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 ...

This Vickers, Sons & Maxim 37mm MkIII "Pompom" is on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The MkIII pattern is quite scarce, with less than one hundred ever made. It is built around the 37 x 124mm cartridge, firing a 1.25 pound explosive or armor piercing projectile. This one (or one of ...

Today I have made the trek to the C&Rsenal studio to have a Q&A with Othais. Not familiar with his channel? It is a wonderfully in-depth look at firearms history, development, and use focusing on the weapons of World War One.

When talking about antitank rifles, I often hear people ask why such things were not fitted with telescopic sights and used as snipers' rifles. So today, I figured I'd take a few minutes to explain the various reasons why...starting with why Carlos Hathcock's scoped M2 Browning was not the same t...

When the Israeli Defense Forces tested the FN Minimi, they found it to be lacking in a few areas, and decided that they could develop a better SAW domestically. Developed in the 1980s, the result was the Negev. Like the Minimi, the Negev is a 5.56mm light machine gun that can feed from either bel...

In the brief couple of years between the election of a new black-majority government in South Africa in 1994 and the dissolution of the Musgrave company, it attempted to produce a new 9mm pistol to sell to the burgeoning market of black South African citizens buying handguns. Ownership of pistols...

The MP5 is widely considered the best submachine gun ever made, for its reliability, its handling, and it's closed-bolt delayed-blowback action. It is so widely praised, in fact, that H&K's efforts to replace it with less expensive polymer submachine guns have largely failed, as their customer si...

The MP-35 is one of several very nicely made inter-war German submachine guns. Unlike most, it has the magazine mounted on the right, and ejects out the left - a configuration chosen to standardize the manual of arms with the K98k style bolt handle. The MP-35 is also unusual in having a progressi...

In 1994, Smith & Wesson began shipping the Model 3566, a double-stack, single action pistols tuned for high-level USPSA competition. It was a pistol that was going to dominate the new Limited division, with the capacity of a standard 9x19mm handgun but enough power to qualify for Major. And then ...

Tom Denall’s “Silent Destroyer” (originally built on surplus Sanish “Destroyer” carbines) is a Ruger 77/44 bolt action rifle with a large integral suppressor. Chambered for the .44 Magnum cartridge, it allows the use of a heavy bullet to maximize ballistic potential while remaining subsonic, prev...

The Hotchkiss was the primary heavy machine gun for the French and American forces in World War One, and this 1918-production example was just begging to be given a workout. So we took it out to the range to run a few strips of ammunition through it. Compared to my previous shooting experience wi...

Yesterday we looked at the history and mechanics of the Soviet AVS-36 battle rifle, and today we are taking it out to the range. As a light rifle firing full-power 7.62x54R ammunition, this is sure to be an exhilarating experience. I am curious to see how the muzzle brake performs, and if this ri...

The Bren gun is widely regarded as one of the best light machine guns ever built, but that reputation is based on the British .303 caliber version. How does the design perform in 8mm Mauser? Today I am going to find out, using one of the John Inglis "sterile" 8mm Brens.

When Prussia and its Dreyse needle fire rifles defeated Austria and its muzzleloaders at Shadow in 1866, much of the world took note. In Italy, the reactive was to immediately begin looking for both a new rifle and also a system for converting existing stockpiles of muzzleloaders into something m...

If a swanky outfit like H&K can make an “Operational Briefcase” with a submachine gun hidden inside it, then you can bet Military Armament Corporation is going to do the same! MAC made these briefcases for both the M10 and M11 submachine guns, and made a shortened suppressor for the M10 pattern g...

James Paris Lee is known today as the inventor of the detachable box magazine, and the “Lee” in the “Lee Enfield” rifle system - a very significant contributor to firearms development. His first foray into the business of gun design and manufacture, however, was a rather ignominious failure.

L...

Presented to Nikita Kruschev at the opening of the 21st session of the Communist Party session in 1959, this is an example of the best sporting arms being made in the Soviet Union at the time. It is an MTs-11 (МЦ-11) side by side double gun, mechanically a Beesley-patent Purdey type with plenty o...

Around 1980, Israeli purchased a batch of modern Mauser SP66 precision rifles to supplement or replace their stocks of M14 and Mauser K98k sniper rifles. This new rifle was based on the Mauser 66 sporting rifle action, and had been developed by Mauser in the 1970s to meet the new demand for serio...