Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Iron Sights at 800 Yards: New Mexico Milsurps Match!

April 21, 2018 Ian McCollum 40

While traveling through Albuquerque, I was invited to join the New Mexico Milsurps club for one of their long range rifle matches. This is no typical shooting challenge – the course of fire is 20 […]

HK XM-8: What Was it and Why? (With Larry Vickers)

April 20, 2018 Ian McCollum 37

Larry Vickers has the closest thing most any of us will ever have to a true XM-8 rifle, and has more than a little trigger time on the original XM-8 rifles. So, I asked him […]

Turkish “Enfauser” – Mauser/Enfield Hybrid Rifle

April 16, 2018 Ian McCollum 15

In the mid 1930s, Turkey updated and overhauled the bolt action rifles in its inventory, to bring them all up to that same standard for sights, ammunition, sling configuration, etc. Most of the rifles overhauled […]

SIG’s World War Two Semiauto Rifle: The Model U

April 12, 2018 Ian McCollum 34

The SIG company of Neuhausen Switzerland spent the 1920s, 30s, and 40s working on developmental semiauto rifles to sell both to the Swiss military and abroad. One of the experimental models in the succession of […]

The Original Retro AR-10: Armalite’s AR10B

April 11, 2018 Ian McCollum 13

In 1994, a man named Mark Westrom, owner of Eagle Arms, purchased the husk of the Armalite corporation, and acquired its trademarks. Westrom wanted to create a new commercial .308 AR pattern rifle, and did […]

H&K Quality Meets the Thumbhole Stock: The SR-9

April 8, 2018 Ian McCollum 13

The H&K SR9 was a the version of the H&K G3/91 designed to comply with (or avoid, if you prefer) the Bush Sr. 1989 import ban on “assault weapons”. About 4,000 of these were imported […]

Incompetence, Corruption, and a Rioting Mob: The Gibbs Carbine

April 5, 2018 Ian McCollum 16

The Gibbs carbine is fantastic illustration of just how difficult it can be to actually manufacture a new firearm. The gun itself is a breechloading, percussion fired cavalry carbine designed to use paper cartridges. It […]

Danish Gevaer m/50 – An American Gun Made in Italy

April 4, 2018 Ian McCollum 23

Dozens of countries around the world received M1 Garand rifles from the United States in the decades after World War Two, and Denmark was one of those that not only got some rifle but went […]

The Diamond of Collector FALs: The G-Series

April 2, 2018 Ian McCollum 25

When the Browning Arms Company first began importing semiautomatic FAL rifles from FN in 1959, the submitted an example for evaluation, and ATF determined that it was not a machine gun. The rifle was made […]

Remington Split Breech – Before It Was Famous

April 1, 2018 Ian McCollum 13

The Remington Rolling Block was one of the most widely successful and popular military rifles of the late 1800s, and its development began with the Remington Split Breech carbine during the American Civil War. The […]