After the Mp44/StG44 Sturmgewehr was starting to see substantial production and field use, the German military and the Mauser company began working on a way to simplify production of the weapon. The design for the Gerät 06H actually began with the Gerät 03, an attempt to make a roller-locked G43 ...

Today's rifle is not quite an Austrian military StG-77, but it is virtually identical. This is one of the commemorative rifles sold by Steyr, which has been rebuilt with military parts and is a registered dealer sample machine gun (which is why I can show you the complete full-auto functionality ...

The Stoner 63 is a firearm surrounded by a tremendous amount of mythology. It was Eugene Stoner's big project following on the AR-15, and it was a brilliant piece of engineering - a single modular receiver which could be assembled into a half dozen different configurations:

Carbine
Rifle
Aut...

Finland adopted the AK in 7.62x39mm after World War Two, and continues to use the AK to this day. The standard pattern RK62 was starting to fall a bit short, and so in the late 1980s a program was begun at Valmet to produce a modernized version for the Finnish Defense Forces. Valmet was acquired ...

Today we are looking at - and shooting - a one of a kind .22 rimfire conversion kit for the Galil developed by South African designer Tony Neophytou (better known for the Neostead shotgun, Neopup grenade launcher, and NTW-20 anti-material rifle). The idea here is to convert a standard R4 Galil se...

When South Africa decided to replace the R1 rifle (a metric FAL), they chose to adopt the Israeli Galil. Both nations had similar environmental issues with blowing sand (in northwestern South Africa particularly), and Israel was one of the few nations willing to trade arms with South Africa in th...

While Harrington & Richardson was making M14 rifles for the United States military, they were also experimenting with other variations on the design. Among these was the “Guerrilla Gun”, an shortened and lightened M14. The barrel was reduced in length by 4.5 inches and also reduced significantly ...

Today we are out shooting the H&R M14 "Guerrilla Gun" prototype, but fitted with a standard M14 stock and barrel. With these parts, it handles and fires exactly like a standard M14 - so I can answer the most pertinent question:

Is the M14 really so uncontrollable in full auto?

The OICW - Objective Individual Combat Weapon - was part of a program in the 1980s and 1990s to replace the whole lineup of uS small arms with a consolidated group of new high-tech ones. The M4, M16, and M203 would be replaced by the OICW, the M240, M2, and Mk 19 would be replaced by the Objectiv...

Finland adopted the AK in 1962, as the m/62 - a milled receiver pattern. By the late 1960s the Valmet factory was experimenting with stamped receiver design to reduce costs. The first stamped Valmet rifle was the m/71, which used forward-mounted open sights like a regular AK instead of rear-mount...

When the German military first requested rifles in the new 8x33mm Kurz cartridge, there were two companies that provided designs. One was Haenel, who would eventually win the competition. The other was Walther, who submitted this rifle - the MKb-42(W). Where the Haenel gun fired from an open bolt...

The Colt Model 639 was the export version of the Colt Model 629, which was type classified by the US military as the XM177E2 and issued to MACVSOG special operations units in 1967 and 1968. Improved from the Model 609 carbine, the 629/639 has an 11.5 inch barrel and an interesting small muzzle de...

The hype? Yeah, it's real. The FG42 is the nicest full-auto full-power rifle I have yet fired. This is a recut of a previous video that YouTube decided to squash.

The Stoner 63 was a remarkably advanced and clever modular firearm designed by Eugene Stoner (along with Bob Fremont and Jim Sullivan) after he left Armalite. The was tested by DARPA and the uS Marine Corps in 1963, and showed significant potential - enough that the US Navy SEALs adopted it and k...

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...

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 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 ...

Want to play He-Man shooting a BAR from the shoulder? This one has been built for just that purpose. It’s chambered in 7x57mm for reduced recoil, has a 21” barrel to improve handling, a custom lengthened pistol grip, safe-semi-full trigger group, good early M1918 pattern sights, and Bren Gun trip...

Development of the CZ-2000 began in the 1970s as a replacement for the vz.58 rifle. The project was named "Lada", and was essentially an improved AK-74 rifle chambered for the 5.45x39mm cartridge. The new rifle was mechanically an AK, but had a number improved features including a thumb-operated ...

I have been trying to get my hands on Fedorov M1916 rifle for a while, and I finally had the opportunity at the NFC, part of the British Royal Armouries. The Fedorov was designed in the years just before World War One, and originally chambered for a proprietary 6.5mm cartridge (also designed by F...

Thanks to the generosity of a collector in the Association of Maltese Arms Collectors and Shooters, we have a chance today to take a look at a pre-production FG-42, serial number 015. This is one of the guns manufactured by Rheinmetall (the series production would be handed over to Krieghoff) in ...

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 ...

The AR-10 rifle was developed in the United States (Hollywood California, specifically) by Eugene Stoner, but the Armalite company did not have a suitable large scale manufacturing facility to produce the number of guns they expected to sell to military forces. Instead, a deal was struck to licen...

Today at the Kessler auction house in Kreuzlingen Switzerland we are taking a look at the W+F Bern C42 and E22 rifles. These are the guns supplied by Bern to compete for the Swiss military Sturmgewehr 90 trials. The C=type ones are chambered for the 5.56mm cartridge, but Swiss adoption of that ca...