The Mosin M91/30 PU is the most recognized Soviet sniper rifle of World War Two, but it was not their first. It was preceded by the Model 1931 PE, the Model 1936 PEM, and also the scoped version of the SVT-40 semiautomatic rifle. The SVT was intended to become a universal infantry rifle as well a...

While in Croatia for filming, we stopped in at the Homeland War Museum (Muzej Domovinskog Rata) in Karlovac. Built in the preserved ruins of the "Hotel California", it houses a small but pretty comprehensive collection of small arms form the Croatian Homeland War, in addition to many other artifa...

No blank-firing adapter? No money for practice ammo? What you need is a wooden clicky-clacky noisemaker that locks into your Suomi!

The Manda is a rifle that was designed for the Croatian Special Police at the beginning of the Homeland War in 1991. At that point, the Special Police (basically the SWAT teams) were basically the only really well-trained fighters in the country with combat experience. They wanted .50 BMG anti-ma...

The .300 Blackout cartridge and the rifle we now know as the Honey Badger were originally developed by AAC by request of a US special forces military unit. They wanted to replace their MP5SD submachine guns with a weapon that was still very quiet but had more terminal lethality than subsonic 9mm ...

Today we are going to take a look at the three main battle rifles of World War Two - the M1 Garand, the SVT-40, and the Gewehr 43. We will also consider the SVT-38, Gewehr 41(W), and Gewehr 41(M). The United States, Soviet Union, and Germany were the three countries that fielded large numbers of ...

The Chauchat is a machine gun with a reputation for being unreliable - a reputation that is only partially deserved. But what the Chauchat does completely deserve is its reputation for being notoriously difficult to shoot well. The grip design, stock design, sight placement, trigger, and the dyna...

Today we're taking a look at a Smith & Wesson Chief's Special, but not just any Chief's Special. This is serial number 29, factory engraved and gifted to Chief Edward Boyko of Passaic New Jersey in 1950. When S&W introduced the new revolver to compete with Colt's Detective Special, they simply ca...

The German military tested several designs of silencer for the MP40 submachine gun during late World War Two. Designated the L4x series, they were made by the Arado and Opel-Schneider companies. This example is an Arado L41, designed to use the sort of heavy rubber baffles as the Soviet Bramit pa...

On October 16, 1859 John Brown and 19 men left the Kennedy farmhouse and made their way a few miles south to the Harpers Ferry Arsenal. They planned to seize the Arsenal and use its arms - along with 200 Sharps 1853 carbines and 1,000 pikes they had previously purchased - to ignite and arm a slav...

Today I'm taking an SVT-40 to the monthly 2-Gun Action Challenge Match, and I'm joined by my friend Tom shooting an M1 Garand. We're both using moderately accurate gear, and so naturally I have a TT-33 Tokarev for my pistol and Tom has a 1911. So, let's see if I can hold my own with the Soviet gu...

The Red Army was interested in developing a semiautomatic rifle clear back to the mid 1920s, and they spent about 15 years running trials and development programs to find one. First in 1930 a Degtyarev design was adopted, followed by the Simonov AVS-36, and then Tokarev won out in 1938 with the S...

The vz.50 pistol was a compact .32 ACP (7.65mm Browning) double action pocket pistol used by police forces. It was given a face lift and redesigned the vz.70, and there were plans at one point to further modernize it. The new design would have been the vz.80, but only a few prototypes were made -...

When the P-83 pistol went into production, the Polish military decided that it wanted a dedicated suppressed version of the gun, and the result was the PT-83. Thw P-83 was a 9x18mm pistol with a fixed barrel, so attaching a suppressor was not going to cause any problems with functioning. However,...

When Smith & Wesson introduced their Model 3566 pistol for USPSA use, the company shooting team needed six of them for use at the 1994 USPSA Nationals. The Performance Center made these six guns, and they are magnificent examples of custom gunsmithing. This is the first of them, and designed for ...

Courtesy of CZ and their reference library, we are looking at a prototype model of the vz.70 pistol intended to use a suppressor. It has an extended and threaded (with interrupted threads for quick attach/detach) barrel, and a mechanism to allow for locking the slide. This will prevent the slide ...

In 1875 the Montreal City Police decided that they wanted to equip a riot squad in case of public disturbance. They initially requested funds for 50 revolvers, but this changed to 60 carbines instead, and these were purchased via broker in 1876 from the Whitneyville Armory. Whitneyville was a fac...

When the clouds of World War Two began to loom in the 1930s, Britain decided to begin securing some of its more distant colonial outposts - places that might be of strategic importance in a future conflict. Fiji was once of these outposts - a vital point on the seagoing supply line from Europe an...

Today we return to Guadalcanal, to the site of the last actuals of the campaign. For the Japanese, the defeat at Edson's Ridge (aka Bloody Ridge) forced a disastrous and uncoordinated retreat into the jungle. With their supply lines destroyed, Japanese troops largely moved west on the island, awa...

The Avenger is a flapper-delayed blowback, fixed barrel conversion upper assembly for the Model 1911 pistol. It was designed by Austrian Peter Spielberger, and manufactured by Hogue in the US and PowerSpeed in Austria. It is a product that came close to vaporware status, announced at SHOT Show in...

Yesterday we looked at where the Hogue Avenger came from and how it works; today I'm out at the range to test it out against a nicely customized M1911...

What is the MP5 was never adopted, and instead the vented barrel and telescoping silencer used by the SD model was instead developed for the AR-15? Broad River Tactical thought it would be fun to follow this line of thought, and builds an MP5SD style barrel and handguard system for the AR - and I...

Starting in 2024, I will be adding a fifth video each week, usually covering a new firearm or accessory that is on the market (but also sometimes subjects like museum or battlefield tours and such). I will also begin filming in 4K exclusively for you here of History of Weapons & War. Please note ...

Angstadt Arms has released an interesting integrally silenced (suppressed, if you prefer) barrel for 9mm AR carbines. It uses a full-length barrel with venting ports (similar to the MP5SD system), combined with a tubular shroud 1.5 inches in diameter covering the entire barrel. There are no baffl...