While the Italian military did adopt the AR-70, it did not actually issue them to all troops. Most continued to use the 7.62mm BM-59 until 1990 when the Beretta AR-70/90 was adopted. This rifle was a substantial rework and improvement of the AR-70, using AR-pattern magazines and a 1:7" twist barr...

There has never been a proper semiauto version of the MP40 available in the US, until now. SSD (Sport-Systeme Dittrich) is a German company that has been making semiauto copies of German WW2 small arms for quite some time, and they now have a US partner in the DK Production Group. They plan to re...

The first version of the new MSBS "Grot" rifle purchased by the Polish government was actually a special version for ceremonial parade use. In order to make the gun suitable to that role, a surprising number of changes were made to it - almost every element is different than the standard service ...

Egypt purchased tooling for the Swedish AG-42 Ljungman in 1952, and adapted it to their 8mm Mauser caliber as the Hakim rifle. Later, they scaled the rifle down to 7.62x39mm as the Rasheed, and manufactured about 7,300 of them between 1966 and 1968. These rifles were issued to the District Ward R...

In 1974, Iraq and Egypt were still on good relations, and Egypt sold Iraq a batch of 300 Rasheed carbines and the production tooling to manufacture them. Iraq quickly set up production and began making their own copy of the Rasheed in 1974 or 1975, named the "Baghdad". Production ran until 1978, ...

In the 1920s, the British Army examined a number of options to replace the bolt-action Lee Enfield rifle. Several self-loading rifle systems were examined at a time when the US Army was looking at adopting the M1 Garand. One such weapon proposed in the trials was the 'Bang' rifle as covered in a ...

It's Jonathan's week off so join our Curator of Firearms Christian Wellard as he explores the bulky M3 Carbine. Developed at the end of the Second World War, the M3 was trialled by British forces in Korea and Malaya and despite its hefty size and weight, was well liked by troops.

A true unicorn of a weapon this week as Jonathan attempts to make sense of one of the strangest weapons we've featured on this channel so far. Overcomplicated and fundamentally flawed, the Kretz rifle was almost immediately obsoleted by superior designs.

When Jonathan first joined the museum 13 years ago, we came across a weapon of unknown design, maker and origin sat on one of the many racks of the Royal Armouries' stores. Having always wanted to know more about it, he believes to finally have some answers.

Experts at the time called it: 'Clumsy ill-balanced and altogether unpleasant to handle.' Charming.

Please support us at: https://www.patreon.com/capandball The story of the SVT40, and of course some fun at the range. World War 2 Soviet combined arms and infantry tactics, and the place of the SVT40 semiauto rifle in the Soviet squad. Technical specifications, disassembly-reassembly, and modern ...

Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries museum examines the last-ditch conversion of a SMLE into an LMG. The brainchild of a car mechanic from New Zealand, the Charlton was one of the more successful conversions of the Lee Enfield during the Second World War.

Damaged present on this incredible object might have actually saved a soldier's life. Jonathan examines how a French poilu, out of ammunition was likely saved by his RSC Fusil Automatique M1917 taking a bullet.

In 1928 and 1929, the Swiss Rheinmetall company produced about 50 examples of a toggle-locked rifle designed by Karl Heinemann. It was tested by the United States among other countries, but never found military acceptance. This particular example is a Heinemann rifle in sporting pattern, made by ...

Partway through 1944, the Japanese Imperial Navy began a program to provide their infantry units with better firepower than was afforded by the bolt action Arisaka rifles. The initial experimentation was based on rechambering captured US M1 Garand rifles for the 7.7 Japanese cartridge, but an inc...

We have all seen plenty of sporter CETME rifles and civilian HK-91s, but when the G3 was new to the Germany military, there was already an interest in bringing semiauto versions into the US. The Golden State Arms Corporation was the first to do so, with three batches of imports in 1962 (just 3 ye...

This CZ Model S rifle is one of many prototypes made between the world wars in Czechoslovakia in an effort to develop a military semiautomatic rifle. Similar efforts were underway in most other countries at the same time (basically every place that had a mature arms industry), and a huge variety ...

Even during World War Two, it was clear that the United States was interested in improving on the M1 Garand rifle. A company that could develop and update to the Garand to make it selective-fire and feed from a box magazine would be in a great position to sell the government a ton of rifles, and ...

The Scotti Model X (the X standing for the 10th year of the Italian Fascist era, or 1932) was one of several semiauto rifles tested by the Italian military during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Scotti entry into these competitions was chambered for the 6.5mm Carcano cartridge and used standa...

A lot of people think that the US was the only country in World War II to mass-issue a semiautomatic infantry rifle, but that isn't true. While the US was the only country to issue everyone a semi auto, both the Soviet Union and Germany produced large numbers of them. The Soviet rifle in particul...

The Japanese military was interested in finding a new self-loading rifle to adopt in the 1930s. The development project began with a request to retired General Kijiro Nambu who designed a gas-operate,d rotating bolt rifle but could not bring it up to the standards demanded by the military and opt...

Sold at auction for $172,500.

By 1932, the competition for the new US semiautomatic service rifle had been narrowed down to just two designs: John Pedersen's delayed blowback toggle action and John Garand's gas-operated action. Both rifles were chambered for Pedersen's .276 caliber cartridge, ...

The Mauser Selbstlader M1915 was the result of many years of work by the Mauser brothers to develop a semiautomatic rifle suitable for military use. They tried many different types of operating systems, and this one is a particularly unusual recoil-operated mechanism.

Only about 600 of these r...

The Walther A115 was one of the semiauto rifles developed in pre-WWII Germany. Apparently only three were made, and it uses a neat combination of sheet metal construction with a rotating bolt and annular gas piston like the later G41 rifles. This particular example was examined by Aberdeen Provin...