Black powder military rifles of the 1860s-1880s are a really enjoyable group of guns. A lot of them are relatively reasonably priced, and they are actually pretty easy to reload for. The unavailability of factory ammunition (for most, although not so much for the Trapdoor) makes them seem like a ...

Black powder military rifles of the 1860s-1880s are a really enjoyable group of guns. A lot of them are relatively reasonably priced, and they are actually pretty easy to reload for. The unavailability of factory ammunition (for most, although not so much for the Trapdoor) makes them seem like a ...

The Beretta Model 34 was basically the final iteration of a design by Tullio Marengoni that began all the way back in 1915. That pistol was updated in the early 1920s, and that one was updated in 1931. The Model 1931 was converted to .380 ACP (aka 9mm Short) as the Model 1932, which became the Mo...

The Super Shorty is a pump action shotgun reduced to a 2-round tube capacity and a 6.5" barrel made by Serbu Firearms. The first one was made in 1998 and since then Mark Serbu has made more than 6,000 of them. There have been a bunch of minor variations, including batches made on both Remington 8...

If you had to pick one, would you take a Valmet M78 (in 7.62mm NATO) or an FN-D (in .30-06)? Both are reliable and well-made machine guns and they use essentially the same caliber. The FN-D weighs twice as much, but has a heavier barrel and barrel quick-change capacity. The Valmet is lighter, but...

The Glock 26 was introduced in 1995 alongside the Glock 27. These were sub-compact pistols with 3.43 inch barrels chambered for 9x19mm (the 26) and .40 S&W (the 27). These were Glock's first foray into. the subcompact market, and they offered a compelling package. These were small, lighter than t...

Mark your calendars; Moons Out 2026 will be March 6-8 at the Echo Valley Training Center, in WV. Practiscore registration will open December 1:

https://practiscore.com/moons-out-26/register

The Type 79 is an overly-complex submachine gun that uses a scaled-down AK operating system chambered for 7.62x25mm Tokarev. In many ways, this is akin to the H&K MP7 - it's a miniaturized combat rifle. The locked breech system allows the reciprocating parts to be arather lighter than a simple bl...

"Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic" by Jennifer Niven:
https://amzn.to/42UBKpG

In the past couple days, I have had two people send me two different images, asking me to identify the odd rifles in them. Both were posted claiming to be Ada Blackjack, and Inuit woman who survive...

On July 14th, 1914 the 50 foot pleasure yacht “Asgard” sailed into Howth harbor in Dublin with its cabin completely filled with arms. It has 900 Mauser 1871 rifles and 29,000 rounds of ammunition for the Irish Volunteers, and there is a crowd of a thousand people turned out to unload them - just ...

This is a really interesting piece with a mostly unknown origin. It was manufactured in the UK (the barrel was deemed Enfield-made by former Royal Armouries curator Herb Woodend) and is chambered for the .58 Morse centerfire cartridge. The date of production is unknown. It uses a gravity-feed mag...

This is a very rare style of Japanese matchlock, with three separate barrels on a revolving axis. It has all the design and decorative elements of a tanegashima musket, but built more as a self-defense piece for home or perhaps when traveling by palanquin. Think of it like the Edo-period Japanese...

After World War One, Colt was the sole owner of license to produce Browning machine guns. With production tooling well established form the war, the company set about looking for international sales. The water cooled .30 caliber (the M1917 in US service, essentially) was designated the Model 1919...

After World War One, there was a lot of tinkering with the BAR by the US military. It was recognized as being a very good platform, but the original M1918 configuration left a lot to be desired. It was deemed to heavy to use effectively form the shoulder, but also not really well suited to sustai...

The Dutch Navy first acquired Luger pistols in 1918 specifically for its aviators. They has 12 German P04 Lugers taken from a German submarine stranded in the (neutral) Netherlands, and 28 more were purchased from DWM in 1918 to round out the 40 guns needed to equip the Naval Air Service. The pis...

The first rifle made in Sam Colt’s Paterson NJ factory was the 1837 “ring lever” rifle. These were rather fragile and underpowered and while they were used successfully in the First Seminole War, they needed improvement. Colt set about doing this with his 1839 pattern, which was more robust and m...

Isaiah Jennings patented an improvement to the Belton repeating flintlock system in 1821 - but we don’t know exactly what his idea was because the Patent Office lost his patent (and many others) in a large 1836 fire. Jennings' system was used by several gunsmiths, though. In 1828/9 the State of N...

When Germany occupied Belgium in the summer of 1940, the took over the FN factory complex and ordered production of the High Power pistol to continue. It was put into German service as the Pistole 640(b), and nearly 325,000 of them were made between 1940 and 1944. The first ones were simply assem...

The P38K is both a fantasy WWII concept and also a real pistol made in small numbers by Walther in the 1970s. The idea is simple; just cut down the barrel on a P38 to barely in front of the slide (2.8 inches on the real ones). This does make for a shorter gun, although it retains the large frame ...

In the 1890s, there was a lot of interest in small caliber, simple revolvers for self-defense by cyclists, primarily against dogs. This led to the creation of a whole category of “velodog” revolvers, and a Belgian designer named Herman patented this extension of the idea. It is a 6-shot, 5mm pinf...

As the main national armory, Springfield got a number of requests to make specialty rifles for commissioned officers and important dignitaries each year. These were essentially all custom sporting rifles, and the orders were duly filled. In 1875, however, the decision was made to standardize a fo...

The Fenian Brotherhood was formed in the US in 1858, a partner organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The groups were militant organizations looking to procure Irish independence from the British, and they found significant support among the Irish-American immigrant community. In Novem...

The American 180 is a .22LR machine gun that fires at a high rate (1300 rpm more or less) from a super-high-capacity magazine (177 rounds). Conceptually it was designed by Richard Casull in the 1960s, but he only produced about 70 of his original M290 design. He sold the rights to the design, and...

This lecture was presented at the Spring 2025 meeting of the American Society of Arms Collectors. It was given by Joel Bohy, coauthor of a new book of the same name, published by Mowbray. You can find his book here:

https://gunandswordcollector.com/product/bullet-strikes-american-revolution/
or
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