Today I am joined for a round table discussion (well, octagon table, technically) by Jonathan Ferguson (Curator of the National Firearms Centre collection at the Royal Armouries) and Nic Jenzen-Jones (Director of Armament Research Services) to discuss a variety of improvised and craft-produced fi...

One of the collectors who offered me access to video some of his guns during my recent trip to Europe said I should do an overview of his whole collection. There is a misconception in both the US and Europe that European governments ban gun ownership. The truth is more complex - different countri...

Today, a general overview of Canadian gun laws, so we Americans (and you folks across the ocean) can have a better idea of what the legal situation is in the Great White North. Please recognize that this is a general overview only - we are not getting into the nitty gritty details, and this is no...

Sorry for the poor audio quality - I am back at the Cody Firearms Museum talking to Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries in the UK. Jonathan has written a new book on the history of British bullpup firearms, which Headstamp is very proud to be publishing!

To...

Sorry for the poor audio quality - today I am back at the Cody Firearms Museum talking to Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries in the UK. Today we are talking about the term "bullpup" - where did it come from, and what IS a "bullpup" anyway? The more you look a...

Today Nicholas Moran (the Chieftain) and I are at DriveTanks.com courtesy of Wargaming.net, to show you around a World War Two Sherman tank and all its various armaments. We will discuss and shoot the bow machine gun, coaxial machine gun, Commander's hatch machine gun, antiaircraft .50 cal M2 mac...

Today Max Popenker joins me again, this time to explain the state of guns laws today in Russia. This is part of continuing series I am doing about gun laws around the world. What is involved in owning a gun in different places? What about hand guns, machine guns, and large collections? Let's fin...

Today I am chatting with Miles Vining, co-creator of Silah Report, a blog and intelligence network researching firearms in MENA - the Middle East and North Africa. Miles and his colleagues have created an organization that both understands the languages and customs of this region, but also are se...

Today I would like to introduce you to Matt Moss, who runs the HistoricalFirearms.info web site and The Armourer's Bench YouTube channel. Matt is a firearms researcher with an academic background, who covers a variety of very rare and interesting firearms on video, as well as other aspects of mil...

This is a 4-Bore single-barrel rifle built on an Army Navy Supply frame by J.J. Perodeau of Enid Oklahoma. I am firing 1750 grain lead bullets over charges of 325gr of Goex Fg. Muzzle velocity is approximately 1340fps, generating about 7,000 ftlb of muzzle energy.

This is the largest rifle ever ...

In this month's Q&A video, I take on more questions from my wonderful Patreon supporters, including:

* Would we still have Browning pistols if the 1911 had not been adopted?
* Gun designs from non-industrialized places
* British .303 Conversions of the Martini
* Weapons best left forgotten
* Wha...

Patented in 1852 by Henry North and Chaucey Skinner, about 700 of these revolving rifles were made by 1856. The design used a locking wedge to seal the cylinder forward so that the firing chamber would nest into the barrel and seal the cylinder gap. The operating lever that did this also served t...

The final production version of the Hall was Simeon North’s Model 1843 Carbine, of which 10,500 were made between 1844 and 1853. It used North’s percussion update to the design, and a cleverly simple calming lug connected to a lever on the right side of the action to open the breech. These were s...

George Morse was one of the most significant American inventors in the development of modern ammunition. In 1856 he received a patent for the first completely self-contained brass cartridge, and a breechloading firearm to use it. Morse’s cartridge was made of several parts, a solid brass case hea...

Have you heard of Jonathan Browning, gunsmith and inventor? Among his other accomplishments, he is credited with designing the harmonica rifle in the US - and we have an example of one of his hand-made guns here to look at today (made in 1853). Browning was a Mormon, and spent several years slowl...

The North & Skinner was an early 6-shot percussion-fired revolving rifle design. Its design was patented in 1852 by Henry North and Chauncy Skinner (US Patent #8982), and the guns were manufactured from 1856 to 1859 by the Savage & North company (which was Henry North and Edward Savage - not the ...

We're going to jump back a hundred years, and take a look at a design from 1854 today - although it was a design well ahead of its time. The Treeby chain gun was a percussion rifle that could fire 14 rounds in rapid succession, unlike anything else available at the time. We took a look at one in ...

The Gibbs carbine is fantastic illustration of just how difficult it can be to actually manufacture a new firearm. The gun itself is a breechloading, percussion fired cavalry carbine designed to use paper cartridges. It was patented in 1856 by Lucien Gibbs, and he was joined by financier William...

Early adoption of new technology is a sword which cuts both ways - you might be getting the first of a fantastic new system, or you might be paying for a flop - and in order to get the benefit of the first possibility you must take the risk of the second. Someone buying a Luger in 1900 was making...

The Lindner carbine was an early US cavalry carbine used during the Civil War. Unlike the many metallic cartridge firing carbines that would follow, it was a breechloader that used .58 caliber paper cartridges. An initial order for 892 of them was delivered to the Army, and Lindner went on to mak...

The Lamson & Ball repeating carbine was one of the last Civil War arms manufactured, as an initial order of 1,000 units was placed in June of 1864 but not actually delivered until April and May of 1866. The delay was in large part caused by the government changing the caliber after the order had ...

John Parker Lindsay patented a superposed, 2-shot muzzleloading rifle action in 1860, and remarkably, was able to get a contract to sell them to the US Federal Army. The system was fairly simple, with two percussion caps and firehouse leading to a front and rear chamber. The rifle was loaded with...

This is a three-barreled muzzleloading shotgun, with two pretty normal hammers on the top barrels and a rather unusual and simple under hammer for the bottom barrel. It has no markings at all, a hinged stock for some reason I cannot understand, and is clearly handmade. And that’s all I got.

In the aftermath of World War One, the French military instituted a plan to introduce a completely new roster of small arms. This would begin with the development of a modern rimless rifle cartridge, which was adopted in 1924. With the new cartridge in hand, programs were begun to develop a light...