Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Tallassee Carbine: The Confederacy’s Last-Ditch Effort

April 10, 2023 Ian McCollum 5

In 1863, the Confederate military decided to design a new standard pattern of cavalry carbine. The designs was put together rather quickly at the Richmond Arsenal; a 25 inch barrel, brass furniture, and Enfield type […]

Kongsberg M52: A Line-Throwing Rifle (or Harpoon Gun)

April 5, 2023 Ian McCollum 28

The Norwegian Kongsberg factory has a history of making firearms-based tools for maritime use, and one of the more recent is the M52 line-throwing gun, introduced in the 1950s and sold through the 1970s. It […]

Italy’s M14: The BM-59 at the Range

April 3, 2023 Ian McCollum 29

Beretta in Italy developed the BM-59 after World War Two as an improvement on the M1 Garand – lightened, shortened, and given a box magazine, bipod, and selector switch. And the did this in a […]

Musket to Big-Bore Rimfire: the Roberts Short-Frame Conversion

March 29, 2023 Ian McCollum 13

Brigadier General Benjamin Stone Roberts designed and patented a fall-block style of breech loading conversion to .58 Rimfire. Over the course of the decade after the Civil War, he was able to sell approximately 23,000 […]

From the American Revolution: Short Land Pattern Brown Bess

March 22, 2023 Ian McCollum 33

The standard weapon of the British Army in the American War of Independence was the “Brown Bess”, and today we are looking at a 1769 Short Land Pattern example of the Brown Bess. This was […]

The Very Rare FN CAL at the Range

March 20, 2023 Ian McCollum 31

The FN CAL (Carabine Automatique Legere) was Fabrique Nationale’s first attempt at a 5.56mm rifle, and it was not successful. They replaced it with the FNC, which saw much wider success. The CAL is quite […]

FG-42: Perhaps the Most Impressive WW2 Shoulder Rifle

March 8, 2023 Ian McCollum 96

The first production version of the FG42 used a fantastically complex milled receiver and a distinctive sharply swept-back pistol grip. A contract to make 5,000 of them was awarded to Krieghoff in late spring of […]

SSG-69: Steyr’s Cold War Sniper Rifle

March 2, 2023 Ian McCollum 15

In the 1960s, Steyr Daimler Pusch developed a modern sniper rifle for the Austrian military (and also for commercial civilian sale). It was adopted as the SSG-69 (Scharfschützen-Gewehr; sharpshooter’s rifle), replacing the SSG-98k in military […]

SSG-98k: Austria Repurposes German Sniper Rifles

February 27, 2023 Ian McCollum 14

In the aftermath of World War Two, the Austrian Army was basically disarmed and disbanded. When it was allowed to reform in the 1950s, it needed new armaments, and in 1958 it adopted the SSG-98k […]

Austrian Troop Training: Erma EL-24 .22 Kit for the Steyr M95 Carbine

February 11, 2023 Ian McCollum 21

The German company Erma (Erfurter Maschinenfabrik) developed a .22 rimfire kit for the Mauser 98 for the German Army in the 1920s. It was used for training, both to allow for more effective fundamental practice […]