Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

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 […]

Israeli M1919 Brownings and the US Semiauto Market

March 28, 2018 Ian McCollum 37

In the world of converted semiautomatic “machine guns,” the Browning 1919 is a happy example of one of the most iconic and historically important US machine guns and also one of the cheapest semiautomatic belt […]

Merrill-Jenks Navy Carbine Conversion

March 27, 2018 Ian McCollum 39

James Merrill was a Baltimore inventor and businessman who patented an improvement to the Jenks pattern carbine in 1858. His idea was for an improved locking lever for the gun, which would also allow the […]

The Svelte Jenks Navy Carbine of the Mexican-American War

March 26, 2018 Ian McCollum 13

The Jenks carbine was a remarkably svelte and elegant breechloading system patented by South Carolinian William Jenks in 1838. It was tested by the US Navy in 1841, and found to be quite successful. The […]

Swiss 1897 Schmidt-Rubin Kadettengewehr Training Rifle

March 25, 2018 Ian McCollum 33

The Swiss replaced their Vetterli rifles in the late 1880s with the new Schmidt-Rubin pattern, and this eventually trickled down to the cadet corps. These youth programs had been using short single-shot 1870 Vetterli carbines, […]

Semiauto Portuguese AR-10 on a Sendra Receiver

March 23, 2018 Ian McCollum 31

So, you would like to get an original AR-10 rifle to shoot? Well, the original Armalite AR10 rifles were almost all manufactured by Artillerie-Inrichtingen in the Netherlands, and they were virtually all machine guns. They […]