In the aftermath of the Boer War, the British military needed to address critical issues of practical marksmanship with its troops. The Long Lee rifles it had deployed to South Africa suffered significant problems in making real-world hits on the battlefield. In addition to investing in better mu...

Patented in 1868 by Colonel G.H. Money and Mr. M. Walker, this rifle was one of the 10 finalists in the British breechloading rifle trials of 1868. It is a simple falling block system with an internal hammer. In the second set of trials, it proved to be middle of the pack in rapidity of fire (20...

This unique Bergmann Model 1910 was made by Anciens Etablissements Pieper with a grip angled slightly back compared to the standard model. It was also fitted with a square front sight and square rear notch in place of the standard barleycorn style sights. Its serial number (8800) puts it right in...

The Japanese military made the decision to move from a 6.5mm infantry rifle to a more powerful 7.7mm cartridge in the 1930s, with specifications for the new rifle proposed in 1938. In response, the Nagoya and Kokura Arsenals developed new models of rifle and carbine.

What we are looking at tod...

Romania adopted the PKM in 1966, and began manufacturing their own direct copy at Cugir. In the 1990s, the plant designed a model intended for paratroopers, with a shortened barrel and unique side folding stock. Romanian special operations and paratroop units tested them, but declined to purchase...

Today we are going to take a looks at a series of six prototype Roth Theodorovic pistols. These were a design that competed in Austrian pistol trials around the turn of the century, and eventually lost out to the Roth Krnka (adopted as the Roth-Steyr M.7).

Yesterday we looked at the development of the Skorpion PDW/SMG in 9x19mm Parabellum both in the 1960s and then when it was revisited in the 1990s at CZ. Today I have the chance to take one of the 1990s Skorpion 9×19 models out the the range for some firing. I was expecting it to be a fairly viole...

Harrington & Richardson was one of the main contractors for the M14 rifle program, and they also had been a major producer of the M1 Garand rifle. In particular, H&R had produced a .22 rimfire training rifle to mimic the handling of the M1 Garand, which was adopted by the US military as the MC-58...

Immediately upon the liberation of France in 1944, the French military began a process of developing a whole new suite of small arms. As it applied to SMGs, the desire was for a design in 9mm Parabellum (no more 7.65mm French Long), with an emphasis on something light, handy, and foldable. All th...

The final iteration of the Danish Schouboe pistol is this, the model 1916. Produced in prototype quantities only, it took the features of the 1910 pattern (safety and external barrel pivot) and made a few more changes. The slide no longer telescopes over the barrel - possibly to add mass and red...

With the impending success of Colt’s program to develop new .45 caliber pistol for the US military (the 1911), the company began to look for ways to exploit the work that had gone into it. They had previously sold lots of .38 caliber automatic pistols, so why not offer a .38 caliber version of t...

Once Lee-Metford rifle production was in place, the British began working on a carbine version of the same action for their cavalry. In 1893 a trial run of 100 carbines were made, and today we are looking at serial number 32 of that batch. These carbines differ in several ways from the ultimately...

Before the Austro-Hungarian Empire adopted the Roth Steyr Model 1907 as its official cavalry pistol, they of course went through a series of pistol trials. The winners of two sets of trials were the Roth Steyr Models of 1904 and 1906, and today we have an example of each to look at.

Finland's standard light machine gun going into the Winter War was the LS-26, a gun which did not succeed in field use. It was complex and cumbersome, and Finnish troops quickly replaced it with captured Russian DP-27 LMGs. Part of the problem of the LS-26 was it's recoil-operated design. Finnish...

Development of the CZ-2000 began in the 1970s as a replacement for the vz.58 rifle. The project was named "Lada", and was essentially an improved AK-74 rifle chambered for the 5.45x39mm cartridge. The new rifle was mechanically an AK, but had a number improved features including a thumb-operated ...

Today we have a very odd BSA prototype Long Lee rifle. The details of its production are unknown, but it has good provenance; the Charnwood Ordnance collection. What makes the rifle unusual is a unique style of split charger guide unlike either the SMLE type fixed guides or the earlier CLLE guide...

When the German Army wanted a new semiauto service rifle in 1941, it received submissions from two companies; Walther and Mauser. Walther’s design didn’t strictly meet the criteria set forth, but it was clearly the better rifle and would eventually win the competition. This involved conducting tr...

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, France was seriously considering joining the NATO small arms standardization. They were equipped with the MAS 49/56 semiauto rifle at this point, and were looking at three possibilities:

1 – Convert the 49/56 rifles to 7.62 NATO. (This was actually tested wit...

The Alar is an interesting very rare Croatian domestic SMG. It is called the "Alar" after it's designer, Stipe Alar. He first came up with the design in 1971 and built one illegally - which resulted in him going to prison for a time. When the Croatian Homeland War broke out and guns were urgently...

The AKB-15 was a project developed by Arex Defense in Slovenia in 2015. The company received a request from a small country (they decline to reveal exactly who) to modernize a stock of AKM rifles with adjustable stocks, picatinny optics mounting, and new barrels among other features. Arex develop...

At the end of World War Two, the Mauser factory complex was in the French occupation zone, and more than a few Mauser engineers went to work for the French. Among them were Ludwig Vorgimmler and Theodor Löffler. These two men joined the Centre d’Etudes et d’Armement de Mulhouse (CEAM) and worked ...

There have been several examples of the AK being used as the basis for a pistol-caliber SMG or PDW. The Russians made the Vityaz, the Hungarians made the KGPF-9…and the Czechs actually made a version form the CZ-2000. This was the attempt to make a 5.56mm AK family of rifles form the roots of the...

The CZ-2000 project in the Czech Republic (derived from the Lada developed in the late years of Czechoslovakia) envisioned a full suite of infantry arms, much like the AK as used by other countries. There would be an SMG-type compact weapon (akin to the AKS-74U "Krinkov"), a standard infantry rif...

We have previously looked at the development of the CZ 2000 and Lada rifle programs in Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic, and today we are taking a close look at one specific variant. This is the SMG pattern CZ 2000, although by current nomenclature it would not be called an SMG because ...