William Walker Marston was born in 1822, and would spend his career as a gunsmith and gunmaker in New York City. He produced a wide variety of firearms, including pepperboxes, multi-barrel derringers, percussion revolvers, and the breechloading single-shot pistol which we are looking at in this v...

Designed in 1936 by Melvin Johnson, the M1941 Johnson Automatic Rifle was a competitor to the M1 Garand, but not introduced in time to actually be adopted in place of the Garand. Instead, Johnson hoped to have his rifle accepted as a parallel second option for the US military in case something we...

In brief, the problem is that the guns will often run away if steps are not taken to prevent it. This is not a clever way to get a machine gun (although I'm sure plenty of fools will see it as such); it is a serious safety problem because it can often cause out of battery detonation of cartridges...

Patented in 1876 in both the US and UK, the Frankenau purse gun was a very small 5-shot, 5mm pinfire revolver hidden inside what appeared to be a normal small coin purse. One side of the purse would even open, with several accordion pockets, allowing to to be used for its nominal purpose. The oth...

The model 1895 Müller automatic pistol is an interesting and unusual design, despite being a simple blowback action. Where most pistols have a bolt or slide that moved directly rearward, the Müller pushes the bolt in a semicircular arc into its grip. This is similar to the Swedish Hamilton trials...

Welcome to your briefing on the new equipment we are issuing for the Spring Offensive of 1919. With this new secret weapon, we can finally push the Germans out of France and end the war

The MC-1952 was a variation on the M1C Garand sniper rifle, adopted by the US Marine Corps in 1952. The Marines were not satisfied with the low magnification of the Lyman scopes on the Army M1C, and after some experimentation they adopted their own version of the rifle using a 4x scope made by Ko...

These unique and unmarked prototype .32 ACP pistols are apparently Iver Johnson prototypes - and I can't find any information on them beyond that description from their consignor. One is a simpler example in the white, and the other is a more developed example with both a manual safety and an unu...

The pistol on display here is a Sauer model 38H (a much more common pistol in German WWII service than many people realize) that was made specially as a presentation piece. Heinrich Himmler presented these pistols to snipers who had killed 100 enemy soldiers - other prizes were offered for 50 (a ...

This rifle started out its life an a normal M91 Carcano long rifle, before being converted into an experimental self-loader by the Terni Arsenal. Rather than adding a gas piston to the barrel, Terni engineered a short recoil system. The barrel and bolt recoil together about a centimeter (3/8 inch...

The Pavesi Model 1942 is a prototype Italian semiauto rifle chambered for the 8x59 Breda cartridge. It is a short recoil action with a 4-lug rotating bolt, and appears to use a Mannlicher type en bloc clip like a Carcano (no sample clip was available for me to look at). It is marked on the chambe...

Wather introduced its first pistol in 1908, creatively named the Model 1. With the outbreak of World War One, the company was offering the Model 4 pistol for military use. This was a .32 ACP simple blowback action, and it proved quite popular and successful. However, the German military was prima...

With no markings or provenance at all, the origins of this revolver are a mystery. Its features all point to the 1880s or 1890s, and someone clearly spent a lot of time working on it - but we don't know who. What makes it interesting is the very unusual operating mechanism. It is similar to a "zi...

This rifle is pretty much a big mystery - I have virtually no good information on it. Through inspection, we know it is a mechanical copy of the Soviet SVT 38 or 40 - it shares the same exact bolt, locking system, and gas system. Even many aesthetic features like the metal front handguard, muzzle...

The Danish artillery was an early adopter of metallic-case handguns, taking on this pinfire 6-shot solid-frame revolver in 1865 - when most of the world was still using percussion firearms. The thousand guns made served well for many decades, until in 1897 they finally were recognized as obsolete...

With the development of the Model 1931, Beretta had nearly arrived at the first really popular pistol (the 1934/5). The 1931 was the result of taking the exposed-hammer 1923 design, shrinking the frame down to a more compact size and changing the caliber to .32 ACP (7.65mm Browning). This smaller...

The Galand was an innovative revolver design created by Frenchman Charles Francois Galand and patented in 1868. It is most notable for using a long lever system to eject cartridges by throwing the cylinder and a separate cartridge retention plate forward. It was also one of the early adopters of ...

David Marshall Williams was hired by the Winchester company in 1939, and would have a hand in a number of major projects during his 10-year stint with the company, although best known for the M1 Carbine. The Carbine was an offshoot of the Winchester G30 and G30M rifles, which would also evolve in...

When someone makes a "fake" historical gun, they can do so with the intent to deceive or be up-front with the gun's new manufacture. Those acknowledged reproductions are a great option to have - guns like Uberti reproduction revolvers give us an excellent opportunity to shoot antique designs with...

Aren't these 19th century little pocket pistols cute? This is another palm-type hideout gun, named the "Little All Right" and patented in 1876. It's actually a pretty basic revolver mechanism, just put into an unusual style of body with a strange trigger. It holds 5 rounds of .22 Short, and fires...

Edit: I mistakenly referenced North Korea in the video, when I should have said South Korea, as Pusan in well within the South of the country. Sorry!

During (and probably for a short time after) the Korean War, a Korean facility called the Pusan Iron Works did fabrication and repair of 1911-styl...

One of the rarest models of LeMat grapeshot revolver is this, the “Baby” LeMat. This is a substantially smaller gun than the normal LeMat, although it retains a 9-shot cylinder and a central barrel. In the Baby, however, the cylinder is in .32 caliber (rather than the standard .42) and the centra...

Star Firearms: http://amzn.to/2c29MyS
Astra Firearms: http://amzn.to/2c29OXw

Leonardo Antaris has written massive and excellent volumes on two of the major companies in the Spanish firearms industry, Star and Astra. Both of these companies made a wide range of military and commercial handguns, a...

This scoped C96 carbine is serial number 12 of the original run of just 30 large-ring C96 carbines. It has the long barrel and detachable stock (in place of the standard pistol grip) of the C96 carbine. The most obvious feature, however, is the telescopic sight mounted on the piece. This was not ...