2018 - Forgotten Weapons

The Fitz Special: Art of the Gunfighter, Circa 1926

June 2, 2018 Ian McCollum 28

This revolver is coming up for auction at Rock Island here. John Henry Fitzgerald was not the first person to cut down a revolver barrel, nor the first person to bob the trigger guard or […]

Demro XF-7 Wasp – An Open Bolt Semiauto From the 70s

June 1, 2018 Ian McCollum 29

The carbine in this video is selling at auction here. Designed by Gerry Fox in the early 1970s, this carbine saw production sequentially as the Fox Carbine, the TAC-1, and the XF-7 Wasp, as it […]

The Very Neat Peruvian Navy 1891 Mauser Carbine

May 31, 2018 Ian McCollum 14

This carbine is coming up for sale here. Peru acquired a large stock of Model 1891 Mausers from Argentina in 1901, and the carbine we are looking at today is a conversion form one of […]

Ordnance Research SSP-91, aka the Lone Eagle

May 30, 2018 Ian McCollum 30

This pistol is coming up for sale here. Designed by John Foote (of MAC/Cobray fame), the SSP-91 is a single shot rifle-caliber pistol intended for silhouette competition shooting and handgun hunting. It was introduced by […]

Astra 300 – A Pocket Pistol Bought Mostly By Germany

May 29, 2018 Ian McCollum 25

The pistol in this video is coming up for auction here. The Astra 300 was introduced in 1923, copying the layout, mechanics, and handling of the Astra 400 military pistol in a much more convenient […]

Romania Doesn’t Make the Dragunov: The PSL

May 28, 2018 Ian McCollum 23

This rifle is available at Rock Island’s next auction here. When Romania vocally objected to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, it lost some of its opportunities for technology transfer form the Soviet Union. […]

Germany’s First Smokeless Carbines: the Kar 88 and Gewehr 91

May 27, 2018 Ian McCollum 5

The Kar88 in this video is coming up for auction here, and the Gewehr 91 here. With the development of the smokeless Gewehr 88 “Commission Rifle”, the German Army finally made a serious effort to […]

Gevarm A6: An Open Bolt Semiauto .22 Sporting Rifle

May 26, 2018 Ian McCollum 58

Gevarm, a gunmaking offshoot of the Gevelot cartridge company, produced a line of open-bolt semiautomatic rimfire sporting rifles from the early 1960s until 1995. This is an A6 model, the base type. It is chambered […]

PTRD 41: The Simple Soviet Antitank Rifle of WWII

May 25, 2018 Ian McCollum 46

The Soviet Union had originally eschewed the use of large numbers of antitank rifles, anticipating that any potential combat use of them would be largely against tanks impervious to AT rifle cartridges. However, when […]

Interview: Mathieu Willemsen, Curator of the Dutch National Military Museum

May 24, 2018 Ian McCollum 8

Today we have a brief conversation with Mathieu Willemsen, Curator of the Dutch National Military Museum. This was shorter than I would have preferred, because it came right at the end of a long day […]