Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

French Trials VHS-F2 Croatian Bullpup

July 9, 2021 Ian McCollum 37

HS Produkt of Croatia makes an interesting modern bullpup rifle, the VHS. The rifle has gone through several major design iterations in the past two decades or so, and the most recent version (the VHS-2) […]

A New Enfield for a New War: The No4 MkI

July 7, 2021 Ian McCollum 66

The stalwart No1 MkIII “Smelly” served the United Kingdom well during the First World War, but by the 1920s it was growing obsolescent. The war had revealed a number of shortcomings of the design, and […]

L96A1 Behind the Scenes: Manufacturing Catastrophes and Exploding Rifles

July 1, 2021 Ian McCollum 58

Accuracy International’s L96A1 was a stunning success in British military trials, and became the basis for one of the most respected line of precision rifles in the world. However, it very nearly was abandoned almost […]

Ian Finally Takes a Full Auto FAMAS F1 to the Range

June 26, 2021 Ian McCollum 46

Huzzah! I finally have a chance to take a proper full-auto FAMAS F1 out to the range. My conclusions? It’s very nice, just like the semiauto civilian model. It has a limited 3-round-burst option for […]

The KP-15: Now in OD Green for you Forest-Dwellers

June 22, 2021 Ian McCollum 6

KE Arms has finally pretty much caught up with the demand for black KP-15 monolithic polymer lowers, and now has the time to put out a limited run of them in OD Green (virtually identical […]

Captain Carl Pelo’s Model 1954 Prototype Semiauto Rifle

June 21, 2021 Ian McCollum 37

Carl Pelo was a an engineer with Sako in the 1930s, and developed a series of self-loading rifles. He used a short recoil mechanism with a pair of locking flaps on the bolt, much like […]

Prototype Johnson Model R Military Rifle

June 15, 2021 Ian McCollum 21

When Melvin Johnson’s rifle design was first going through US military testing in 1938, it was set up to use box magazines. These magazines were a problem – they were not quite fully perfected, and […]

Chinese Warlord Rifles: Hanyang Type 88, aka Type Han

June 7, 2021 Ian McCollum 9

It’s not too late to get in on the Kickstarter for Pistols of the Warlords! One of the biggest arsenals in China in the 20th century was the Hanyang Arsenal, built in 1890 by the […]

How Russia Captured its First MKb-42(H)

May 30, 2021 Ian McCollum 99

This guest article written by Andrey Ulanov. When a new weapon model gets to the front, there is always a risk of it getting captured by the enemy. Armed forces go to great lengths to […]

British L85A1 at the Range: Will It Work?

May 22, 2021 Ian McCollum 66

I am excited to have a chance today to take a trip to the range with a proper, factory L85A1 rifle (it’s in the United States as a post-1986 dealer sample). I had a chance […]