This book is a bit of an odd one...written by Klaus-Peter König and Martin Hugo in 1987, it is a translation from German or a book intended for the German sport shooting market. It attempts to be a catalog of 9mm Parabellum pistols, but this is impossible because of the number of new designs that...

Rather than review a specific book today, I thought it might be useful to go through my library and pick out a set of 5 general-purpose books that would make a good foundation for a firearms reference library. Specifically, books that cover a lot of ground, have at least a decent amount of detail...

Perry Cox and Bruce Kaufman recently released a book on the very specific details of the Colt SP-1 Sporter rifle and carbine. This was Colt's semiauto civilian model of the AR-15/M-16, and they were the only commercial semiauto AR available for many years. Production ran from 1964 until 1984, and...

Yesterday we looked at the history and development of the vz.82 pistol; today I am taking it out to the BackUp Gun Match. this should be a pretty competitive pistol in this environment, and it actually meets the characteristics of a backup gun quite well. It is light and compact, but still offers...

When the Allied examined the weapons discovered in the German Reich after the war, they came across a device which was classified as a “spring gun” or “trip wire activated static defense machine gun”. Nevertheless, in actual fact it was a practice device with the name “Zielfeuergerät 38” (short “...

The Serbian Army was essentially destroyed in 1915, and lost a massive amount of equipment. It was rebuilt with French assistance and reequipped with French arms in 1917, including about 5,000 Ruby pistols. These were standard French handguns at the time, and those that survived the rest of the w...

Yugoslavia began development of a Kalashnikov pattern rifle in 1959. The Yugoslav rifle would be distinct from the standard Soviet model, as evidenced by features like the gas cutoff for grenade launching and the early use of a true bolt hold open feature.

The first version was the M64, but t...

The Yugoslav M56 is a hybrid of the MP40 general design with the Soviet 7.62x25mm Tokarev cartridge, and a gun whose practical shootability is surprisingly better than its looks would lead one to expect. This is largely the result of a very long receiver tube, which ensures that the bolt does not...

In the aftermath of World War One, German police forces were responsible for maintaining social order is a very chaotic Germany. They were reequipped with small arms, and in particular needed pistols. The ideal sidearm would have been the P08 Luger, but the Treaty of Versailles caused Luger produ...

Today we continue our series on the development of Croatian pistols towards the XD line. Last week we saw Marko Vukovic's first design, and today we are looking at his second. This was the V.M.18, a step towards a more proven system instead of the really unusual flapper locking of the Kordun. The...

The Vigneron was adopted to replace the Sten in Belgian service – so is it actually better than the Sten? In my opinion, yes. The sights and overall handling are better. The pistol grip is a welcome addition, although its contours make the grip safety a bit difficult for me to fully depress.

The Vickers MkI No2 was an improvisation of the British Royal Air Force. They needed arms for airbase defense, without unduly impacting the production of weapons for the infantry. Wheat they had a good supply of were Vickers Gas-Operated (aka Vickers K-class) guns that had been used in now-obsole...

The VHS-1 was heavily influenced by the French FAMAS, albeit with a short stroke gas piston operating system. Early development began in the late 1990s with the prototype designs we looked in over the past few weeks, and the VHS-1 itself really emerged between 2003 and 2005. It was formally annou...

As the end of World War Two loomed close, the German arms industry turned to a number of Volkssturm rifle designs. These were the crudest and simplest rifles that could be made to work with minimal time, labor, and raw materials. Most were bolt action rifles chambered for 8x57mm, like the Walther...

While under international embargo and at war in the late 1970s, South Africa needed a new 7.62mm GPMG. The answer was Vektor's SS77, a design which would replace the FN MAG in South African service in the 1980s. The gun had really substantial problems for many years, and took a lot of work to rev...

Valmet designed the M78 hoping to sell it to the Finnish military as an equivalent to the RPK, but it was not adopted. Instead, they were old a semiautos on the commercial market. Because this was before 1986, new machine guns could still be registered in the US. While the guns were all imported ...

When Japan opened up to the outside world and began to industrialize in the late 1800s, it instituted major military reforms. In place of the samurai tradition, the new Japanese Imperial armed forces emulated the major European powers - France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. One element of this...

The Type 93 Chinese assault rifle is a development of the Type 56 Kalashnikov, produced by the People's Liberation Army of the PRC. While the Type 93 designation suggests that the design originated in 1993, there is no evidence of production before the mid 2020s at the earliest.

Fundamentally...

Many of the small arms developed in North Korea show substantial Czechoslovakian influence, and the Type 73 machine gun is no exception. Based on the concept of the Czech 52/57 light machine gun, the Type 73 is able to use both magazines and belts (although not both simultaneously). fundamentally...

All that is tactical is not necessarily new...and this shotgun is a perfect example. It was put together by a Tucson police officer in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and has all the elements of a very modern "tactical" combat shotgun. It is a Remington Model 11 semiauto shotgun (a licensed copy o...

Aimo Lahti was the premier firearms designer, and the m/26 was his first significant design. Lahti was a Civil Guard armorer, and upon seeing the Lindelof copy of the Bergmann SMG in 1921 he thought he could make something better and cheaper. He took on three partners and formed Konepistooli Osak...

In February of 1943, new production Suomi submachine guns began to include a 10-point compensator built into the barrel shroud. This pattern, really the only substantial variation in Finnish military m/31 production, was identified as the m/31 SJR, an abbreviation for muzzle brake ("suujarru"). S...

Today I'm taking a Skorpion Evo 3A1 out to the range...let's see how much fun it can be!

The CZ Skorpion grew out of a Czech Army request for a new 9x19mm SMG as the newly formed Czech Republic pivoted to a Western orientation in the 1990s. The CZ factory took a look at what it already had that might be suitable, and did in fact revisit the vz.61 Skorpion design in 9x19mm (originally...