From Nintendoeats on Utreon:
"Modern centerfire and rimfire cartridges seem (to the casual observer) like they would always have been the simplest cartridge types to make. Why was pinfire ever used, and how was it economically manufactured?"

Essentially, pinfire represents a cartridge develop...

From Brian on Patreon:
"Would you give your thoughts and comments on non-gun companies making guns? For example Baldwin Locomotive/Eddystone 1917s, IH Garands, GM M-16s, most M-1 carbines, maybe even TRW M-14s. How did the experiment work out?"

I would say that the experiment worked very wel...

From Brian on Patreon:
"What’s the dumbest or most unsafe thing you’ve ever witnessed while out shooting in the desert or at a range / match?"

That would definitely be when a pair of totally movie shooters out at my desert shooting range spot decided to violate Rule 4 (Know your target and wh...

From Nick on Patreon:
"What small arm of the 20th century do you think got the most updates and changes from first production model to last? Was the effort worth it? Or should this country/company have adopted an entirely new design at some point before that last production?"

After initially ...

From Dennis on Patreon:
"What rifles were between the M1 Garand and the M14? I went through Basic with an M14 and I know the M15 was supposed to be a BAR relacement. Google doesn't really find anything on the M2 - M13 rifles."

The Army had rifle for much more than just standard infantry use. ...

From LongBeef on Patreon:
"What exactly is headspace? And how important is headspace in old milsurp guns vs. more modern guns?"

Headspace is basically the amount of play a cartridge has in a chamber. There has to be some to account for manufacturing variations in guns and ammunition, but too ...

From Nathaniel on Patreon:
"Why didn't Germany or Axis powers have a machine gun similar to the American M2?"

Basically, because everyone faced the choice of a .50 caliber machine gun or 20mm (or larger) cannons for anti-aircraft use, and most people chose the cannons - including Germany. The...

Asked by Prmetime on Utreon: In WW2, Finland was given approximately 100,000 Carcano M38 rifles in 7.35 Carcano. I have heard it stated that the Finns didn’t like the rifles. Can you comment on the veracity of that statement, and if true, do you know why they weren’t liked?

The Finnish governm...

Today's Q&A is from Tim on Patreon:
"The great nation of Elbonia is looking to spin up a sniper program. But they know better than to adopt ZF41 scopes. What rifles do you attempt to sell them?"

After some consideration, I would try to sabotage the Elbonian Sniper Corps by supplying them with...

From Jon on Patreon:
"Elbonia has been occupied by an enemy force. Do you sabotage their resistance by airdropping them Liberator pistols or Cobray Terminators?"

To my mind, the Liberator is a substantially more useful resistance weapons, so I would supply Elbonia with lots of crates of Cobra...

From Jan on Patreon:
"What often baffles me is the transition period of various stages of development of gun technology - in particular around the Civil War. What were the types of guns used during civil war and why weren't more modern mechanisms used, if they were available? Was it similar in w...

From Nikolas on Patreon:
"Have there been any attempts to make miniaturized man-portable chain guns? Do you think there's a future for such a machine gun given modern advances in energy storage?"

Chain guns are a specific type of externally-powered machine gun. They have a single barrel, and ...

Edit: I mixed up the selector and rear pin holes; the rear takedown pin hole is not stepped. Sorry!

From Ryan on Patreon:
"Why do more rifles not have captive takedown pins? It seems that if someone is developing a rifle from the ground up there are almost no drawbacks to having them, especi...

From John on Patreon:
"You've covered your fair share of strange conversion of firearms. Have you ever come across a bullpup conversion that was actually useful, and not a kludge?"

Nope.

That's basically the whole answer.

Okay, to elaborate a bit, it's because making a bullpup use blue ...

From crablegs21 on Utreon:

"In your opinion and in hindsight, which country had the most optimized cartridge for the their primary infantry rifle for WWII? Additionally, which country would have benefited most by switching to that cartridge prior to WWII?"

In my opinion - and I think post-w...

From Jubs on Patreon:
"They say that 'no one's gone bankrupt making guns during a war,' but is that actually true?"

It's usually true, but not always. Even during a war, you can make enough bad choices that you can go bankrupt as a gun manufacturer, and Hopkins & Allen is a perfect example of...

From Arvid on Utreon:
"Why does an AR-15 need a buffer thingy? Why can't it just have a spring like every other normal gun?"

The Ar-15 really doesn't need the buffer and tube, but it is a holdover from the origins of the system: the AR-10. The intent of the AR-10 was to create a 7.62x51mm bat...

Yesterday we looked at the history and the functioning of the Armatix iP1 "smart gun", and today I'm taking it out to a BackUp Gun Match. How will it perform? Will it cycle reliably? Will I time out before I can actually get it authorized to fire? Let's find out!

The Armatix iP1 is a pistol created by former H&K designer Ernst Mauch that was released - or almost released - in the US in late 2013 and early 2014. It is a .22LR caliber semiauto pistol that incorporates an RFID-connected authentication link between a watch and this pistol, so that the pistol ...

During my visit to Slovenia, I had a chance to tour the AREX Defense factory in Šentjernej. I came away really impressed by the quality and the breadth of operations that the factory performs in-house. They have only been making their own handgun designs for about 5 years, but they have been a su...

When I got a tour of Arex Defense in Slovenia, one of the really neat things I saw (which I had not seen elsewhere before) was a machine for making MG links. It's a single really long piece of hardware where a spool of sheet steel goes in one end and hardened links plop out the other end, with ju...

In firearms, as in really all technology, the market iterates and improves concepts over time. A novel new system - like the polymer-framed, striker-fired semiauto pistol - will never be perfect on its first introduction. Over time, as users and manufacturers gain more insight into the details of...

David Wirth is one of the founders of Arcflash Labs, a small company developing "ultra-high energy pulsed power supplies", which have applications in a variety of fields - but today we are talking about electromagnetic weaponry. Arcflash is currently shipping out their first batch of commercial G...

The GR-1 "Anvil" is a portable, shoulder-fired gauss rifle made by Arcflash Labs. Yeah, it's pretty awesome to be living in the future where we actually have real gauss rifles, isn't it?

First, some terminology. This is accurately identified as a gauss rifle, coil gun, or linear accelerator (a...