The MP5 is widely regarded as the best submachine gun ever made, and it has been widely copied. But only now has H&K released a semiauto civilian version of it in pistol form. Prior to the AWB, the HK94 was available as a semiauto carbine (with a 16" barrel), but that was prohibited in 1988. H&K ...

The H&K Mk 23 pistol was developed in the 1990s for the US Special Operations Command and US Navy. The goal was to produce an "offensive handgun" that could serve as a primary armament for a special forces operator as well as a backup arm. It was required to be no more than 12 inches long, fit a ...

There is an old gun shop tale that Argentine Ballester-Molina pistols were made form the salvaged armor plate of the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. The Graf Spee was scuttled in the Rio de la Plata estuary in December 1939, only a few miles from the HAFDASA factory in Buenos Aires, and Arge...

Introduced in 1957, Franchi's LF-57 submachine gun has a very distinctive sci-fi look to it, but was never able to become a major player in the Cold War arms market. It is in all ways a fully satisfactory design, including a grip safety, bolt lock to prevent accidental discharge, reasonably stabl...

When John Browning licensed his handgun patents, the North American rights were granted to Colt, and the Western European rights to FN in Belgium. Browning provided the patents and patent model guns to the companies, and they were then free to interpret the design however they thought best. In th...

When I arrived at DriveTanks.com down in Texas, I was happily surprised to find my old acquaintance Glenn Fleming working there as lead gunsmith. Glenn and I first met on the set of a certain TV show many years back, and he is a great guy - in marked distinction from the rest of the show's cast. ...

The m/44 pistol was intended to be a lower-cost replacement for the Lahti L35 pistol for the Finnish Defense Forces, but production delays resulted in the first batch of 25 examples not being completed until after the end of the Continuation War. Treaties limited Finland's right to conduct arms d...

With the Morphy's fall 2019 auction now complete, it's time to take a look at what the market says guns are worth. This time, it's mostly submachine guns - with an interesting mix of transferrable and pre-samples.

The PGMP (Poignée Garde-Main Polyvalente) handguard assembly is the original modification to allow mounting of optics to the FAMAS rifle. The FAMAS handguard was not designed to hold an optic, and is not nearly stable enough to retain zero. The PGMP adds a hefty metal block to secure the optics ...

The Australian Owen submachine gun was once of the best overall SMG designs of the Second World War, and when Australia decided to replace them in the 1960s, the new F1 design have big shoes to fill. The basic configuration of the top-mounted magazine remained, but coupled with elements of the St...

Designed in an effort to compete with the then-new Colt/Browning air cooled 1895 machine gun, the Extra-Light Maxim weighted in at just 27 (maybe 28) pounds for the gun, and 44 pounds with tripod. This may sound heavy, but it was a remarkable improvement over the 100+ pounds of most models of Max...

When John Browning designed his Model 1895 machine gun with it's rotary-lever gas operation system, Hiram Maxim filed suit claiming patent infringement. Maxim had filed quite broad patents covering gas pistons operation, but specifically in a linear format. Browning and Colt (who had the license ...

In 1930, Haile Selassie I became Emperor of Ethiopia (aka Abysinia), and would rule for almost 45 years, with a brief exception when the country was occupied by fascist Italy. During that time, he paid particular attention to Ethiopia’s military strength. As part of his coronation celebration he ...

Today I am joined by an Estonian collector friend to discuss gun laws in Estonia. This a continuing series on gun laws in different countries around the world, and is intended to be an overview only - we do not cover every detail and many subtleties are generalized. I find it interesting to learn...

Juan Erquiaga was a Peruvian Army officer who was introduced to Gordon Ingram and the Police Ordnance Company, probably during Ingram's time working on sales of the Model 6 submachine gun to Peru. Erquiaga first moved to the United States in 1951, and was hired by Police Ordnance. During his time...

This cut-down Beretta Model 38/44 submachine gun was made by the EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston) independence group, which fought in the late 1950s for Cyprus to be reunified with Greece, instead of being a British colony. It shows a clever use of a Bren gun barrel handle as a front gr...

Juan Esperanza was one of the two partners who formed the Astra company (with Pedro Unceta). When the two had a falling-out in 1925 and parted ways, Esperanza formed his own company and went on something of a patenting binge. He made an unsuccessful attempt at designing a new machine gun for the ...

There is a second gun museum in Cody Wyoming that is a lot smaller than the main one, but just as interesting - albeit in very different way. The Cody Dug Up Gun Museum houses a large collection of guns literally "dug up" and in less-than-ideal condition. These can be fascinating to see, as much ...

Almost as soon as the Degtyarev DP-27 was put into Soviet military service, variations were developed for aircraft (DA) and tank (DT) use. The tank pattern we have here is actually a later improved DTM model, but it shares most features with the DT. It has a collapsing stock to save space inside ...

Israel was one of the very First Nations to adopt the FN FAL rifle - after Canada but before many actual NATO nations. Israel made its first purchases of the rifles in 1955, and delayed them almost immediately in the 1956 Suez Crisis. The first rifles were wholly made by FN in Belgium, but over t...

Russian small arms researcher Max Popenker joins us again today, and this time he is discussing the history and development of the Dragunov rifle. We start from the desire to match longer-ranged NATO forces and the competition between Simonov, Konstantinov, and Dragunov through its development an...

Patented in 1885 by Romanian military officer Haralamb Dimancea, this revolver is actually a true hammerless design. Instead of simply shrouding a hammer inside the frame, Dimancea used a pair of rotating sprockets to cock and release a striker and act as hand and stop for the cylinder. The Gatli...

The D30 is a Soviet 122mm multi-role gun introduced in the 1960s and still in use around the world today. It has a somewhat unusual 3-leg mount that is slower to set up than a standard trail, but allows for complete 360-degree rotation of the gun. The piece was designed for both indirect fire (ma...

After World War Two, the Czech economy was in serious need of money to recover from the ravages of war. The arms factory at Brno was not bound by the same restrictions as German manufacturers, and still had a production line for the Mauser K98k, which they had been making for the Wehrmacht. Eager...