Video - Forgotten Weapons

At the Range with the Iconic MP5A3

June 15, 2019 Ian McCollum 25

The MP5 is widely considered the best submachine gun ever made, for its reliability, its handling, and it’s closed-bolt delayed-blowback action. It is so widely praised, in fact, that H&K’s efforts to replace it with […]

Lightweight Experimental Lanchester SMGs

June 14, 2019 Ian McCollum 33

George Lanchester was the engineer responsible for originally reverse engineering the German MP28 submachine gun for production by the British, under the designation Lanchester. Once he finished that design work, the gun was put into […]

Nagant Model 1877 Gendarmerie Double Barrel Rolling Block Pistol

June 13, 2019 Ian McCollum 14

This pistol is for sale as part of Lot 280 at Rock Island’s Regional auction on June 20th. Emile and Leon Nagant set up their manufacturing company in Liege, Belgium in 1859, and it would […]

Smith & Beecham Prototype Polymer High Power

June 12, 2019 Ian McCollum 32

The South African company Smith and Beecham was not a large operation, and their most notable product was a .380 caliber compact pistol, of which not more than 2000 were ever made (it was not […]

How Does it Work: Gas-Delayed Blowback

June 11, 2019 Ian McCollum 21

Gas-delayed blowback is a relatively uncommon operating system used in handguns. It is not an efficient mechanism for high-pressure rifle power cartridges, but works well with something like 9mm Parabellum. It tends to provide benefits […]

Egyptian FN49 Sniper (Late Pattern)

June 10, 2019 Ian McCollum 11

Egypt was the first country to adopt the FN-49 rifle, and its purchases actually predated FN’s development of a method for mounting a telescopic sight to the rifles. So Egypt came up with its own […]

Book Review: P38 Pistol – Spreewerk Production

June 9, 2019 Ian McCollum 8

I initially put off getting a copy of Jan Balcar and Ron Clarin’s book on the Spreewerk P38 because, well, I assumed it was just about Spreewerk. Upon finally reading it, I discovered that it […]

Polish PM63 Rak at the Range

June 8, 2019 Ian McCollum 18

Whether it is described as a machine pistol, a submachine gun, or a personal defense weapon, the PM63 Rak is really not the best examples of this sort of thing to actually shoot. The open-bolt/slide […]

PM63 Rak: An Interesting Polish SMG/PDW Hybrid

June 7, 2019 Ian McCollum 29

The PM-63 Rak is a pretty interesting Polish Cold War machine pistol or personal defense weapon. It fires from an open bolt, but uses a slide like a pistol rather than a bolt in an […]

South African R2 and its Special Furniture

June 5, 2019 Ian McCollum 12

In South African military service, the R1 was the FN FAL and was the preferred infantry combat rifle until the adoption of the Galil as the R4 rifle. So what were the guns in between? […]