Yesterday we looked at the history and mechanics of the Soviet AVS-36 battle rifle, and today we are taking it out to the range. As a light rifle firing full-power 7.62x54R ammunition, this is sure to be an exhilarating experience. I am curious to see how the muzzle brake performs, and if this ri...

The Bren gun is widely regarded as one of the best light machine guns ever built, but that reputation is based on the British .303 caliber version. How does the design perform in 8mm Mauser? Today I am going to find out, using one of the John Inglis "sterile" 8mm Brens.

When Prussia and its Dreyse needle fire rifles defeated Austria and its muzzleloaders at Shadow in 1866, much of the world took note. In Italy, the reactive was to immediately begin looking for both a new rifle and also a system for converting existing stockpiles of muzzleloaders into something m...

If a swanky outfit like H&K can make an “Operational Briefcase” with a submachine gun hidden inside it, then you can bet Military Armament Corporation is going to do the same! MAC made these briefcases for both the M10 and M11 submachine guns, and made a shortened suppressor for the M10 pattern g...

James Paris Lee is known today as the inventor of the detachable box magazine, and the “Lee” in the “Lee Enfield” rifle system - a very significant contributor to firearms development. His first foray into the business of gun design and manufacture, however, was a rather ignominious failure.

L...

Presented to Nikita Kruschev at the opening of the 21st session of the Communist Party session in 1959, this is an example of the best sporting arms being made in the Soviet Union at the time. It is an MTs-11 (МЦ-11) side by side double gun, mechanically a Beesley-patent Purdey type with plenty o...

Around 1980, Israeli purchased a batch of modern Mauser SP66 precision rifles to supplement or replace their stocks of M14 and Mauser K98k sniper rifles. This new rifle was based on the Mauser 66 sporting rifle action, and had been developed by Mauser in the 1970s to meet the new demand for serio...

Benjamin Hotchkiss was an American artillery designer who moved to Paris in 1867 in hopes of building a business for his improvements in artillery shells. He experienced the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and understood the failure of the French Mitrailleuse multi-barrel volley guns. In his opinion...

The gun that became the Hotchkiss 1914 and served as the bulwark of French and American forces in World war One was actually first designed and patented by an Austrian officer; Adolph von Odkolek. He took his idea to the Hotchkiss company in Paris hoping to arrange for them to produce it under li...

The Heym SR30 is a modern hunting rifle produced in Thuringia, Germany using a rather clever and interesting locking system. It is a straight-pull rifle with six ball bearings around the circumference of the bolt head. When the bolt handle it forward, it forces a central plunger down the interior...

Developed between 1883 and 1889 by Lt. William Driggs and Commander (later Admiral) Seaton Schroeder, the Driggs cannon was an improvement on the market-standard Hotchkiss quick-fire cannon of the day. By quick-fire, I am referring to a single-shot cannon that has a recoil mechanism and ejects it...

The John Inglis company in Toronto first opened in 1859 as a metalworking shop, and grew steadily over the decades under first John Inglis, and then later his sons. Inglis did substantial amounts of military work during World War One, but the Great Depression hit it hard, and both William and Ale...

Today we are looking at the results from the Morphy's April 2019 sale to see what happened with the guns that I featured in videos over the last few weeks.

After the commercial failure of Gordon Ingram’s M6 submachine gun in the early 50s, we would radically change the layout of his designs. Instead of a Thompson lookalike Ingram’s M10 (the M7, M8, and M9 doing experimental prototypes only) would be a boxy and compact affair with a Czech-style teles...

The Dreyse needle fire rifle was invented by Niclaus von Dreyse in 1836, adopted by Prussia in 1841, and would serve as their standard military rifle for 30 years, undergoing constant tweaking and improvements. By 1871, however, the days of the needle fire were coming to a rapid end, as it was re...

Adopted by Bavaria in 1869, Johann-Ludwig Werder’s breechloading rifle was a brilliant piece of engineering, offering an automatically ejecting falling-block system with a remarkably high effective rate of fire and a wonderfully modular system of parts. Removing a single screw releases the entire...

The Ultimax light machine gun was developed by James Sullivan for the Singaporean military, and it is the first mass-production machine gun to be designed with the "constant recoil" system in which the bolt never impacts the rear of the receiver and the recoil impulse is felt as a continuous push...

Today I am speaking with retired Master Sergeant John Keene, who is the NFA specialist for the Morphy's. Specifically, we are discussing the terminology and categories of legal machine guns in the United States. From the very common misconception of a "Class III License" (which does not exist), t...

During World War One, the Ottoman Empire would join the war on the side of the Central Powers, in part because of a decision by the British Navy to seize a pair of battleships under construction for the Ottomans in the UK. This also caused the Ottoman military to adopt the 1909 Maxim as their sta...

The “cone hammer” was the first commercial version of the Mauser C96, so named for the stepped conical sides of its hammer. The C96 did not sell particularly well in the first few years after its introduction, and the only major bulk sale was to Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire, who bo...

The Striker shotgun was designed by a Rhodesian named Hilton Walker in the late 1970s, although not manufactured until after he had emigrated to South Africa. He partnered with the owner of the Armsel company to finance production, which was actually done by a company called Aserma Manufacturing....

Courtesy of the Morphy Auction Company, I am out at the range today with a very rare Italian Villar Perosa machine gun from World War One. These are pretty unorthodox machine guns, as they were initially designed as aircraft armament and later repurposed as ground guns. The basic design is a pair...

The Marlin / United Defense US-42 submachine gun was not used by the American military, but it did see service in World War Two. Its 9mm chambering made it inconvenient for the US, but ideal for agencies like the OSS and SOE to drop to resistance organizations within occupied Europe. So, let's ta...

Made by Señor Osorio in Nicaragua, this is a .22 rimfire caliber machine pistol with several clever design elements. It fires from an open bolt, using a .22-round Italian magazine of indeterminate origin. It has a selective trigger, with the top firing in full automatic (sliding rearward) and the...