Submachine Guns - Forgotten Weapons

Born in the Heart of Besieged Leningrad: the PPS-42

November 11, 2022 Ian McCollum 24

One would think that the Shpagin PPSh-41 was as simple as a submachine gun could get, but that wasn’t the case in World War Two USSR. Barely had the PPSh gotten into real production than […]

The Added Safety on German Inter-War SMGs

November 10, 2022 Ian McCollum 2

Police in inter-war Germany used a variety of submachine guns, and sometimes added a distinctive extra safety mechanism to them. No patent or documentation ha been uncovered (that I am aware of, anyway), but the […]

An Early .45 ACP Reising Model 50 at the Range

November 5, 2022 Ian McCollum 22

The Reising was adopted by the US Marine Corps and used in campaigns through 1942 and early 1943, and it garnered a pretty poor reputation for reliability on the islands of the Pacific. However, it’s […]

First to the Fight: The Marines’ Reising M50 SMG

November 4, 2022 Ian McCollum 23

Eugene Reising developed a .45 ACP submachine gun in the late 1930s that was basically the opposite of the Thompson – it was light and handy, fired from a closed bolt with a delayed blowback […]

Thompson SMG Cases: Police, FBI, and Secret Service

November 3, 2022 Ian McCollum 9

The Auto Ordnance company made a couple different types of cases for the Thompson SMG, and today we are going to look at two of the most common and one exceptionally cool type. The two […]

Beretta 38/42 at the Range

October 29, 2022 Ian McCollum 28

The pre-war Beretta Model 38A was a magnificent SMG, but it included a fair number of fancy elements that would prove to costly to justify once wartime production needs grew. Beretta would simplify the design […]

Beretta 38/42: Simplified But Still Excellent

October 28, 2022 Ian McCollum 5

The Beretta Model 38A was an outstanding SMG at the beginning of World War Two, loaded with features and very easy to shoot. However, it was expensive and complex to produce, and pressures of war […]

Late-Production Degtyarev PPD 34/38 at the Range

October 22, 2022 Ian McCollum 12

A crash program to produce the PPD 34/38 after the initial battles of the Winter War, even as the improved PPD 40 was being rapidly developed. These are very rare gun today, and we have […]

The Soviet Union Adopts an SMG: Degtyarev’s PPD-34/38

October 21, 2022 Ian McCollum 28

The Soviet Union adopted its first submachine gun in 1935 after trials of some 14 different design in 1932/33. The winner of the trials was Vasily Degtyarev, once of the Soviet Union’s most prolific firearms […]

MAC Model 1947 Prototype SMGs

October 12, 2022 Ian McCollum 17

Today’s video – and many others – have been made possible in part by my friend Shéhérazade (Shazzi) Samimi-Hoflack. She is a real estate agent in Paris who specializes in working with English-speakers, and she […]