I took a few minutes at Finnish Brutality 2023 to chat with Derek, a former Range and SF medic who overcame some quite daunting personal challenges to come shoot the match despite stage 4 cancer. It was great to hang out with him at the match, and to take inspiration from his story!

Back by popular demand, we have Neil Vermillion again today. We're talking about his experiences while volunteering as a trainer for troops in Ukraine. We're going to discuss why the Russians underperformed so badly, what the Ukrainians are doing well to adapt and improve, and perhaps why he has ...

When Armalite designed the AR-180, they needed a factory to produce it, as their own production capacity was limited. Initially a license was granted to How in Japan, but this only lasted a few years before US involvement in the Vietnam War led Japan to cease allowing arms to be shipped to the US...

When France decided to adopt a new 9x19mm submachine gun after World War Two, all three of the main French arsenals (St Etienne/MAS, Chatellerault/MAC, and Tulle/MAT) developed designs to compete for adoption. Tulle would eventually win and their design became the MAT-49, but the other lines of d...

Interested in more pistols from the Chinese warlord era? Check out my book "Pistols of the Warlords", now in stock and shipping at:

https://www.headstamppublishing.com/chinese-pistols

One of the professional factory-made Chinese warlord-era copies of the FN Model 1900 came from the Nanjing Arse...

Today we are looking at examples of the 1st pattern (Type E) and second pattern (Type G) FG42, comparing their construction and disassembling both to get a close look at the internal differences. Despite sharing the basic mechanism, these two models share zero parts in common, not even the bayone...

The Model 607 was Colt's first attempt at a carbine version of the AR-15 rifle, shortening both the barrel and stock. The action is identical to a standard AR, but the barrel is only 10 inches (254mm) long, and the stock uses a collapsing design unique to this model. Most examples used a small su...

It's time for Finnish Brutality 2023! This year the match is back and better than ever, with a new "Breacher" division for those seeking extra punishment. In addition to wearing armor and kit (minimum 12kg/26lb), Breacher includes a 3-10 minute physical challenge after each stage just to spice th...

Today we have both 1st and 2nd pattern semiauto FG-42s from SMG out at the range for some comparative shooting. Which is the better one to get?

It's time for Finnish Brutality 2023! This year the match is back and better than ever, with a new "Breacher" division for those seeking extra punishment. In addition to wearing armor and kit (minimum 12kg/26lb), Breacher includes a 3-10 minute physical challenge after each stage just to spice th...

In 1949, Israel was still fighting its was of independence, and purchasing arms internationally was difficult to do. The recently-formalized IDF wanted sniper rifles, and looked to Hammerli in Switzerland for a variant of the K-31 straight-pull bolt action action. Two different models were purcha...

Stocked pistols: they have been around as long as pistols have been around, but are they really all that useful?

The Vugrek family of Croatia (Marko Sr, Marko Jr, and Ivan) were talented firearms designers, who ended up supplying organized crime. Their best-known development was the Agram 2000 submachine gun, a very well-built weapon submitted to Croatian military trials in the early 1990s. In the wake of p...

The AMELI (which is a contraction of "ametralladora ligera", or light machine gun) was introduced by CETME in 1981, and adopted by the Spanish military as the MG82. It was a counterpart LMG to the new CETME-L 5.56mm rifles, and is a mechanically fascinating design.

The AMELI is a roller-delayed ...

The Springfield Echelon pistol was released today, and it's a significant step forward for Croatian manufacturer HS Produkt. In an effort to appeal to new military and police tenders as well as introduce a forward-looking new design, the company has brought out a pistol based on a serialized chas...

If the FG-42 was such a great gun, then why didn't it get used after the war? Well, two answers...

1) It was crazy expensive to make and there weren't very many lying around for people to use in quantity after the war.

2) It was used; there was at least three post-war development projects based...

The Mateba 6 Unica is the culmination of a series of revolver development by Italian designer Emilio Ghisoni (1937-2008). The Unica 6 is one of only a few self-cocking revolvers to see commercial production and sales (the other two being the Union and the Webley-Fosbery). It was available in .357...

While the Italian military did adopt the AR-70, it did not actually issue them to all troops. Most continued to use the 7.62mm BM-59 until 1990 when the Beretta AR-70/90 was adopted. This rifle was a substantial rework and improvement of the AR-70, using AR-pattern magazines and a 1:7" twist barr...

Tara Aerospace is an arms factory in Montenegro that was privatized around 2013 or 2014, and a major stake in it was purchased by one Heinrich Thomet (formerly of Brugger & Thomet, and then the basis for a character in "War Dogs"). The first firearm the new Tara produced was the TM-9, and it was ...

There has never been a proper semiauto version of the MP40 available in the US, until now. SSD (Sport-Systeme Dittrich) is a German company that has been making semiauto copies of German WW2 small arms for quite some time, and they now have a US partner in the DK Production Group. They plan to re...

Yugoslavia purchased both 1895 Nagant revolvers and TT33 Tokarev form the Soviet Union after World War Two, but this was only a holdover until domestic pistol production could begin. While Yugoslavia was formally communist, Tito was not a puppet of Moscow, and Yugoslavia did their own development...

The first version of the new MSBS "Grot" rifle purchased by the Polish government was actually a special version for ceremonial parade use. In order to make the gun suitable to that role, a surprising number of changes were made to it - almost every element is different than the standard service ...

Egypt purchased tooling for the Swedish AG-42 Ljungman in 1952, and adapted it to their 8mm Mauser caliber as the Hakim rifle. Later, they scaled the rifle down to 7.62x39mm as the Rasheed, and manufactured about 7,300 of them between 1966 and 1968. These rifles were issued to the District Ward R...

In 1974, Iraq and Egypt were still on good relations, and Egypt sold Iraq a batch of 300 Rasheed carbines and the production tooling to manufacture them. Iraq quickly set up production and began making their own copy of the Rasheed in 1974 or 1975, named the "Baghdad". Production ran until 1978, ...