Select-fire Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Exploring the Details of an E.M.2 with Jonathan Ferguson

May 6, 2020 Ian McCollum 13

Join the Kickstarter campaign and preorder your copy of Jonathan’s “Thorneycroft to SA80: British Bullpup Firearms 1901 – 2020”! Sorry for the poor audio quality – I am back at the Cody Firearms Museum talking […]

The EM2 in NATO Trials, with Jonathan Ferguson

April 29, 2020 Ian McCollum 14

Join the Kickstarter campaign and preorder your copy of Jonathan’s “Thorneycroft to SA80: British Bullpup Firearms 1901 – 2020”! Sorry for the poor audio quality – I am back at the Cody Firearms Museum talking […]

Archival E.M.2 Footage: Slow Motion and Janson Doing Mag Dumps

April 26, 2020 Ian McCollum 9

Thanks to Jonathan Ferguson and Royal Armouries Archivist Philip Abbott, we have a compilation of some archival video of the E.M. 2 testing circa 1951/1952. This is mostly high speed video clips showing reliability testing, […]

H&K’s Middle Child: The HK33 and HK53 in 5.56mm

March 18, 2020 Ian McCollum 20

Introduced in 1968, the HK33 was Heckler & Koch’s adaptation of their roller-delay operating system to the 5.56mm / .223 Remington cartridge. In addition to the standard full-length rifle (with a 15.35 inch barrel) a […]

Forced-Air Cooling in an Experimental Ross Machine Gun

February 28, 2020 Ian McCollum 22

In addition to building three main patterns of straight-pull bolt action rifle for the Canadian military and the commercial market, Sir Charles Ross also experimented with self-loading rifles. Starting with a standard Ross Mk III, […]

The Prototype .280 FAL from 1950s NATO Trials

February 24, 2020 Ian McCollum 112

After World War Two, the new NATO defense alliance held a series of trials to adopt a standard cartridge and infantry rifle. This would eventually devolve and the goal of a standardized rifle would be […]

The FAL for British Troop Trials in 1954: X8E1 & X8E2

February 21, 2020 Ian McCollum 33

The NATO rifle trials of the early 1950s eventually chose the 7.62mm x 51mm cartridge, and the British and Belgians agreed on the FAL rifle to shoot it (and they thought the US would as […]

Beretta 57: Italy Makes a .30 Carbine SMG for Morocco

January 29, 2020 Ian McCollum 29

The Model 57 is a select-fire carbine made by Beretta around the .30 Carbine cartridge. It uses a newly designed magazine much more durable that the American M1/M2 Carbine magazines, and has a tilting bolt […]

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 […]

AR-18 and AR-180: Can Lightning Strike Twice for Armalite?

November 13, 2019 Ian McCollum 45

The AR-18 has its genesis in the AR-10. I n an effort to develop a less expensive version of that rifle, Armalite created the AR-12, an experimental rifle which used a stamped or bent sheet […]