The PPS-43, designed by Alexei Sudayev based on a previous submachine gun design by I.K. Bezruchko-Vysotsky, was the Soviet replacement for the PPSh-41. The Shpagin submachine gun was a very effective combat weapon, but was time-consuming to produce and required specialized manufacturing tools. T...

Degtyarev’s PPD-40 was the first submachine gun adopted in a large scale by the Soviet Union. Its development began in 1929 with a locked breech gun modeled after Degtyarev’s DP light machine gun, but evolved into a much simpler blowback system. It was accepted as the best performing gun of 14 di...

When World War One began, the British did not have a formal sniping program, and by 1915 the British found themselves thoroughly outclassed by the Germans in this area. They responded by developing tactics and equipment for sniping, and by mid 1916 they had really outclassed the Germans. However,...

Most people think that the MP41 is simply an MP40 in a wooden stock, but this is actually not the case - and unlike the MP40, the MP41 can be accurately called a Schmeisser - because it was Hugo Schmeisser who designed it.

The MP41 is actually a combination of the upper assembly of an MP40 wi...

The MP35 submachine gun was designed by Theodore Emil Bergmann, the son of the Theodore Bergmann who had manufactured the turn of the century line of Bergmann pistols. Unlike his father, Emil was a firearms designer, and not just a manufacturer. This design was submitted for German military testi...

The MP28,II was Hugo Schmeisser’s improved take on the original World War One MP18,I design. It used a simple box magazine in place of the Luger drum magazines, and this magazine would form the basis for a long series of military SMG magazines. It was a double-stack, single feed design because Sc...

When Germany began looking in late 1915 for a new weapon ideally suited for the “last 200 meters” of a combat advance, Hugo Schmeisser’s blowback submachine gun would prove to be the weapon that would set the standard for virtually all submachine guns to come. It was a fully automatic only weapon...

The MG-17 is a belt-fed 8mm machine gun that was used on a large number of Luftwaffe aircraft early in World War II. The gun was developed by Rheinmetall through its subsidiary in Solothurn, Switzerland (as a way to evade the Versailles Treaty restrictions on arms development). The basic action i...

Developed in the early 1980s by Perry Arnett, the LAR Grizzly was manufactured from 1983 until 1998. It was an expensive gun (base price was $675 in 1985), a huge gun (48oz / 1.36kg), and a powerful gun - its .45 Winchester Magnum cartridge throws a 230 grain bullet at 1450 feet/sec (15g @ 450 m/...

The Lanchester MkI was the first British effort to produce a domestic submachine gun during World War II. The British military had rejected these types of arms as "gangster guns" prior to the war, and did not see them as useful in a military context. Well, that opinion changed rather quickly as t...

In 1917, the German military issued a contract for the construction of 2500 of these unique and impressive 4-barreled flare launchers. They were manufactured by 7 different companies (this example being from Gebrüder Rempt), and were intended for the illumination of airfields. To this end, they d...

The Spanish-made MP41/44 is a licensed copy of the Erma EMP submachine gun. The development begins with Heinrich Vollmer in 1925, designing a submachine gun for German military testing. The military trials showed a number of flaws in the gun, and Vollmer updated the design to fix them - but by th...

Patented in 1879 by Reuben Chaffee and General James Reece, the Chaffee-Reece rifle is an excellent example of how an idea that seems good on paper can easily become untenable in a fielded rifle. The main design premise of the rifle was to have a tubular magazine in the buttstock which held the c...

The Professional Ordnance Carbon-15 was developed during the assault weapons ban in the United States as a way to market a pistol version of an AR15 action without exceeding the weight limit imposed by legislation. While Olympic Arms achieved this goal through extensive skeletonization, Professio...

The Arsenal 2011 began as a manufacturing proof of concept, to showcase the technical ability of the company making it (their prior experience was largely in exquisite miniature firearms). It was introduced to the public at SHOT Show a few years ago, and garnered more purchases than had been anti...

The M-56 is a Yugoslav take on the MP-40 design, produced starting in 1956 to replace its previously issued M49 submachine gun (which was a copy of the Soviet PPSh-41). The M56 is simpler than the MP40, however, and chambered for the 7.62x25mm Tokarev cartridge. It is a simple gun to make, but qu...

This unique custom sporting rifle (and shotgun) is a very cool example of the true gunsmith's art. This firearm began as a Mauser model 98 action, which was embellished and fitted with a fancy barrel (chambered for 8mm) and express sights. The gunsmith, Georg Knaak, of Berlin then added a shotgun...

The Uru, named for a tropical bird, is a Brazilian 9mm submachine gun made from 1977 until 1985 and used by Brazilian military and police forces. What makes it interesting is the designer’s focus on simplicity - the gun has just 17 parts, and basically no screws or pins (except the bolt holding t...

The Star Z-63 is a 9x19mm version of the Star Z-62, which was made in both 9x19 and 9x23. Together, these represent the company’s effort to produce a more modern submachine gun than their Z-45, which was basically a copy of the German MP-40. The Z-63 is, contrary to its external appearance, a wel...

C.S. Shattuck’s “Unique” squeeze pistol is one of the last of this sort of sightless, underpowered hideout guns. Its core patent was actually filed by Oscar Mossberg, who worked for Shattuck before setting up his own company, which you are much more likely to have heard about today! Mossberg woul...

One of many firearms developed for Remington by Joseph Rider was the Rider Magazine Pistol - a manually operated 5-shot repeater chambered for the .32 extra-short rimfire cartridge (the same round used by the Chicago Palm Protector). It used a tube magazine under the barrel and a simple but cleve...

Sold for $23,000 (transferrable).

The 20mm Oerlikon automatic cannon was a mainstay of United States naval air defense during World War 2, and today we will look at a few of the characteristics and questions that apply to this sort of automatic cannon but not to typical small arms. Like, for i...

Mexico’s President for nearly 30 years, Porfirio Diaz was very interested in modernizing the Mexican Army. He invested in new artillery, magazine guns, and small arms - such as the Mondragon semiautomatic rifle. In addition, Mexico tested the Luger pistol circa 1903-1905. They found it to be quit...

The MAS-38 was France’s first officially adopted submachine gun, rushed into service in 1940. It was basically too late to help with the defense of France, with less than a thousand delivered by June 1940. The Germans kept the gun in production, making 20-30 thousand under the designation MP722(f...