Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Ball Repeating Carbine (Video)

December 16, 2013 Ian McCollum 9

The Ball Repeating Carbine was one of the last Civil War arms manufactured, as an initial order of 1,002 units was ordered in 1864 but not delivered until shortly after the cessation of hostilities in […]

Vintage Saturday: A Long Way From Home

December 14, 2013 Ian McCollum 26

Malagasy soldier from the French army, World War I. Armed with a M1886/93 Lebel rifle and early style bayonet with hooked quillion.

Mauser M1915 Flieger-Karabiner

December 11, 2013 Ian McCollum 20

Thanks to reader Jacob, we have some fantastic photos of a Mauser M1915 Flieger-Karabiner. This was an early (although not the earliest) Mauser self-loading rifle design, and was used for a short time by German […]

Johnson M1941 Video

December 9, 2013 Ian McCollum 28

Melvin Johnson was a gun designer who felt that the M1 Garand rifle had several significant flaws – so he developed his own semiauto .30-06 rifle to supplement the M1. His thought was that if […]

Vintage Saturday: Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance

December 7, 2013 Ian McCollum 28

Cuban exiles training in Florida for the Bay of Pigs invasion, with scoped M1941 Johnson rifles. (coming Monday, a video on the Johnson…)

Model 1871 Ward-Burton Rifle

December 2, 2013 Ian McCollum 10

The Model 1871 Ward-Burton was one of the early experimental rifles trialled by the US military in its search for a new breechloading rifle to replace the theoretically-interim Allin conversion that made muzzle-loading rifles into […]

Vintage Saturday: Mausers on the Silk Road

November 30, 2013 Ian McCollum 19

Commentary from the photographer: Full-length portrait of the four men, standing in a line with rifles. ‘While halting for the night I had an interesting opportunity of becoming acquainted with a small party of well-armed […]

Bergmann 1897 Carbine

November 28, 2013 Ian McCollum 13

Several of the popular pistols of the very early 1900s were offered by factories in carbine configurations, with 10-14 inch barrels and permanent shoulder stocks (not to be confused with the detachable stock/holsters also made […]

Pakistani 44-Bore Followup

November 19, 2013 Ian McCollum 48

Thanks to a Pakistani reader named Adi who happens to own a 44-Bore rifle (an AK with the chamber reamed to accept 8×33 Kurz cartridges), we have some a bit more information on this interesting […]

Egyptian Hakim in a 2-Gun Match

November 18, 2013 Ian McCollum 34

This past weekend was another 2-Gun Action Challenge Match, and this time I decided to shoot my Hakim in it. The Hakim is an Egyptian license-built copy of the Swedish AG-42 Ljungman (you can find […]