Semiauto Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Mauser 1902 Prototype Long Recoil Rifle at James D Julia

September 27, 2015 Ian McCollum 14

Paul Mauser was very persistent – if ultimately unsuccessful – in his long-tim goal to create a practical semiautomatic rifle using a full-power cartridge. In total he tried some 17 different designs, including one in […]

Holek Automat at James D Julia

September 15, 2015 Ian McCollum 35

The Holek Automat was a semiautomatic sporting rifle designed by Emmanuel Holek. Emmanuel was also the designer of the ZH-29 rifle, and brother of Vaclav and Franticek Holek, who developed the ZB-26 and ZB-53 machine guns. […]

RIA: Pedersen PA Carbine

September 9, 2015 Ian McCollum 5

We have done a number of videos recently on various different Pedersen long guns (the PA rifle, the Japanese copy, shooting the PB rifle, etc), but there was one version that I have not covered […]

RIA: M14E2 Semiauto Clone

August 28, 2015 Ian McCollum 39

The M14E2, later redesignated the M14A1, was the replacement for the ill-fated heavy barrel M15 rifle. Both were intended to fill the role of the BAR in providing automatic fire in support of M14 rifles. […]

RIA: Gyrojet Carbine

August 27, 2015 Ian McCollum 53

The Gyrojet was one of the more creative and one of the most futuristic firearms innovations of the last few decades – unfortunately it wasn’t able to prove sustainable on the market. The idea was […]

RIA: German Gewehr 41(M)

August 18, 2015 Ian McCollum 40

When the German military started looking for a self-loading rifle in the late 1930s, they had a pretty strict set of requirements. Most significantly, the rifles could not have gas ports or recoiling barrels, could […]

Garand converted to use AR10 magazines by Artillerie Inrichtingen

Dutch M1 with AR-10 Magazines

August 5, 2015 Ian McCollum 19

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Dutch government was looking to adopt a new rifle for its Army, and considered both the AR-10 (which was being produced domestically by Artillerie Inrichtingen) and the […]

British trials Bang Rifle, caliber .303 (photo courtesy National Firearms Centre, Leeds, UK)

Danish Bang Rifle for British Trials

July 24, 2015 Ian McCollum 26

One of the first semiautomatic rifles tested by the US military was a design by a Dane named Søren Hansen Bang, which was first presented to the government in 1911. The rifles used a […]

Slow Motion: Scotti Model X

July 23, 2015 Ian McCollum 47

The Scotti Model X (the X standing for the 10th year of the Italian Fascist era, or 1932) was one of a bunch of semiauto rifles tested by the Italian military during the late 1920s […]

HMG’s US-Made Sturmgewehr

July 14, 2015 Ian McCollum 43

In all the time I have been able to look at MP-43/MP-44/StG-44 rifles, one of the comments that comes up over and over is the desire for someone to make a semiauto reproduction of the gun […]