Elbonia had a brief partnership with Egypt in the mid 1950s through which they acquired some early-production Hakim rifles. These were used along with Israeli surplus MG-34 machine gun barrel jackets to build an experimental Hakim LMG for Elbonian service. The gun was fed by adapted German MG-13 ...

After I started getting malfunctions last time, I gave the Calico a good (and much-needed) cleaning, and also replaced the striker spring. Hopefully this brings it back to a state of reliability...

Today we are taking a look at a very unusual prototype rifle, courtesy of Legacy Collectibles. I suspect - but have no direct evidence - that this was designed by one Francis K. Young, a man who patented several very similar systems. What makes it unusual is that it operates by having the cartrid...

Today I am running an early-configuration M1 Carbine through my standardized Pistol-Caliber Carbine course of fire. This consists of a selection of cool target systems from MOA Targets - an 8-plate dueling tree, a mini-Mozambique, and a Redneck Star. These will serve to test target transitions, p...

In 1960, Elbonia set out an RFP for a new carbine for a fledgling paratroop brigade. They wanted a rifle to provide a higher volume of firepower for these troops, rather like the intention of the FG42 in German WW2 service. What they got was actually based on surplus Czech vz52 rifles, adapted to...

Today we are taking a look at the history of the monolithic polymer AR-15 lower receiver. By "monolithic" I mean a design which integrates the receiver, grip, and buttstock all into a single unit, rather than the various attempts to simply make a standard AR receiver out of polymer. This is impor...

In the 1950s, Remington decided that it needed an inexpensive new .22 self-loading rifle to add to its catalog. In looking at how to reduce the cost of such a rifle, they hit upon the idea of using polymer to replace the wooden furniture typically used - and to replace the metal receiver as well....

The Tinck Arms Perun X-16 (distributed in the US by AEA Arms) is a much more interesting rifle than I expected from an initial glance. I assumed it would be just another AR-18 derivative, but the truth is much more interesting. Slovenian company Tinck Arms designed the Perun (named after a Slavic...

Johnson M1941 rifles were used in limited numbers by the US Marine Corps in the Pacific theater of World War Two, but they were used - and generally well liked. Interestingly, there was a fairly common field modification done by the Marines, and that was to cut off the front sight wings, and some...

In 1970 and 1971, China experimented with a stamped-receiver version of the SKS. About 6,000 of these rifles were made each of the two years, and a number of them have come into the US as commercial exports.

We don't have any official records from China about this program, but it seems clear t...

One of the really interesting variations on the AK to come out of Russian military development and testing is the balanced-recoil system, as exemplified on the military AK-107 and the commercial Kalashnikov SR-1 rifles. Contrary to common assumption, this is not a system to counteract to recoil c...

I was first introduced to the Tinck Arms Perun X16 at Lynx Brutality 2022 in Slovenia, and it is an interesting system emphasizing modularity and simple disassembly. I opted to use one (a 5.56mm carbine) at Lynx Brutality 2023 this year, and it ran perfectly for me. So I figured we should take a ...

The NGSW (Next Generation Squad Weapon) program began in 2017 to find a replacement for the M4, M249, and 5.56mm cartridge. It came to a conclusion in April 2022 with the formal acceptance of the SIG M5 rifle, M250 machine gun, Vortex M157 optic, and the 6.8x51mm cartridge. SIG released a handful...

The MDR has been out in the market for five years now, and DesertTech has been making some improvements. The current production model I called the MDRX, to denote several incremental improvements that have been made to the system. The gas block now has drainage holes, the polymer blend has been s...

Today we are out at the range to compare the Angstadt Arms MDP-9 to the classic H&K SP-5. We will do a bunch of runs on a course of fire that incudes precision targets, spinners and stars, and see which of the carbines comes out ahead! Plus, as a bonus, some shooting with a suppressor and subsoni...

One of the really cool aspects of the Cody Firearms Museum is that their collection is built largely on the original Winchester factory collection. Thus they have a significant number of prototype Winchester designs that were built and tested, but never put into production. One of them is this Wi...

Having worked with the KP-15 for the WWSD2020 project, I got a hankering to know how a tiny SBR carbine would work using a KP-15 lower. There is no option for using a pistol brace, of course so this was built as a registered short-barreled rifle. I used a Faxon 10.5 inch 5.56mm pencil-weight barr...

Zastava has been making AK rifles in Serbia (formerly Yugoslavia) since the 1960s, and today has a number of offerings made for the commercial market. One of the recent ones is the M90 (or more specifically, the PAPM90PS). This is a 5.56mm rifle fundamentally based on the M70 pattern. It uses Ser...

Thanks to MagPul for sponsoring this video! I was happy to use one of their new Daka Grid rifle cases today - it's a very cool system that will be of great use for me both because of its modular configurability and its excellent security.

The AR-57 is a system developed by Rhineland Arms in th...

Angstadt Arms has recently released their MDP-9 carbine, an AR-type lower coupled with a roller-delayed blowback upper assembly. This is the same operating system as the much-lauded MP5, and Angstadt version of the design is remarkably light, handy, and simple. It is made specifically for Glock m...

Hi-Point has chosen to release a new carbine, the Model 3095 - in 7.65mm French Long! Well, not quite...it's actually in .30 Super Carry. But it will run 7.65mm French Long, so I clearly need to have one...

If you are familiar with the other carbine Hi-Point makes, you will find no surprises i...

Mack Gwinn was a US Army Special Forces officer in Vietnam (he retired from the service as a Captain) who had extensive experience carrying and using a Stoner 63A. When he returned home, he decided to get into the firearms industry. His first work was the Ranger 7, an improvement on John Foote's ...

KE Arms has released a 9mm polymer lower, based on the KP-15 AR lower. It is set up for Glock magazines, and makes for a nice lightweight and inexpensive base for a 9mm PCC...

In the mid 1980s, an Italian designer named Alphonso Giambelli developed a bullpup pistol-caliber carbine with hopes of selling it to Italian law enforcement. That never happened, but the gun was offered on the commercial civil market as the semiauto AGM-1 by a company named Algimech (after ALpho...