The Cosmi is a very high-end boutique Italian sporting shotgun. It has all the looks and lines of a single shot break-action gun, but hiding inside is a long recoil self-loading action and 8-round magazine tube.

The video I have today is really only half a video - I filmed this footage back i...

In 1928, the Italian army adopted a rifle-mounted grenade launcher. It was a potentially interesting weapon which wound up being fatally handicapped by the use of ineffective grenades. The basic idea was to mount a second rifle receiver to the side of a Model 91TS carbine, but with an integral gr...

After failing to acquire a license to produce the M16 rifle, Beretta worked with SIG from 1963 through 1968 to develop 5.56mm infantry rifles. When the companies parted ways, SIG went on to produce the SIG-540 and Beretta developed the AR-70. It was introduced on the market in 1972, and was adopt...

For several decades, the Beretta company’s handguns and submachine guns were nearly all designed by the very talented Tulio Marengoni…but nothing can last forever. After World War 2, Beretta engineer Domenico Salza began working on a new SMG design, one which would be more compact and more contro...

I would like to propose that the M38 Carcano short rifle was, despite the poor reputation of the Carcano series of rifles, one of the best thought out bolt action weapons of World War 2. Why, you ask? Well, let's consider...

Only a few nations actually recognized the short ranges at which comb...

The Breda Model 30 was the standard Italian light machine gun of World War II, and is a serious contender for “worst machine gun ever”. Yes, given the choice we would prefer to have a Chauchat (which really wasn’t as bad as people today generally think).

The Breda 30 suffered from all manner o...

The LAW-12 was a sister product to the much better-known SPAS-12 shotgun made by Franchi in the 1980s. The SPAS was a selectable pump or semiauto system, and the LAW was semiauto only. This made it simpler, less expensive, and about 2 full pounds lighter. It was intended for the law enforcement m...

After World War Two, both the Beretta and Breda companies in Italy began manufacturing M1 Garand rifles. When Italy decided that they wanted a more modern selective-fire, magazine-fed rifle, they chose to adapt the M1 Garand to that end rather than develop a brand new rifle. Two Beretta engineers...

Dozens of countries around the world received M1 Garand rifles from the United States in the decades after World War Two, and Denmark was one of those that not only got some rifle but went so far as to formally adopt the M1 as its post-war standard. The US and Denmark signed a mutual defense agre...

The pre-war Beretta Model 38A was a magnificent SMG, but it included a fair number of fancy elements that would prove to costly to justify once wartime production needs grew. Beretta would simplify the design progressively over the course of the war. What we have today is a Model 38/42 with a muc...

The Beretta Model 38A was an outstanding SMG at the beginning of World War Two, loaded with features and very easy to shoot. However, it was expensive and complex to produce, and pressures of war forced Beretta to progressively simplify its construction. This happened incrementally, but the most ...

The original Villar Perosa machine gun was a rather odd combination of features; a double-barreled gun in 9mm Glisenti with spade grips and a blistering rate of fire. This proved to be of limited practical utility, and the Officine Di Villar Perosa went back to the drawing board in response to an...

The MTR-8 was Emilio Ghisoni's first revolver design, predating the more popular and better known Mateba semiauto revolvers and the Chiappa Rhino. The MTR-8 was designed for competition shooting, and made in a variety of calibers and configurations, including long carbine versions, different barr...

The Beretta 38A is not a gun that comes to mind for many people today when discussing World War Two submachine guns, but at the time it was one of the most desirable guns of its type. So - does it live up to that reputation?

In the years following World War Two, the Bernardelli company in Italy made an attempt to enter the full-power pistol market with a simple blowback 9mm Parabellum design. They basically scaled up their existing .32/.380 pocket pistol designs to the larger cartridge, and actually designed this new...

Amerigo Cei-Rigotti was a major in the Italian Bersaglieri (light infantry) in 1900, wen his innovative self-loading rifle design was first introduced. Unlike many or the very early semiauto rifle designs, the Cei-Rigotti is a light, handy, and pretty compact rifle:

The rifle was select-fire, ...

We have been able to find very little information on the Vitali 1910 automatic pistol, but we did have the opportunity to take a look at one recently. It is very clearly marked Vitali 1910 Terni, but bears no other markings whatsoever. The gun is much more typical of its era than the Hino-Komuro,...

Today we have one of the oldest guns we've looked at, a Lorenzoni repeating flintlock pistol. The system was designed by an Italian gunmaker in Florence name Michele Lorenzoni. They were made in very small numbers, and the workmanship is stunning, especially considering that they were first manuf...