Semiauto Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Roth-Sauer Automatic Pistol at RIA

November 30, 2014 Ian McCollum 24

The Roth-Sauer is a rare early automatic pistol designed by Karel Krnka, financed by Georg Roth, and manufactured by J.P. Sauer & Sohn in Germany. It is mechanically quite complex – much moreso than strictly […]

M1908 Mondragon Semiauto Rifle at RIA

November 25, 2014 Ian McCollum 16

The M1908 Mondragon is widely acknowledged to have been the first self-loading rifle adopted as a standard infantry arm by a national military force. There are a couple earlier designs used by military forces, but […]

Sedgley Model 45 .22 Rifle at RIA

November 23, 2014 Ian McCollum 12

The firm of Sedgley Inc of Philadelphia was a gun company involved in many aspects of the industry. They made rifle barrels for the US military, they made the rather goofy “Glove Guns” for the […]

M3 Infrared Sniper Carbine at RIA

November 19, 2014 Ian McCollum 32

The first US military night vision system used in active combat was the T3 Carbine system – an infrared light-amplifying scope and IR floodlight mounted on an M1 Carbine. About 150 of these were used […]

Pedersen Selfloading Rifle at RIA

November 18, 2014 Ian McCollum 56

When the US military decided to seriously look at replacing the 1903 Springfield with a semiautomatic service rifle, two designers showed themselves to have the potential to design an effective and practical rifle. One was […]

Slow Motion: M1 Garand

October 23, 2014 Ian McCollum 12

The M1 Garand needs no introduction, does it? Here is is at 2000 frames per second:

2-Gun Action Challenge with a MAS 49/56

October 20, 2014 Ian McCollum 28

This month I chose to shoot the 2-Gun Action Challenge Match with a French MAS 49/56, in the original 7.5×54 caliber. I really like the handling of the rifle, and I was curious to see […]

Slow Motion: MAS 49/56

October 9, 2014 Ian McCollum 48

The MAS 49/56 is a much under-rated rifle here in the US – it is extremely simple, durable, and reliable, while being shorter and lighter than it’s US contemporary, the M14.

C96 High-Speed Video and Smith-Condit article

August 1, 2014 Ian McCollum 11

Now that I have this high speed camera to use, I am going to be making high-speed video a regular weekly feature, at least until I run out of guns to film this way. Today’s […]

Hagen Rifle

July 29, 2014 Ian McCollum 15

One of the very first things I posted here on Forgotten Weapons was an article on a French rifle called the Hagen (it was designed by a Norwegian). I posted an article on it written […]