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 ...

In 1934 (just year before officially requesting that the Western world call his country “Iran” rather than “Persia”), the Shah of Iran ordered 4,000 Luger pistols form the Mauser company. These were to be divided between 3,000 standard P08 models and 1,000 LP08 artillery models (plus a handful o...

Designed by A. Noël in 1865 and manufactured by Gouery, Canat et Cie in Paris, this is a .28 caliber, 10-shot turret revolver. It has a folding double-action trigger, and is actually a remarkably svelte pistol, ideal for a gentleman’s coat pocket (as one does in 1865). Best as I can tell, about 5...

Created in 1973 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the .45-70 cartridge by the US military, the Model 100 revolver is a behemoth of a six-shooter. It was made by Earl Keller and Gene Phelps of Indiana, under the name Century Mfg, Inc (no relation to Century International Arms...

Between 1935 and 1937, the recently independent nation of Lithuania purchased 5,000 Browning High Power pistols from FN. These were early pattern guns, with 500m tangent rear sights and stock slots, although Lithuania did not purchase holster stocks to go with them. The guns are also early enough...

Theodore Emil Kommer was born in 1866, son of a German gunsmith. He took the same profession, and at the age of 23 in 1889 opened his own business making guns. He initially focused on sporting rifles and single-shot pistols, but expanded into semiauto pocket pistols after World War One. His first...

Bob Holloway designed the HAC-7 rifle to be the ultimate combat infantry rifle in 1984, drawing on his experiences in Vietnam and Rhodesia. It is a very interesting hybrid of AK, FAL, and other design elements, but it was not commercially successful. Only about 280 were made before the Holloway A...

Estonia purchased several batches of early FN High Power pistols in the 1930s. First in 1936 120 were ordered for the police, and then much larger orders followed in 1937. The military bought 5,338 and the Home Guard bought an additional 3,038. Both batches have their own serial number ranges, an...

The Dardick 1500 was a magazine-fed revolver designed by David Dardick in the 1950s. His patent was granted in 1958, and somewhere between 40 and 100 of the guns were made in 1959, before the company went out of business in 1960. The concept was based around a triangular cartridge (a “tround”) an...

Colt held a dominant market share in revolver sales in the 1880s, but was quite interested in taking a piece of the rifle market as well. This initially manifested with the Colt Burgess lever-action rifle, which prompted the famous alleged agreement between Colt and Winchester that Colt would not...

The US first tested the Luger in 1901, and it seemed potentially good enough that the government spent $15,000 to buy 1,000 of the pistols (in 7.65mm Luger; the only cartridge available at the time) for field trials. The trials resulted in a variety of complaints, but particular among them was a ...

This is a prototype or one-off over/under sporting shotgun, made in a bullpup configuration. It is basically two long slabs of wood clamshell around a pair of barrels, with the action at the very end in the stock. The breech rotates up to open, activated by a lever on the surface of the buttplate...

Bulgaria bought its first Lugers in 1903; 1000 Old Model guns in 7.65mm. It bought another 1300 New Model Lugers in 1908 (again in 7.65mm), but both of these orders were intended for private purchase by officers. It wasn’t until 1911 that Bulgaria formally adopted the Luger as an army sidearm, an...

The Ballester-Molina was designed to be a more economical pistol to produce than the 1911A1, which had been adopted by Argentina as the Pistola Sistema Colt Modelo 1927. It was produced by a company called HAFDASA, an Argentine franchise of the Hispano-Suiza firm created by Arturo Ballester and E...

The AR-18 has its genesis in the AR-10. I n an effort to develop a less expensive version of that rifle, Armalite created the AR-12, an experimental rifle which used a stamped or bent sheet metal lower receiver in place of the forged AR10 lower. When Armalite sold the AR-15 patents to Colt, they ...

Manufactured in the 1880s and 1890s to serve the professional hunter market, Pieper’s 7-barrel Mitrailleuse was essentially a rimfire volley gun. It was offer in both .22 rimfire and .32 rimfire calibers, both models having clusters of 7 rifled barrels which fired simultaneously with a single tri...

Let's take a look at what some of the guns in the last RIA sale went for, shall we? If you've got a cool million bucks you can get an old revolver with no finish!

The KKW (“Klein Kaliber Wehrsportgewehr”, or small caliber military sporting rifle) was developed by BDW in 1937 as an amalgamation of various .22 rifle elements form other manufacturers as well as BSW itself. It was intended to fill the role of the German national standard target rifle. When he ...

Sweden tested the Luger in 1904, along with all the major semiauto pistols available at the time. The Luger was found to be the most accurate gun in the trials, but expensive and not as reliable in cold weather as the Browning 1903 - which was formally adopted as the m/1907 a few years later and ...