This appears to be a handmade prototype form one P. (or J. P.) Percy of Albany, NY, although I don’t have any information about who he was or when he built this. The gun itself is a .44/.45 caliber rimfire rifle, with three triggers. The first is actually a latch to release the tip-up barrel, and...

Sweden tested the Luger in 1904, along with all the major semiauto pistols available at the time. The Luger was found to be the most accurate gun in the trials, but expensive and not as reliable in cold weather as the Browning 1903 - which was formally adopted as the m/1907 a few years later and ...

This is a prototype or one-off over/under sporting shotgun, made in a bullpup configuration. It is basically two long slabs of wood clamshell around a pair of barrels, with the action at the very end in the stock. The breech rotates up to open, activated by a lever on the surface of the buttplate...

After World War One, the British looked at how to apply the lessons of the war to development of a new infantry rifle. Even before the war, a decision had been made to move to an aperture type rear sight - which would have been used on the Pattern 1913 Enfield, had the war no interrupted adoption...

In April 1940, the US Ordnance Department circulated a request for a new light machine gun to replace the Browning M1919A4. It was to be shorter and lighter than the Browning, and was not to be based on the Browning system (presumably the Department wanted to move on from the bulky and heavy 1919...

When SIG was developing the pistol that would ultimately be adopted as the m/49 by the Danish Army and the P49 by the Swiss Army (P210 commercially), they initially experimented with both single stack and double stack variations. Today, we will take a look at a SIG 44/16, the double stack version...

Built in the 1990s, this rifle is part of an experimental series of precision rifles made by H&K. It is marked "SL7 Match", and uses the same action as the standard SL7 sporting rifle (the roller-delay blowback system of the G3). It is set in a competition type stock the an adjustable cheekrest a...

In the 1980s, the US Navy requested a new submachine gun to replace the MP5 then in use. In particular, the Navy wanted a gun that was optimized for use with a suppressor. H&K built two models of experimental guns in the 1980s to meet this request, creatively named the SMG and SMG II.

Both gun...

In the 1960s, the Sterling company began to worry about the prospects of continued sales of the Sterling (Patchett) SMG, especially in light of new competitors like the H&K MP5. Its chief design engineer, Frank Waters, created the S11 as a gun to replace the classic Sterling. The S11 was based on...

In 1909, the Austro-Hungarian Empire announced a desire to find a new semiautomatic military rifle, and requested proposals from arms manufacturers. Six rifles were submitted to the resulting trials in 1911, including this model from Steyr chambered for the 7x57mm Mauser cartridge. It uses a two-...

The Viper Mk I was an experimental submachine gun developed in the UK for use by military policemen in post-WW2 occupation West Germany. It was a simplified Sten gun (full-auto only, without the semiauto option normally included in the Sten trigger mechanism) put into a wooden housing. It was int...

In the late 1930s, Walther experimented with the idea of an Olympia target pistol in .32 ACP. They used the frame from a 1936 pattern standard (.22LR) Olympia with a .32 caliber barrel, increased mass slide, and magazine adapted from a Walther PP. The project never progressed beyond the toolroom ...

In the early 1930s, Walther began to experiment with changes to its Olympia target pistol in hopes of beating the Colt Woodsman out of its place as the most popular pistol of the type. The most distinctive difference between the Woodsman and the Olympia was in their grip angles; quite straight fo...

After World War Two, the new NATO defense alliance held a series of trials to adopt a standard cartridge and infantry rifle. This would eventually devolve and the goal of a standardized rifle would be abandoned, but during the early trials there were three main contenders: the British EM-2, the A...

Sorry for the poor audio quality - today I am back at the Cody Firearms Museum talking to Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries in the UK. Jonathan has written a new book on the history of British bullpup firearms, which Headstamp is very proud to be publishing!...

Unlike most countries that adopted bullpup rifles, the French military never had a short-barreled version of their standard FAMAS. However, GIAT created several prototypes as part of their (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to market the FAMAS internationally. Today, we have two to look at, both wi...

The High Standard company only made on .45 caliber pistol, and it was an improvement on the Grant Hammond pistol tested by the US military during World War One. After his gun's rejection by the military, it appears that Grant Hammond took the design to his friend "Gus" Swebelius who ran High Stan...

When Mauser began development of the HSc pistol, it was intended to be a pair of guns - a simple blowback gun in .32 or .380 caliber for civilian and police use and a larger locked-breech type in 9x19mm for military use. Mauser had tried this before with their 1910 pocket pistol, but in that effo...

Courtesy of The Mosin Crate, we have a Soviet "M44L" today. This was an intermediate length (24 inch barrel) pattern of the Mosin Nagant rifle with an M44-style permanently attached folding spike bayonet. Developed in 1944, it was intended to serve as a universal replacement for the Mosin Nagant ...

When the US military held its automatic pistol trials in 1907 (actually beginning in December 1906…), Colt submitted a Model 1905 pistol. Despite what would be considered today to be significant problems, it was judged one of the best guns tested. A few changes were requested (more vertical eject...

In addition to building three main patterns of straight-pull bolt action rifle for the Canadian military and the commercial market, Sir Charles Ross also experimented with self-loading rifles. Starting with a standard Ross Mk III, this experimental rifle has a gas piston and trigger to allow auto...

The very first group of C96 pistols made. -about 200 in total - are called "System Mauser" pistols. They have this hand-engraved on the top of the barrel, and have a number of other very early features that would quickly change. Most of these changes involve lightening the gun, but they also have...

When the Italian military was looking for a new sidearm in the early 1930s, they really liked the pistol submitted by Beretta - but they also really liked the Walther PP. During the development process, the military requested that Beretta add a Walther-style slide-mounted safety to the Model 1934...

The NATO rifle trials of the early 1950s eventually chose the 7.62mm x 51mm cartridge, and the British and Belgians agreed on the FAL rifle to shoot it (and they thought the US would as well, but that's another story). The British government formally accepted the FAL for troop trials, and in 1954...