The basic equipment of the Finnish Army came from what was left in Finland by departing Russian soldiers when Finland declared independence. As the Russians had no scoped rifles at that time, Finland didn't have any either. The Finnish Army began experimenting slowly with the concept of a scoped ...

We looked at the 7.62mm conversion of the No4 Enfield into Rifle L8 yesterday. Part of that program was an attempt to develop a new sniper rifle on the L8 platform. To this end, six good-quality No4(T) Lee Enfield sniper rifles were tested for accuracy, then made into L8 rifles and fitted with No...

In 1986, the French Army adopted the FR-F2 (Fusil à Répétition F2) as its standard sniper rifle. The F2 was never manufactured new; it was an improvement made on existing FR-F1 rifle by giving them new 7.62mm NATO barrels, new flexible bipods, and thermal sleeves over the barrels. Of 6,000 FR-F1 ...

Today I've taken the FR-F2 to the range to try it out. I'm using the early French Army scope, an APX L806-04. This is a 3.85x optic basically modeled on the German WW2 ZF-4. It has a big simple German post reticle, and the -04 variation indicated that the BDC cam has been calibrated for 7.62mm NATO.

The standard Canadian sniper's rifle of World War One was the MkIII Ross fitted with a Warner & Swasey "musket sight" purchased from the United States. However, armorers in the field did create sniping rifles using other scopes - in particular the Winchester A5. The A5 was a popular commercial ri...

Germany was the earliest adopter of scoped rifles in World War One, and produced more of them over the course of the war than any other power. After an initial stop-gap effort to scrounge up civilian hunting rifles, a sniper conversion program was adopted by the main German rifle factories. Germa...

The ZfK-55 is basically a K31 action, with a bunch of modifications to convert it into a very nice marksman's rifle. The more obvious changes are the muzzle brake (very reminiscent of the second model FG-42, which makes sense as the Swiss experimented with those rifle quite a bit after the war), ...

While Czechoslovakia was a part of the eastern bloc, it did a pretty thorough job of developing its own weapons rather than use standard Russian designs. For example, the vz52 pistol, vz52, 52/57, and 58 rifles, the uk59 light machine gun, and more. Well, their military sniper rifle was closer to...

The Swiss experimented with scoped sniper rifles during World War II, and the results were the K31/42 and the K31/43. Only a couple thousand were made between the two models, and they were not considered particularly successful. Ultimately they were replaced by the ZfK-55 (a much better rifle for...

As World War One stagnated into trench warfare, snipers and machine guns quickly proliferated, and exposure above the parapet of one's trench could be extremely hazardous. This leaves one with the question of, how to shoot back without risking a bullet?

One answer that was devised was to mount...

The Soviet Union produced more sniper rifles during WWII than any other country, and was one of very few to have a well-developed sniper program in place before the war began. Starting in the early 1930s, they developed a sniper variant of the standard M91/30 infantry rifle, with technical assist...

(Note: I misspoke regarding Roosevelt's letter; he was President at the time and writing to the Secretary of War)

The US military adopted the Model 1903 Springfield rifle in 1903, replacing the short-lived Krag-Jorgenson rifle. However, the 1903 would undergo some pretty substantial changes in 1...

Patented in 1884 and designed by retired Civil War General William Franklin, this was an effort by Colt to win a military contract for a repeating rifle. It was a wholly new rifle (not a conversion) that operated like a Gras action, was chambered for .45-70 cartridges, and fed from a 9-round hopp...

In April 1940, WaPrüf 2 directed Mauser to begin development of a shortened Master carbine with a 490mm (19.3”) barrel, presumably for specialty troops. Development meandered on until July 1942, by which time just 28 rifles had been made, in two series. The first batch were numbered 3-15 and the ...

The CR39 ("crosse repliable", or folding stock) is the paratrooper version of the MAS 36. The need for a more compact and transportable pattern was recognized almost as soon as the MAS 36 was finalized, originally for paratroops but in practice also for alpine troops. Two years were spent devisin...

Made by Carl Gebert, a master gunsmith in Munich, this custom sporting rifle exhibits all the fancy options available in the 1870s or 1880s! The base action is an 1871 Mauser, which was a single shot rifle. However, this specially made one had been modified to us a fixed box magazine holding 3 or...

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...

This is a fascinating experimental Remington Keene rifle, build in an attempt to alleviate concerns about magazine tube detonation. With centerfire ammunition in a linear tube magazine, there was an ever-present (if very slim) risk of a bullet detonating the primer ahead that it was resting again...

The Thorneycroft was the first military bullpup rifle, developed in the United Kingdom in response to combat experiences in the second Boer War showing the British infantry rifles to be overly long and cumbersome. Scotsman James Baird Thorneycroft figured he could address this by moving the actio...

Among the many Swedish Mauser carbines imported into the United States is an interesting batch of guns marked "InterArms G33/50". What are these actually?

They are rifles imported by InterArms, of course, and they began life as proper Swedish m/94 and m/94-14 carbines. Upon import, though, the...

As World War Two expanded to encompass the whole US economy, it became clear to the Army that some cost cutting measures would be required. One place that was a clear choice was in rimfire .22 caliber training rifles. Since the 1920s, the US had used training and competition rifles from Springfie...

At the end of When Germany capitulated in 1945, there were nearly 400,000 German soldiers in Norway (largely thanks to the efforts of the Norwegian Resistance to prevent them from being transferred south). This provided Norway with a massive supply of K98k Mauser rifles to reequip their armed for...

Jeff Cooper was an icon of the American firearms community, best known for his work with the Southwest Pistol League and father of modern practical handgun competition. Cooper was a Marine Corps veteran and avid hunter in addition, and in the mid 1980s he began to codify a concept he would call t...

The effort to create a .22 rimfire training and competition version of the 1903 Springfield rifle began just after World War One, as a project of the esteemed then-Major Julian Hatcher. His work would result in the M1922 rifle, of which about 2000 were made. However, the design would go through s...