Yep, it's that time again - we've had another 2-Gun Action Challenge Match. I was hoping to take a Ross rifle this month, but it didn't arrive in time - so instead I used a heavily modified M1 Garand. I've had some people ask what my personal favorite (practical-use) guns are, and this month I'm ...

It's 102F at the range, my rifle weighs 20 pounds, and the bipod puts me in Open class. Why do this? Because it's fun, that's why...2-Gun Action Challenge Match Tucson: it's like the Crossfit of run-n-gun!

The rifle is a semiauto Madsen LMG, made by Midwest Metal Creations.

Once again, we have video today from the monthly 2-gun Action Challenge Match. This time, I thought it would be interesting to do a bit of a historical matchup, and look at the oft-discussed question of how much of an advantage a shooter with an Enfield has over one with a Mauser. So, with the he...

2-Gun Action Challenge Match Overview

So, after the hype about setting the FG-42 up against the M1 at a practical action match, I unfortunately have to let you down. We had a bit of a mishap right before the match started, which rendered the FG unable to be used. It's disappointing, but we're going to get it fixed up and try again in...

The US military experimented almost continuously with new repeating rifles between the end of the US Civil War and the beginning of the 20th century, and the rifles submitted for testing are a fascinating spectrum of ideas. Many were purchased in relatively small quantities for military field tes...

William John Whiting spent about 10 years trying to get the British military to adopt his automatic pistol, and finally achieved his goal in 1913 with a contract for pistols supplied to the British Royal Navy - only to have the expense of World War I wipe away all interest in self-loading pistols.

The Walther KPK was a modified version of the PPK automatic pistol made in very small numbers by Walther in hopes of winning a new military contract. Mechanically identical to the PPK, the KPK has a lengthened slide to effectively shroud the hammer, preventing it from catching or snagging on clot...

The Walther HP was the immediate predecessor to the P38 pistol that was adopted into widespread German service. The HP (Heeres Pistole, or Army Pistol) was offered for commercial sale and export by Walther. It was formally adopted by the Swedish army in 1939, but only a small number were shipped ...

The story of the .45ACP Lugers is a bit complex, and widely misunderstood. What most people believe is that two such guns were made for US military testing, one was lost, and the other is worth a million dollars. Well, that's virtually all incorrect. In actuality, probably about a half dozen were...

I recently had a chance to take a look at a rifle that has been floating around the Japanese collector's community causing grief since for at least 25 years. It is a Type 99 Arisaka, specifically a first-series Nagoya production gun, serial number 84664. What makes it unusual is that it had a Typ...

The JoLoAr pistol was a combination of a poor-selling and unremarkable Spanish blowback semiauto pistol called the Sharpshooter and an idea by a man named Jose Lopez Arnaiz (whose name is the source of the pistol's name). Arnaiz conceived the idea of mounting a lever (palanca in Spanish) onto a p...

I recently got a copy of Tom Davis Jr's brand new book on the history of British use of the Thompson SMG. This is very much a history book rather than a technical book, and it is based on meticulously researched documents from the British national archives, right down to the hand-written notes sc...

Today we're looking at one of Ohio Ordnance's semiauto M1918A3 BARs - how it shoots, how it works, and what the pros and cons of the military BAR variants were in World War I and World War II.

I've been looking forward to shooting one of the local 2-Gun Action Challenge Matches with a Swiss straight-pull rifle for a while now, and had the chance this past weekend. I was debating between using a Gewehr 1911 (the older style long rifle) or the K31 (newer carbine variant), and so I left i...

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...

The miquelet lock is generally considered the first true, mature flintlock action in the progression of firearms technology. It combined the pan cover and frizzen (the plate against which the flint strikes) into a single multi-purpose part. This particular pistol is a good example of the characte...

The Smith & Wesson 1940 Light Rifle is one of the spectacular failures of arms design, on several levels. It was too expensive, too heavy, too fragile (ironically, given the weight), too difficult to manipulate, and just all-in-all bad. To put the bad-ness in perspective, the British cancelled th...

This particular rifle is a prototype of the reproduction VG1-5 (or more correctly called the Gustloff MP-507) rifles that will be available for sale soon from Chuck at GunLab.net. The VG1-5 was a gas-delayed blowback design that has been used in handguns, but not in any other rifle designs. For m...

The Type 94 Nambu is a much-maligned pistol used by the Japanese military from 1935-1945. It's actually a much better gun than people give it credit for, but we will address that in a later video. For now, enjoy some high-speed footage of it firing!

Slow motion footage of a Luger pistol firing - 500 fps and 2000 fps.

Today's high speed video analysis is the first Browning-style pistol that was at hand when I took out the camera: a Star Model B Super. Manufactured in Spain for many years, this basic pistol was made in both 9mm Luger and 9mm Largo variations as well as full-size and shortened varieties. This pa...

Today's slow motion subject is a Russian PKM general-purpose machine gun, often considered the best overall machine gun design in service today. These clips were filmed at 2000 frames/second.

Today we're looking at a luftgekühltes maschinengewehr 08/15 in slow motion - a lightened and air-cooled version of the Maxim used on German WWI aircraft. This particular example is set up as a Zeppelin gun, with a buttstock and pistol grip (guns mounted on fixed-wing aircraft had different fire-...