A few months ago FN America was able to import 400 parts sets from original Belgian Gendarmerie FAL rifles. I got one of them, and had it completed by DSA. They made receivers with Gendarmerie markings, as well as the barrel and other parts not included with the kit. So today we'll take a look at...

Swords of the Emperor: A Guide to the Identification of Imperial Japanese Swords, 1873 – 1945 is a comprehensive reference work examining a little-studied period in the Japanese swordmaking tradition.

Japan is internationally renowned for its traditional swords, but comparatively little has be...

Dr. Jackson Crawford and I got the idea for our collaborative April fools videos on Viking firearms and gunpowder almost 8 months ago, when we visited Iceland together on the way to Finnish Brutality 2022. We took some time this week to talk about the origins of the videos and some of the Easter ...

From Thunderchild on Patreon:

"How would you see a modern major nation (US, USSR/Russia, China, etc) simplify their small arms in a large scale war, WW3 or Cold War gone hot? You've mentioned in the past how most nations end up having to simplify to meet demands, so why not start simplified?"
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Lots of people put together significant gun collections over a lifetime, and want to see those collections preserved after they pass. This often manifests as looking for a museum that will keep a collection intact and display it - which is unfortunately a nearly impossible goal.

First, it is v...

Hi-Point has chosen to release a new carbine, the Model 3095 - in 7.65mm French Long! Well, not quite...it's actually in .30 Super Carry. But it will run 7.65mm French Long, so I clearly need to have one...

If you are familiar with the other carbine Hi-Point makes, you will find no surprises i...

The Midnight Brutality match was only feasible because of the assistance of the 1 Shepherd Leadership Institute cadre, and so I want to take a few minutes today to talk about just who they are. It is an organization founded in 1981 that uses infantry tactics and exercises to teach leadership. Int...

Greenland is a remote and desolate land without a significant industrial base, but there is a demand for hunting rifles there. As the place has long been a Danish colony since 1814, its trade was restricted to Denmark - including rifles. The Danish military received a substantial number of M1917 ...

Launched in 2016, the Bren 2 was a significant upgrade program over the original Bren 805 rifle. In addition to being offered in both 5.56mm and 7.62x39mm with user-changeable barrels, the Bren 2 was both simpler and lighter than the 805. virtually every part of the rifle was improved, from remov...

Today's item is an example of the smallest centerfire pistol ever made - a 2.7mm Kolibri semiauto. About a thousand of these were made between 1910 and 1914, firing a 3-grain projectile at about 650 fps (for a total of 3 ftlb of muzzle energy). It may be insanely impractical, but it's a great pi...

The M1895 Lee Navy was a rifle well ahead of it's time - a smallbore (6mm) straight-pull bolt action adopted by the US Navy at the same time that the US Army was adopting the Krag-Jorgenson. The Lee Navy was designed by James Paris Lee (the same man who designed the Lee Enfield action), and was a...

Manufactured in Brooklyn from 1861 until 1863, Moore's revolver was a 7-shot single-action piece firing .32 rimfire cartridges. What makes it unique is its swing-out cylinder design - the first commercial revolver in the US to use this mechanism. A latch on the back of the frame released the enti...

The Khyber Pass is a well known center of arms production, with gunmaking there going back at least 100 years. The quality of craftsmanship varies greatly, from excellent and safe weapons to thoroughly unsafe guns made with little more than hand files and drills. In the last decade or so, much of...

The Type 97 was a copy of the Czech ZB-26 machine gun which was used in early Japanese tanks and tankettes. It is chambered for 8mm Mauser, and uses standard ZB-26 20-round magazines. This particular one is in the collection of the owner at Battlefield Vegas, a machine gun rental range in Las Veg...

The Fiala Model 1920 was a manually-operated repeating pistol in .22LR caliber that was marketed with the backing of famed polar explorer Anthony Fiala. The guns came as a set of one frame, three barrels (3", 7.5", and 20") and a removable shoulder stock. This allowed the owner to set the gun up ...

The Cobray Terminator is an unusual - and unusually impractical - single-shot 12 gauge shotgun. It uses a sort of open bolt system in which the barrel is under spring pressure, and slams backwards into a fixed firing pin when the trigger is pulled. Only about 1500 of these were made before they w...

The Ladies Home Companion was a pistol (technically) made by the Cobray company on the same frame as their 12ga "Street Sweeper" shotgun. It had no stock or front grip, and was chambered for the .45-70 rifle cartridge, carrying 12 rounds in its fixed drum magazine. It's kinda like watching a trai...

The Bullard company was one of the lesser-known firearm manufacturers during the late 1800s, producing both single-shot falling block and lever-action repeating rifles. This particular example is a .45 caliber large-frame sporter. It was originally a very fancy, high end version of the gun, and s...

The "Apache" was a combination knife, brass knuckle, and revolver made by several companies in Belgium and France, which became associated with a group of street thugs in Paris around the turn of the century.

The T124E2 was the last US antitank gun, and was discontinued after only about 100 had been made - before it was put into service. It was a high velocity 76mm piece, and was replaced by the much smaller 75mm recoilless rifle.

The "Hermit Kingdom" of North Korea has a number of somewhat unusual military firearms that are not quite direct copies of anything else, but we very rarely get to see example of them up close. The Type 70 was intended for high-ranking officers, replacing the Type 64 (which was a copy of the Brow...

The Radium was the predecessor to the much more well-known (and more successful) Ruby pistol made by Gabilonda y Urresti, which was sold to the French Army by the hundreds of thousands during World War One. The Radium was very unusual in its magazine design, which featured a spring loaded sliding...

Most countries still had anti-tank rifles in their military inventory at the beginning of WWII - the Solothurn S18-100, the Lahti L39, the Boys AT Rifle, the PTRD and PTRS, and so on. For Germany, this role was fulfilled by the Panzerbüchse 39, a single-shot falling block rifle firing a high velo...

Two of the scarcest and least known of John Pedersen's designs are the Model GY and GX rifles, which are basically copies of the production model of the M1 Garand. After losing out in the Army rifle trials with his toggle-locked rifle design, Pedersen made one last attempt to garner a US military...