Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

GIGN’s MR73 Sniper Revolver in .357 Magnum

December 16, 2019 Ian McCollum 29

Courtesy of the French Ministry of the Interior, we have a chance to take a look at an authentic GIGN sniper model MR73 revolver today. GIGN is the elite intervention element of the French Gendarmerie, […]

Terry’s Breechloading Carbine: Used by Hussars and Confederates

December 5, 2019 Ian McCollum 12

This capping breechloader was patented in the UK by William Terry in 1856, and adopted (in limited numbers) by the British military in 1860. Approved for cavalry use, it was issued to the 18th Hussars, […]

Tippman’s Half-Scale .22 Rimfire Browning 1917 Machine Gun

December 4, 2019 Ian McCollum 12

In 1983, Dennis Tippman formed a company to manufacture half-scale functional replicas of Browning machine guns – the 1919 and 1917 specifically. He built these as both fully automatic and semiautomatic (the semiauto design being […]

Valkyrie Arms Semiauto M3A1 Grease Gun

December 3, 2019 Ian McCollum 7

Valkyrie Arms was formed in 1993 to produce semiautomatic copies of classic military machine guns, and in 2004 they introduced a semiauto M3A1 “Grease Gun”. The M3 and M3A1 are particularly rare guns as registered […]

FN FAL With an Original FN Scope

November 28, 2019 Ian McCollum 7

When the FN FAL was first being sold, many militaries that bought it opted to mount optics on a small percentage of their rifles. These military setups used a variety of different optics and mounts, […]

Pieper’s 7-Barrel Mitrailleuse: Like a Shotgun But Accurate

November 23, 2019 Ian McCollum 26

Manufactured in the 1880s and 1890s to serve the professional hunter market, Pieper’s 7-barrel Mitrailleuse was essentially a rimfire volley gun. It was offer in both .22 rimfire and .32 rimfire calibers, both models having […]

Civil War Smith Carbine and its Rubber Cartridges

November 22, 2019 Ian McCollum 13

The US military experimented with a wide variety of breechloading carbines during the Civil War. One of these that got a bit of a head start on the others was the Smith carbine, patented in […]

Springfield’s SAR-4800 FAL…in 5.56mm

November 20, 2019 Ian McCollum 11

In the early 1990s, the Brazilian Imbel factory made a small run of FAL rifles converted to 5.56mm using AR magazines. They used standard FAL receivers and bolt carriers, with a boltface cut for 5.56x45mm […]

The Best SMLE: The No1 MkV Trials Rifle

November 18, 2019 Ian McCollum 11

After World War One, the British looked at how to apply the lessons of the war to development of a new infantry rifle. Even before the war, a decision had been made to move to […]

Holloway HAC-7L: A Specifically Left-Handed Battle Rifle

November 14, 2019 Ian McCollum 6

Bob Holloway designed the HAC-7 rifle to be the ultimate combat infantry rifle in 1984, drawing on his experiences in Vietnam and Rhodesia. It is a very interesting hybrid of AK, FAL, and other design […]