Ian McCollum - Forgotten Weapons

Browning BDM Controls (Video)

July 22, 2013 Ian McCollum 16

Last week, we talked a bit about obsolete firearms controls, and that discussion made me think of a fairly recent pistols with a fairly unique feature, the Browning BDM. Mechanically, the BDM is a pretty […]

Vintage Saturday: The Not-French Resistance

July 20, 2013 Ian McCollum 22

Soviet guerrillas in the Crimea, with a few different types of rifles. Just women in the main shot, but there are men in the background as well.

Prototype vz.52 Machine Pistol

July 19, 2013 Ian McCollum 35

In light of our recent video on the HK P9 (and comparison to the Czech vz.52 pistol), I though it would be interesting to take a look at an interesting prototype machine pistol. This was […]

Book Review: Military Rifles of Japan (Honeycutt)

July 18, 2013 Ian McCollum 1

I’ve been boning up on Japanese WWII firearms recently, and when it comes to rifles my go-to resource is Fred Honeycutt’s book Military Rifles of Japan 1897-1945. It isn’t the newest book on the subject, […]

The Huot Machine Rifle: A Ross Conversion

July 17, 2013 Ian McCollum 13

The first serious automatic weapon considered for military service in Canada was the brainchild of Joseph Alphonse Huot, a machinist and blacksmith from Quebec. Born in 1878, Huot was a large and strong man (not […]

Controls Long Past

July 16, 2013 Ian McCollum 70

Guns are like vodka. The better and better new ones get, the more indistinguishable they become, as they get closer and closer to that Platonic ideal design. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, really – […]

H&K P9S Video

July 15, 2013 Ian McCollum 50

When we think about roller-delayed blowback firearms, we generally think of H&K rifles – but H&K also made a miniature version of the system for the P9 pistol in the late 1960s. The P9 was […]

Vintage Saturday: Comparing Gear

July 13, 2013 Ian McCollum 25

Russian and American troops linking up to fight the Germans. Note the variety of weapons – Browning 1917A1, M1 Carbine with grenade launcher, M38 Mosin carbine, PPS-43, and let’s not forget the emergency grenade on […]

Another Unusual Chinese Pistol

July 12, 2013 Ian McCollum 49

When you see a pistol with markings from multiple different manufacturers, it means one of two things: collaborative project, or Chinese workshop manufacture (or Khyber Pass workshop manufacture). Well, this one is definitely Chinese: Check […]

Book Review: Fred Datig’s Tokarev Volume

July 11, 2013 Ian McCollum 7

The full title of this work is far too long to use as the title of this post, as it is (deep breath) “The History and Development of Imperial and Soviet Russian Military Small Arms […]