The Inkunzi PAW (Personal Assault Weapon) is a 20mm shoulder fired semiautomatic grenade launcher designed by Tony Neophytou (and previously known as the Neopup). It is a creative and very interesting weapon system, both from a mechanical perspective and also from a question of practical applicat...

How Does it Work: Open Bolt vs Closed Bolt Firearms

Most semiauto firearms fire from a closed bolt and most fully automatic firearms fire from an open bolt, but these are far from strict rules, and many exception exist. Open bolt offers better cooling and prevents any possibility of cookoff, w...

How Does it Work: Blowback Action

The simplest for of firearms action is blowback, also called simple blowback. It is basically just an application of Newton's 3rd Law; that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As the bullet moves forward down the barrel, the slide or bolt...

Thanks to my friends at Bear Arms in Scottsdale, we have an H&K P8A1 to take a look at today - the current Bundeswehr issue version of the USP. Chambered for 9x19mm and adopted in 1994, only a few things differentiate the P8/P8A1 from the standard commercial USP. Most notably is the safety, which...

The H&K G41 was developed for the NATO trials of the early 1980s, which were set up to look at both rifles and cartridges for NATO standardization (although they did not end up choosing a rifle). The gun is a basically an HK33 roller-delayed system set up to use standard M16 magazines and with a ...

I have gotten quite a lot of questions about this experimental Austrian 1915 machine gun or submachine gun since it was included in the Battlefield One computer game. Unfortunately, the sum total of information we have on this weapon is three photographs found in an Austrian archive. Extrapolatin...

The Halbek Device was a clamp-on muzzle brake designed by two Rhodesians, Douglas Hall and Marthinus Bekker. It was patented in Rhodesia in 1977 and in the US in 1980, and manufactured in small numbers for the Rhodesian military. I have seen these occasionally, and doubt they are actually very ef...

Today I am speaking with Ken Hackathorn about submachine guns - specifically the Thompson and the MP5. Mr Hackathorn has an extensive resume that he is quite humble about, but I will point out that it includes being a US Army Special Forces Small Arms Instructor. He has a great deal of practical ...

This video has been updated from its original form to fix translation issues and to clarify that Nepal was not, in fact, a British colony.

Originally published January 10, 2017.

Long a mysterious unknown member of the Martini family, the Nepalese Gahendra rifles finally became available in ...

When the G11 program was cancelled and German reunified, the West German military was still using the 7.62mm G3 rifle, while the East German forces had AK-74 variants. Neither of these were suitable for a new unified German NATO-member Bundeswehr - a rifle in 5.56mm NATO was needed. Heckler & Koc...

The Winchester G30R is the final iteration of David Marshall Williams' work on a full power .30 caliber military rifle. The project began with a design by Ed Browning (John Browning's half brother) using a tilting bolt an annular gas piston, manufactured for US military trials by Colt. It moved t...

I have been waiting for a long time to have a chance to make this video - the Heckler & Koch G11! Specifically, a G11K2, the final version approved for use by the West German Bundeswehr, before being cancelled for political and economic reasons.

The G11 was a combined effort by H&K and Dynamit...

After about 2 years or working and waiting, my FR-F1 has arrived from France - so it's time to get it zeroed! I am using the only commercial ammo available in the us; PPU 139gr FMJ (caliber 7.5x54mm). To properly show the accuracy this rifle is capable of, I will need to handload the ammo, and fi...

Patrick Hernandez is a noted collector of French rifles here in the US, and a moderator of several French firearm discussion channels - so when it comes to deciphering the markings on a French rifle he is an excellent person to ask. So today, we will go through each of the markings that is found ...

While on the road with Military Historical Tours visiting American battlefields of World War One, I was asked to explain the French mutinies of 1917. This was an extemporaneous lecture, so please forgive any factual errors I may have made (and such errors are entirely my fault, not that of MHT). ...

Today I am joined by my friend Edouard for a discussion of French gun laws, as part of our continuing series on how firearms laws vary across the world. The French system is...bureaucratic.

Welcome to out first episode of Forgotten History! This will be an occasional series looking at interesting events and places in military history. We will begin with the capture of Fort Douaumont on February 25, 1916...

This video was made possible by Military History Tours, and it is the firs...

The imposing heights of the Vercors Massif form a very impressive natural defensive position in the southeastern corner of France. It was here that the French Resistance had its largest set piece battle against German occupation forces, in the summer of 1944.

Plan Montagnards originally called...

When one visits the Montfaucon American Memorial (to the soldiers in the Meuse-Argonne offensive), one finds the road in flanked by a pair of (mostly) surviving German bunkers. These standing artifacts of 20th-century warfare are something that we simply don't have in North America, and I find th...

With the surprise capture of Fort Douaumont in February 1916, the French reinforced all the remaining forts around the city of Verdun, and would hold them all successfully for many months. In fact, the only other fort in the area to fall would be Fort Vaux, in June of 1916.

In the chaos of th...

The German army captured Blanc Mont Ridge in the early months of World War One and occupied it throughout the years of fighting, fending off repeated French assaults throughout 1915 and 1916. While the ridge looks far from imposing, it is a piece of high ground which overlooks a large part of the...

Here at a forested railroad crossing outside Compiègne in Picardy, France, two rail cars met in November of 1918 - one with members of the Allied/Entente high commend and ones with representatives of Imperial Germany. They met here to end 5 years of slaughter; the German delegation being presente...

The CAL (Carabine Automatique Leger; Light Automatic Carbine) was FN's first attempt to produce a 5.56mm rifle as a counterpart to the 7.62mm FAL. While light and handy, the CAL was a relatively complex and expensive design, and failed to garner many sales. About 12,000 were made in total before ...

As usual, I have a recap today of the final prices of the guns I filmed from the most recent Morphy's auction (Fall 2018). One of the things I noticed here is an opportunity for people interested in some of the big tripod-mounted early heavy machine guns. They aren't cheap my most standards, but ...