During World War II, the US military had a simultaneous need to put machine guns into combat service, and also a need to train new soldiers on the operation of those machine guns. Cutting up existing guns to make demonstration models reduced the number available for field use, and the solution wa...

With the British military's return to Afghanistan in the Global War on Terror, it was found that the very long engagement ranges made it necessary to have a 7.62mm designated marksman's rifle, in addition to the 5.56mm scoped rifles in service. This was not unique to the British military; the US ...

The Thorneycroft was the first military bullpup rifle, developed in the United Kingdom in response to combat experiences in the second Boer War showing the British infantry rifles to be overly long and cumbersome. Scotsman James Baird Thorneycroft figured he could address this by moving the actio...

The Tankgewehr antitank rifle was developed by the Mauser company and adopted by the Imperial German military as an emergency measure to counter the introduction of tanks to the WW1 battlefield. The question is, did they really work? Could a 13.2mm AP bullet from a Tankgewehr really perforate the...

When the Swedish military decided that 1937 seemed like a pretty good time to be getting some new submachine guns, they arranged to purchase a version of the m/31 Suomi from their Finnish neighbors - which they called the M-37. Since the standard Swedish military pistol (the Husqvarna m/07) was c...

Designed by Finland's most notable arms inventor, Aimo Lahti, the m/31 Suomi submachine gun is an iconic weapon of the Winter War and the Continuation War. It is a first-generation submachine gun with a heavy milled receiver and very well-fitted parts - enough so that a series of vent holes were ...

Collector Grade is known for being a premiere publisher of technical firearms reference books, and I would be willing to argue that "Sturmgewehr!" by Hans-Dieter Handrich is the best book they have yet printed. The book was originally printed inn 2004, and by the time I started looking for a copy...

The origins of flap-locking (as used in the G41(W), G43, DShK, DP, and RPD, among others) goes back to a Swedish Lieutenant Friberg in 1870, who patented the system. At that time, however, the fouling endemic to black powder made self-loading firearms effectively impossible and so the concept wou...

I get a lot of questions about the purpose of stacking rods and stacking swivels on rifles - so let's see if we can clear some of them up today.

The SS41 was a bullpup, bolt action antitank rifle manufactured in small numbers by CZ for the SS. contrary to common assumption, the SS were not a part of the standard German military arms procurement system, and were forced to scrounge for their weapons from other sources. Czech factories were ...

The Model 1941 Sosso is a huge Italian experimental semiauto pistol designed by Giulio Sosso. It uses a short recoil locking mechanism and is chambered for standard 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition, but its more unusual feature is its magazine. Instead of using a traditional spring and follower, the ...

In the US, the commonly accessible version of the vz.61 Skorpion is the stock-less semiauto pistol - and in that configuration the gun is really nothing like the intentions of its designers. The Skorpion was designed to be a personal defense weapons, and in the small .32ACP caliber that really re...

The Czech vz.61 Skorpion is a rather unusual sort of firearm; a machine pistol designed from scratch instead of being converted from an existing handgun design, and chambered for the seemingly out of place .32ACP (7.65mm Browning) cartridge. It is a weapon which seems awkwardly small as a shoulde...

The SIG 310, aka MP48, is the final evolution of SIG's submachine gun design from the 1920s. It began as the MKM/P/S/O with a folding magazine well, wooden stock, and fancy lever-delayed operating system. Over almost 30 years of development, the wood stock and the lever-delayed system fell away, ...

The year in review with shooting! In order of appearance:

EM-2 (.280/30)
vz61 Skrpion
kp/44
kp/31 Suomi
ZB-26
RK-95/S
American 180
Finnish Maxim
KVKK-62
DP-28
Prototype Friberg/Kjellman
SIG MP48
Dreyse light rifle
PSM
RSC-1918
RSC-1917
Norinco M-305A
Yugo M84 (PKM)
Trejo Mode...

Andreas Schwarzlose was a German designer who created several very interesting and unusual handgun designs (in addition to his 1907 heavy machine gun, which was adopted as a standard arm of the Austro-Hungarian military). His first handgun was the model 1898, a short recoil, rotating bolt pistol ...

Josef Laumann was an Austrian designer of early ring-trigger manually repeating pistols, and was one of the first to develop that type of handgun into a semiautomatic. He took an 1891 pattern ring trigger gun and adapted it with an 1892 patent into a simple blowback self-loader - coming very clos...

Savage was very successful with their .32 ACP and .380 ACP pocket pistols, and in the 1910s was interested in also breaking into the .25 ACP market, to compete with the Colt 1908 "Baby Browning". Savage invested in all the tooling to make a new blowback .25, but never put them into serial product...

The Salvator-Dormus has the distinction of being the world’s first semiauto pistol, being patented in 1891. It is chambered for the 8mm Dormus cartridge, and holds 5 rounds in a Mannlicher type clip. Only about 50 of these pistol were made, mostly for an Austrian military trial in 1896/7 (this pa...

In our final segment on the SA80 family of weapons, we are looking at a selection of underbarrel grenade launcher adaptations of the L85 rifle. Specifically, we will see a prototype XL60 series launcher, a prototype Enfield XL70 series system, an adaptation of the Colt M203, and the final adopted...

One of the original design intentions of the SA80 project was to replace the infantry rifle and the submachine gun with a single weapon that could fulfill both roles - hence the choice of a bullpup configuration. This would, theoretically, allow rifle ballistics and also SMG handling and maneuver...

At last, we have reached the L85A2, when the rifle was finally made into something reliable and effective. In 1995, after extensive public scandal from the L85A1's shortcomings being blatantly exposed in the first Gulf War, Heckler & Koch was given a contract to retrofit the rifles. At the time H...

The SA80 saga continues today with the final pre-production versions of the L85A1 and L86A1, although at this point they still both carry XL designations, as they were not yet formally adopted weapons. In these weapons we can see a couple last distinctive mechanical changes, but perhaps more impo...

By 1980, the scheduled deadline for adopting the L85 and L86 was rapidly approaching, and the weapons should have been in the last stages of fine-tuning before production began. This was not the case, however - testing was still uncovering critical problems in the guns.

The goal for these weap...