Would you believe it? Factory engraved Glocks are actually a thing! They have not made all that many, but they do turn up from time to time, recognizable by their ELP serial prefixes. These three were displayed by Glock at the 2002 SHOT Show, and are now on the civilian market. They were made as ...

In 1951 and 1952, Colt supplied a small number of extremely lightweight revolvers to the US Air Force, designated the M13 Aircrewman. These guns were very similar to the commercial Colt Cobra; .38 special 6-shot guns with aluminum alloy frames and cylinders with a loaded weight of just 11 ounces....

One of the rarest versions of the Thompsons Submachine Gun is the Model of 1927 Thompson Semi Automatic Carbine. These were regular 1921 machine guns that had their fire control groups slightly modified to only firm in semiauto and their receivers remarks to show Model 1927 instead of 1921. The r...

While the standard Rhodesian Army rifle was the FAL, their next most common rifle was the G3. These were mostly of Portugueses origin, and had the thing and narrow style of G3 handguards. In an effort to counteract the rapid heating of these handguards, a domestically designed and produced clamp-...

One of my pet peeves is when people buy collectible guns because they have been stuck with clickbait sorts of gimmicky names. In particular, the "Grey Ghost" P38 and the "Black Widow" Luger - especially the Luger.

Thanks to Milkor USA, I have a chance today to do some shooting with both the M32 and M32A1 rotary grenade launchers they make for the US military. I'm using 40mm chalk training ammunition, with some steel targets at about 75-85 meters. In live fire, it's quite clear how much of an improvement th...

We are joined today by Max Popenker to answer your questions about Soviet and Russian firearms:

00:32 - Russian-contract Colt 1911 pistols
01:33 - Clarification on SVD accuracy standards
02:57 - Is the PSO-1 BDC calibrated for LPS ball or 7N1?
03:57 - What was the purpose of the IR detectio...

Questions for today's Q&A, as always, come from my Patrons, who are noted for their classy good looks and excellent taste. Specifically:

00:22 - First Polish purchase for a C&R licensee
04:00 - What's the deal with the black powder .50 BMG Hotchkiss revolving cannon reproductions?
05:35 - Ta...

For this month's Q&A, we go back to a wide variety of questions, without a single specific theme. They are:

0:00:30 - Rifle, pistol, and machine gun for a modern squad
0:04:35 - Favorite non-firearm historical site
0:08:50 - What is my daily schedule like?
0:10:47 - Advantages of toggle loc...

For today's Q&A, I am joined by John Keene, retired US Army Master Sergeant and NFA specialist for the Morphy auction company (and for the James D Julia company before their acquisition by Morphy's). John has a tremendous knowledge of machine guns, the machine gun collecting community, and the le...

More Q&A! No specific theme this time, but a combination of SHOT Show news, what-ifs, and some specific questions about me…

0:00:34 - SHOT Show Report
0:05:22 - 1895 Lee Navy destructive testing
0:07:40 - Opinion on the L85A2
0:09:25 - How did NATO adopt the 5.56x45mm?
0:11:32 - Cold War s...

Today I would like to introduce you to Jack, who runs the Cartridge_Gram account on Instagram. Ammunition researchers and collectors are a somewhat rare subset of gun collectors, and theirs is a subject that is often overlooked. Jack is posting some pretty cool stuff, and I look forward to seeing...

Arsenals of History is an annual symposium of firearms museum, and met this year at the newly renovated Cody Firearms Museum. The theme of this year's symposium was social media and museums. This presentation was given by Danny Michael, Assistant Curator for he Cody Firearms Museum. Video games t...

Arsenals of History is an annual symposium of firearms museum, and met this year at the newly renovated Cody Firearms Museum. The theme of this year's symposium was social media and museums. This presentation was given by Logan Metesh of High Caliber History on the topic of museum staff and visit...

Arsenals of History is an annual symposium of firearms museum, and met this year at the newly renovated Cody Firearms Museum. The theme of this year's symposium was social media and museums. This presentation was given by Scott Gausen, an Education Specialist for the Springfield Armory National H...

Whether it is described as a machine pistol, a submachine gun, or a personal defense weapon, the PM63 Rak is really not the best examples of this sort of thing to actually shoot. The open-bolt/slide mechanism is very cool from an engineering and design perspective, but does in fact have a tendenc...

The PM-63 Rak is a pretty interesting Polish Cold War machine pistol or personal defense weapon. It fires from an open bolt, but uses a slide like a pistol rather than a bolt in an enclosed receiver like a typical SMG. There are several other interesting elements to the design, so let's take a cl...

I'm happy to be joined once again by Russian small arms historian Max Popenker, for a discussion of the development of the Kalashnikov PK machine gun. This is universally regarded as one of the best general-purpose machine guns ever designed. We will look at the Soviet machine gun systems at the ...

Note: I goofed on a detail here; "DRGM" is a trademark designation, not something related to the party. Sorry!

Today, courtesy of Tom from Legacy Collectibles, we are taking a look at "party leader" PPK pistols. There are three different versions of these, and we will look at all of them in se...

The 1985 competition to pick a new sniper rifle for the British military came down to a closely fought contest between the Accuracy International PM and the Parker Hale M85. The M85 was a fantastically accurate rifle, every bit the equal of the AI submission and to this day there are still people...

The Pretoria Arms Factory was founded in 1954 by Piet Nagel and Jan Willem Dekker. both Dutch immigrants to South Africa after WW2. They began manufacturing a simplified copy of the Baby Browning pocket pistol, chambered for the .25 ACP (6.35mm Browning) cartridge. This appears to be the first d...

The P7 was one of the most interesting and original handgun designs of the last few decades. Originally created for West German police trials, it was chambered in 9x19mm. As it became popular beyond Germany, the question arose of it being offered in additional calibers. The P7M10 was released in ...

The US held three series of pistol trials beginning in the late 1970s to find a replacement for the venerable M1911 handgun. H&K was a participant in all three - in the first the entered a P9 and a VP-70, both of which were rejected. In the second series, they entered the P7A10 - a single-stack P...

The One submachine gun is one of the ugliest SMGs ever designed, and yet also one of the most beloved by its users. The original basis for the gun was a .22 rimfire submachine gun designed by 23-year-old Australian Evelyn Owen. That prototype was found by his neighbor Vincent Wardell after Owen ...