The original Scorpion was adopted in .32 ACP caliber as the vz.61 by the Czechoslovakian military – but development of the Scorpion did not end there. Prototypes were also developed in .380, 9×18 Makarov, and 9x19mm. In particular, the 9x19mm version, designated vz.68, got as far as field trials ...

The NGSW (Next Generation Squad Weapon) program began in 2017 to find a replacement for the M4, M249, and 5.56mm cartridge. It came to a conclusion in April 2022 with the formal acceptance of the SIG M5 rifle, M250 machine gun, Vortex M157 optic, and the 6.8x51mm cartridge. SIG released a handful...

Following the adoption of the WF Bern MP41/44 by the Swiss military, SIG continued to develop its own submachine gun design in hopes of outside commercial and military sales. This is the MP48 pattern, which is a simplified blowback action, but using the same basic receiver geometry as the MK seri...

The SIG MP48 was the result of a series of successively cheaper and simpler iterations of the MKPS design. They kept the basic receiver geometry, but lost much of the finesse. The MP48 in particular was very compact, with its 8″ (200mm) barrel and collapsing stock. It kept the really high rate of...

After joining (formally) World War Two in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the United States endured a series of defeats at the hands of the Japanese. The Philippines garrison fell, Wake Island fell, Guam fell. British possessions in Southeast Asia teetered and fell as well - the campaign was not going ...

00:00:32 - What is the "elevator pitch" for Polenar Tactical?
00:02:26 - How did you get your channel name?
00:04:49 - What are the Slovenian gun laws like?
00:07:11 - How do EU rules impact an individual country's laws?
00:11:37 - What do you think will be the most prevalent rifle and cartri...

Today I am speaking to Len Antaris of Historic Investments, aka "Fireplace Guy". Len has a tremendous collection with an emphasis on unusual and prototype handguns, and he has been very generous in allowing me to film much of it for you over many years. So, I figured we should talk to him about s...

Today we have a bunch of questions about gun shops, and I am joined by Kurt Stancl, of Bear Arms in Scottsdale AZ. You can find him at:

https://www.facebook.com/BearArmsAZ
https://www.instagram.com/beararmsaz

0:00:00 - Introduction
0:02:02 - How have online sales impacted the business?
0...

I decided to try a bit of an experiment for this month's Q&A, and took questions from Forgotten Weapons Patreon and Utreon supporters to ask directly to exhibitors at SHOT Show 2022. It turned out quite a lot shorter than I was anticipating, but I think I got some good answers for you. Thanks to ...

Croatian engineer Marko Vukovic first developed his P38-based pistol in the late 1980s for the Yugoslav Peoples' Army. It was left unadopted at that time, but when Croatia declared independence in 1991 the gun found a new life. The newly formed Croatian armed forces needed quite a lot of small ar...

The MPi-69 was adopted by Austria to replace its aging MP40 submachine guns, and it included an unorthodox charging handle design connected to the sling. Clearly this didn’t turn out to be such a great idea, because when the questions of Austrian military SMGs was revisited in 1981, the feature w...

Designed in the 1960s by Steyr and adopted by the Austrian Army in 1969 to replace it aging MP40s, the MPi-69 is an economical and simple 9x19mm SMG. It uses many features seen in the Uzi, including the dual sear lugs, similar barrel nut, magazine in the grip, and telescoping bolt (first used by ...

Designed by Piotr Wilniewczyca and Jan Skrzypinski starting in 1936, the Mors was Poland's first domestic SMG. Polish police forces had purchased Thompsons and Suomi in the 1920s and 1930s, but the military still had no such guns by the 1930s. One of the main inspirations for the More was the Erm...

During the late 1920 and early 1930s, the Walther company worked on developing a military pistol in 9x19mm. They began from the basis of the PP/PPK design, and produced three separate designs, the first two designed “MP” (Military Pistol) and the third being the Armee Pistole (which was followed ...

After World War Two, the Belgian military wanted to replace its many Sten guns with a better standard SMG. The solution was designed by Colonel Georges Vigneron in 1953, and adopted by all branches of the Belgian military (as well as the Force Publique in the Belgian Congo) in 1954. This is a ver...

The Westley Richards "Monkey Tail" was a popular capping breechloader first designed in 1858. It was finally adopted by the British cavalry in 1866, and served until 1881. It was also a popular commercial rifle, especially in remote places like Australia and South Africa. It was named for the lon...

The Maden-Saetter was the Madsen (DISA) company’s entry into the GPMG arena. It Wass developed by Eric Larsen-Saetter in the early 1950s, although it did not enter production until 1960. The design was heavily German-influenced, with an MG34-like receiver, MG42-like recoil mechanism and feed syst...

The M8C is a .50 caliber self-loading rifle designed to mount on top of the 106mm M40 recoilless rifle. The recoilless rifle creates a massive signature when fired, and so it is imperative that operators move immediately after firing. In order to make accurate first-round hits, the M8C was built ...

After World War Two, FN put the BAR back into production. This was initially the FN-D version with a quick-change barrel, but with NATO's adoption of the 7.62mm cartridge, there was a demand for the BAR in that chambering. The Belgian Army adopted this new round, and plenty of other nations did a...

The SCS-70 (Special Carbine, Short) is a version of the standard Beretta AR-70 rifle made for Italian special forces use. It has a 12.7” barrel, no gas cutoff or rifle grenade capability, pistol grip storage compartment, and a polymer sidefolding stock. These were used until about 1990, when the...

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, France was seriously considering joining the NATO small arms standardization. They were equipped with the MAS 49/56 semiauto rifle at this point, and were looking at three possibilities:

1 – Convert the 49/56 rifles to 7.62 NATO. (This was actually tested wit...

The Madsen-Saetter is a general purpose machine gun that had the unfortunate luck to compete against the MG42/MG3 and FN MAG. It is a quite nice gun to shoot, but not quite up to the overall standard et by those other two guns, arguably the best of their type ever made in the West. This example i...

The concept for the M60 began at the end of World War Two, when US Ordnance officers became very interested in the German concept of a universal machine gun (originally conceived by the Danes, but first put into large-scale use by the Germans). This was the idea of having a single machine gun tha...

Harrington & Richardson was one of the main contractors for the M14 rifle program, and they also had been a major producer of the M1 Garand rifle. In particular, H&R had produced a .22 rimfire training rifle to mimic the handling of the M1 Garand, which was adopted by the US military as the MC-58...