Today's Ethiopian Oddity appears to be a factory-built Mauser short rifle, but embellished with a couple replacement parts (nosecap retainer, stock, bayonet lug) and some truly mysterious markings. The top of the receiver has been milled down flat, and hand-engraved with a quite odd crest, along ...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity is a rifle that began its like as an early Lee Enfield MkI made by London Small Arms. It has the original buttstock, early style safety, volley sights, and magazine cutoff from that configuration. However, at some point it appears to have been reworked by an Ethiopian arm...

The Beaumont was one of the early European breechloading metallic-cartridge rifles, adopted in 1871. The rifle is a combination of elements form the Chassepot, the Mauser-Norris, and a unique V-spring firing pin system invented by John Claes of Liege. The rifle was submitted to Dutch testing by E...

The DS-39 is an air-cooled heavy machine gun designed by Degtyarev, which was intended to replace the 1910 Maxim as the standard Soviet HMG. It was lighter and more mobile than the Maxim, and also offered two rates of fire for ground and anti-aircraft use. Testing all seemed to go well, and produ...

The A&W Diverter was designed by Clifford Ashbrook and Wilson Wing to change a shotgun's circular pattern into a horizontal linear one. They applied for a patent in 1967, and it was granted in 1970 (US Patent #3,492,750). Their invention was similar in purpose to the "duckbill" chokes tried out b...

Long associated with Parisian street gangs called "Apaches" (after the American Indian tribe), there were two main patterns of combination knife/knuckle/firearm made in the mid/late 1800s in France. This one was designed by J. Delhaxhe, and features a solid frame set up as brass knuckles. The fir...

It's time for Desert Brutality 2021! This match is a bit different form previous Brutality matches; it required three guns: pistol, rifle, and precision rifle. I chose to enter the Cold War division (all guns dating form 1946-1991) using a couple of French classics: my FAMAS and new FR-F2. For a ...

When we left off yesterday, I had a perfect streak going with my FR-F2, but the choice of a .357 revolver for a Brutality match was looking pretty questionable. Well, we've got our more stages today to round out the match. I'll be shooting out to 550 yards, shooting weak-handed, charging up hills...

When the Tikkakoski company bought the rights to produce the kp31 "Suomi" submachine gun in the 1930s, they attempted to make a bunch of export sales, although none were very successful. By the late 30s more countries were interested, but by that time Finnish military needs took precedence. While...

There were a surprising number of different revolving rifles produced in the United States in the mid 1800s, including a number of turret rifles like this one. Specifically, we have here a 7-shot, approximately .55 caliber Daniels turret rifle (well, not technically a rifle, as it is smoothbore)....

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...

The Colt Model 1847 Walker is one of the most valuable of all US military handguns in the collecting community, with examples sometimes breaking seven figures. However, the Walker was in many ways a remarkable failure as a service sidearm, mostly because it tended to explode. By today's standards...

What we today call the Collette Gravity Gun was actually designed by a gunsmith named Jean Nicolas Herman in Liege between 1850 and 1854. He was an employee of Victor Collette (note: spellings vary), and licensed his patent for Collette to produce. The system was first shown at the 1855 Paris Int...

The British Royal Navy tended to accumulate some of the obsolescent patterns of Enfield rifles around the turn of the 19th century, as the Army had higher priority for the new types of rifle. This resulted in a rather odd and poorly-documented pattern, the Charger-Loading Lee Enfield (CLLE) MkI N...

While the Indian Army was looked down upon by much of the British military, it saw much more combat service than its European counterpart. The Indian Army was actually faster than the British to recognize and adopt a number of small arms improvements, and the CLLE MkI India Pattern is a good exam...

The Clair brothers were three men from Saint Etienne, France – Benoit, Jean Baptiste, and Victor Clair. They submitted their first patent in 1889, which described in general a gas-operating system for firearms. This was followed by a British patent (#15,833) in 1893 for their system, which they c...

My friend Rhett Neumayer has been experimenting with an unorthodox but very interesting way to use handguns that don't have reciprocating slides. He fits a red dot optic on a relatively tall mount, then presses the back of the pistol into his cheek while gripping it over the top of the frame with...

With the MR-73 revolvers finally becoming regularly available in the US, I figured it would be really interesting to see how they are made! So, I headed over to Chapuis Armes, where the Directeur Général, Vincent Chapuis, gave me a really nice tour. Want to see? Let's go in...

The Celmi brothers were Italians who moved to Uruguay and opened an arms factory. They are best known for sporting shotguns, but in 1943 they introduced an automatic pistol, much like the Walther PP but with a removable barrel bushing, a la FN 1910. Quality was questionable, and only a few hundre...

Today we have a Q&A guest: Jari Laine, CEO of Varusteleka. Jari is active in the Finnish reserves in addition to his role as CEO, and exemplifies the company's practical expertise in designing and producing topicality military gear as well as sourcing all manner of surplus. Located just north of ...

My previous experience shooting a VHS-2 was limited to a small indoor range, so I’ve been really looking forward to getting this Springfield Hellion out to a proper range. First up, we have a 2-Gun match with it – one with stages specifically written to fit bullpups. So we have lots of maneuverin...

I am honored today to be able to bring you an interview with Christian Prouteau, the founder and original leader of GIGN. This is France's premier elite counter-terrorism force, who have been at the forefront of developing modern special operations techniques and standards. Prouteau led more than...

0:00:00 - Introduction
0:00:27 - Stocked pistols as submachine gun substitutes?
0:03:20 - Haunted guns?
0:03:58 - Is the NGSW hybrid cartridge case a gimmick?
0:06:23 - My loadout for Desert Brutality 2021 (and Finnish Brutality 2021)
0:08:42 - M60 vs FN MAG
0:11:49 - Why so few 10mm Auto P...

0:00:00 - Introduction
0:00:28 - What am I using to learn French?
0:01:21 - How difficult is a C&R license?
0:04:06 - Thoughts on FB Radom's return to the US commercial market?
0:06:22 - Do milling and optics on slides impact pistol reliability?
0:08:09 - Maxim-Tokarev
0:09:29 - Suppressing...