Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Why Antitank Rifles Were Not Sniper Rifles

January 23, 2020 Ian McCollum 42

When talking about antitank rifles, I often hear people ask why such things were not fitted with telescopic sights and used as snipers’ rifles. So today, I figured I’d take a few minutes to explain […]

Mauser-Norris Prototype: Origins of the Mauser Legacy

January 10, 2020 Ian McCollum 19

Today we are looking at one of the rarest and earliest rifles built by Paul and Wilhelm Mauser, a design which would set in motion all the events that led to the Mauser company becoming […]

Short: Inspecting an RSC 1917 Gas System

January 7, 2020 Ian McCollum 11

The French Model 1917 RSC rifle has a rather unusual gas system, and without some experience it can be difficult to know what one is looking at in one. So today, we’re taking a quick […]

SIG 550-1 Sniper: Answering a Question Nobody Asked

December 31, 2019 Ian McCollum 15

Today at the Kessler auction house in Kreuzlingen Switzerland, we are taking a look at a SIG 550-1 Sniper model. This is mechanically a SIG 550, aka Sturmgewehr 90, but made to a very high […]

Erquiaga EM-62: Castro’s Ex-Armorer Makes an M14

December 28, 2019 Ian McCollum 28

Juan Erquiaga was a Peruvian Army officer who was introduced to Gordon Ingram and the Police Ordnance Company, probably during Ingram’s time working on sales of the Model 6 submachine gun to Peru. Erquiaga first […]

Colt 601: The AR-15 Becomes a Military Rifle

December 25, 2019 Ian McCollum 21

The AR-15 rifle was originally developed by Armalite as an offshoot of the AR-10 rifle designed by Eugene Stoner. How that second-thought rifle became the US standard military rifle – and the longest-serving infantry rifle […]

Prototype Mauser 1917 Trench Carbine

December 20, 2019 Ian McCollum 15

In the latter stages of World War One, the German military was looking for new arms for its Sturmtruppen. Without a reliable self-loading rifle design to use, they instead focused on pistil caliber arms. The […]

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 […]