really the safety issue it's usually made out to be, but that's a point for another video. Today, I took a Type 94 to my local Backup Gun Match. This mat...

The Schwarzlose 1908 is the only blow-forward firearm ever to see real commercial sale. It is a compact pocket pistol chambered for .32 ACP, with a 7-round magazine. They were sold by Schwarzlose in Germany and also assembled and sold in the United States in a slightly altered form by the Warner ...

The C.O.P. (Compact Offduty Police) .357 was designed by Robert Hillberg, patented in 1983, and manufactured by COP Inc in California. It's a stainless steel, 4-barrel, .357 Magnum derringer. It's also an awful pistol to shoot. The trigger is one of the worst I've ever felt, recoil is sharp (alth...

The M2 Browning machine gun was first conceived in 1918, as a request by General John Pershing of the AEF for a large-caliber antiaircraft and antitank machine gun. John Browning scaled his M1917 water-cooled .30 caliber design up to .50 caliber, and the first prototypes were test fired in Novemb...

Today I am chatting with Paul Levy of Brownells about their BRN-180 upper; a modernization of the original Armalite AR-180. This particular project is an interesting combination of recreating an older design but simultaneously modernizing it - so let's pick Paul's brain about some of the unexpect...

Brownells has produced a substantial line of retro AR-15 pattern rifles, from the "Proto" with the trigger-shaped charging handle to the M16A1 and XM-177 rifles and carbines. Today I am joined by Paul Levy from Brownells at RIA to discuss how these rifles came to be, and what the future plans are...

Today I'm sitting down with Paul Levy from Brownells to talk about the development process for the BRN-10, their Retro copy of the original Armalite AR-10. Brownells is one of a small cadre of companies who have actually been able to successfully execute a project like this, and I wanted to pick ...

In 1883, the Brazilian government decided to purchase 3,000 new revolvers, and they chose the Mauser Model 1878 "Zigzag" to procure. The officer charged with making the purchase in Europe, however, appears to have done some of his own investigation and unilaterally decided to buy Nagant revolvers...

(Edit: Tungsten carbine is, of course denser than steel, not lighter. Sorry.)

I have done several previous videos on the Boys antitank rifle, but never actually fired one - until today! We're out at the range with a MkI Boys and five rounds of its .55 Boys ammunition. So let's see if it's an p...

The most recent addition to the Vickers Guide series of books is SIG Sauer Volume 1. This is 460 pages covering SIG's handguns and submachine guns from it's very first contract (the Mannlicher 1894 blow-forward pistols) to the recently-adopted M17 and M18 US military handguns and SIG's other ongo...

When Volume 1 of the Vickers Guide to the AR-15 sold out, Larry Vickers and James Rupley decided not to simply print more copies. Instead, they chose to go back to basics, and massively expand the book. The new Second Edition has 300 pages more photographs and content than the original book, comi...

Bruce Canfield's newly released book, "U.S. Small Arms of World War II", is a book that attempts to cover a huge amount of material from bayonets to mortars and recoilless rifles. Where most books of this type end up providing only a rather shallow view of a large number of subjects, what Canfiel...

Have museums fundamentally changed since the advent of the internet? Does this impact decisions about whether artifacts like firearms are best held in museums versus private collections for the sake of study and understanding? How do creeping deactivation standards irreparably harm the community,...