Video - Forgotten Weapons

RIA: Stocked FN Model 1903

August 26, 2015 Ian McCollum 18

The FN Model 1903 was a Belgian-made scaled-up version of John Browning’s model 1903 pocket hammerless pistol. The pocket hammerless was made in .32 ACP and .380 calibers for (primarily) the civilian market in the […]

RIA: Roper Repeating Shotgun

August 25, 2015 Ian McCollum 35

Sylvester Roper is not a well known name in firearms history today, but he made a number of notable contributions to the field – in addition to his work with motorcycles and automobiles where he […]

RIA: Boys Anti-Tank Rifle

August 24, 2015 Ian McCollum 35

Pretty much every major military had an antitank rifle in service when WW2 kicked off, and the British example was the Boys AT rifle, named after the Captain Boys who designed it. It was a […]

RIA: 1918 German Tank Gewehr

August 23, 2015 Ian McCollum 36

Germany was the first country to produce a purpose-built antitank rifle, in response to the major Entente tank attack at Cambrai. The design was pretty simple, basically a scaled-up Mauser 98 with 4 locking lugs […]

RIA: The ASP Subcompact 9mm for Sneaky People

August 22, 2015 Ian McCollum 39

The ASP was a custom take of the S&W Model 39 autoloading pistol developed by a man named Paris Theodore in the 1970s. Theodore made a wide variety of sneaky James-Bond-like guns for various clients, […]

RIA: Merwin & Hulbert Revolvers

August 21, 2015 Ian McCollum 20

The Merwin & Hulbert company was a short-lived firearms manufacturing partnership between designer Joseph Merwin and the Hulbert brothers as financiers. Merwin wanted to design a particularly strong and high-quality revolver, and he succeeded – […]

RIA: Lindner Carbine

August 20, 2015 Ian McCollum 12

The Lindner carbine was an early US cavalry carbine used during the Civil War. Unlike the many metallic cartridge firing carbines that would follow, it was a breechloader that used .58 caliber paper cartridges. An […]

RIA: Liegeoise 1888 Trials Rifle

August 19, 2015 Ian McCollum 69

The Belgian Army held rifle trials in the late 1880s to choose a new infantry rifle, and the winner was the Model 1889 Belgian Mauser. Quite a few different guns were involved in the competition […]

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 […]

Vintage Saturday: Classi Alpini

August 15, 2015 Ian McCollum 55

Italian Alpini posing for a photograph with a nice selection of Italian small arms – 1934 or 35 Beretta pistols, Beretta 38 submachine gun, and a 1935 model Fiat-Revelli machine gun.