The Benelli MP3S is a very rare pistol in .32 S&W, and a nearly unheard of one in 9mm Parabellum. Well, thanks to viewer Todd we have one of those 9mm examples to take to the range today - thanks, Todd! I figured it would be interesting to try it side by side with my standard Benelli B76 and see ...

Benelli is not the company we think of today for modern service pistols - and according to the sales record of the B76 family, they weren't in the 1980s either. Designed in the early 1970s and put into production in 1976, the Benelli B76 is very pretty single-stack service pistol, notable for bei...

The Grande Puissance - High Power - was John Browning's last firearms design. In fact, he only began the design; it was taken to completion by his protege Dieudonné Saive at FN in Belgium. It was the best military handgun of the time, with a double-stack 13-round magazine capacity, and chambered ...

The Becker shotgun is a very unusual blow-forward, revolving cylinder shotgun made in Germany in the 1920s (although it was originally patented in the late 1890s). Only a very small number were made - allegedly as few as 100. The serial number on this one appears to be 755, which could mean more ...

When you get into expensive historical firearms, values begin to diverge significantly for guns in particularly good condition. This, naturally, leads some people to take poor quality guns and make them better. Sometimes this is done with an innocent view to improving condition, and sometimes it ...

The story of the Austen submachine gun did not end when the Mk I guns were pulled from combat service in 1944. The manufacturer continued to work on an improved version, which would be ready in 1946, after the end of World War Two. Only 200 were made total, and they were both adopted and declared...

When World War Two began, Australia saw little threat of invasion from Germany (obviously), and sent a substantial number of firearms to Britain to help arm the Home Guard there, which was seriously concerned about the possibility of a German invasion. When Japan and Australia declared war in Dec...

The B25 was introduced by FN in 1925; the last of John Browning's designs and the first successful over/under sporting shotgun. The one we are looking at today was created as a presentation piece for the celebrations in 1939 for the inauguration of the Albert Canal between Liege and Antwerp. As p...

When Italy signed an armistice with the Allied powers in 1944, the German military took over control of several Italian arms factories still in their geographic control. These included Beretta and Armaguerra, in Cremona. The German military was happy to use Italian pistols and submachine guns, an...

Thanks to Staghounds for the invaluable help researching this episode! The French Munition Lancée à la Main Pierre is one of the little-known French infantry weapons of the Great War. Originally developed as a man-portable version of the Munition Trébuchet Bloc de Rocher 1873, it would be progres...

The Hungarian AMP-69 is, I think, the undisputed ugliest military AK variant ever fielded. It is truly an example of function over form, designed specifically for the role of dedicated rifle grenade launcher. To this end, the muzzle is fitted with a grenade spigot, a side rail mounts a high-angle...

Turkey adopted the 8mm Mauser cartridge as part of its modernization after World War One, and with the assistance of German technicians developed a copy of the German 8mm S cartridge. Most of the surplus Turkish 8mm ammunition available in th eUNited States at this time is 1940s production, with ...

Towards the end of the Cold War, Romania was a major exporter of arms and ammunition on the world market. Today we are looking at Romanian pattern 1971 8mm Mauser ammunition, made between 1972 and 1978 (this particular sample is form 1972). It was produced at the U.M. Sadu plant in Bumbesti Jiu, ...

One of the most mechanically unusual rifles I have had the chance to examine is the SIG AK-53. One of a long line of interested experimental self-loading designs made by SIG between the 1920s and 1950s, the AK53 is a gas operated rifle with a fixed breechblock and a barrel that cycles forward whe...

I am very happy to be joined today via Skype by Russian small arms researcher Max Popenker. You may know Max from his nearly 20 years publishing world.guns.ru, one of the original small arms reference web sites. He has also written numerous magazine articles and several books in both Russian and ...

Back before World War One, when Abercrombie & Fitch was still a true sporting goods company catering to the likes of Joseph Steinbeck and Theodore Roosevelt, they decided to offer Luger pistols for sale. This was simple enough, with guns ordered from DWM in Germany. It became harder after the war...

The SPIW program began in 1962 with entries from Colt, Springfield, AAI, and Winchester. The first set of trials were a complete failure, and both Colt and Winchester abandoned the project at that point. AAI pressed on, producing these second generation rifles - one for trials in 1966 and one aft...

I finally have a source for top quality reliable 7.65mm French Long, thanks to Steinel! I can't link to them, but I'm sure anyone who wants some themselves can find them online. Anyway, with ammo now available, I decided to test out the French 1935A and 1935S pistols side by side. First slow fire...

In the latter stages of World War One, the German military was looking for new arms for its Sturmtruppen. Without a reliable self-loading rifle design to use, they instead focused on pistil caliber arms. The first to be used was the existing lP08 artillery Luger, fitted with a drum magazine. At t...

The French Navy chose not to adopt the Gras rifle, and continued to use the paper-cartridge, needlefire Chassepot into the late 1870s. When they finally decided to adopt a new metallic-cartridge rifle, they decided to jump right to a repeater. Testing was done in 1877 of the Winchester-Hotchkiss,...

This ludicrously huge handgun is actually a 10-gauge Colt 1855 Revolving Shotgun with a cut-down barrel and a newly made grip frame. The backstop and trigger guard of the shotgun were handily reshaped into a grip frame, and the finished product actually looks nicely proportional - until you try t...

Germany developed its first 37mm (or as German designations put it, 3.7cm) antitank gun in the last months of World War One; a very simple design built using barrels from obsolete Hotchkiss revolving cannons. In the mid 1920s, the concept was reinvigorated by Rheinmetall, which developed a much m...

One of the more mainstream attempts at incorporating electronic into firearms technology on the civilian market was the Remington EtronX, introduced in 2000. It consisted of a standard Remington 700 bolt action rifle, with the trigger and firing mechanisms replaced by electric versions. The firin...

We have reached the final iteration of the Winchester lever action rifle development story today, the Model 1895. This was another John Browning design, although the locking system is basically the same as the 1894 but with the bolt extending over the top of the locking block and hiding it from s...