Video - Forgotten Weapons

Type 1 Japanese Paratroop Rifles at RIA

September 2, 2014 Ian McCollum 12

Before standardizing on the Type 2 paratroop rifle (a 7.7mm Arisaka that broke in half at the chamber), the Japanese military tested a variant of the Type 38 carbine with a folding stock retrofitted into […]

Nazi Belt Buckle Pistol at RIA

August 28, 2014 Ian McCollum 34

One of the items at RIA in this upcoming Premier Auction is a Nazi belt-buckle pistol. There is a fair amount of debate as to whether these are authentic WWII German artifacts, as opposed to […]

Handmade Auto-Revolver at RIA

August 27, 2014 Ian McCollum 22

This very odd one-off pistol first appeared in a 1958 Golden State Arms catalog, with no description of its history or mechanical design. I have often seen it referred to as an automatic revolver, but […]

Krnka 1895 Semiauto Pistol at RIA

August 26, 2014 Ian McCollum 14

This prototype 1895 Krnka automatic pistol is another of the items up for sale at the upcoming Rock Island Premier Auction. This pistol, serial number 7, was the first in the developmental line that led […]

Transferable FG-42 at RIA

August 25, 2014 Ian McCollum 18

The undisputed star of the upcoming Rock Island Premier auction is this transferable full-auto German FG-42 paratrooper’s rifle. Only a few dozen of these are in private hands in the US, and they are an […]

Four-Shot Superposed Ratchet Pistol at RIA

August 24, 2014 Ian McCollum 19

Today’s item in the upcoming Rock Island Premier Auction is a rather unusual percussion pistol. It began life as an underhammer gun, and was rebuilt by an unknown gunsmith as a percussion gun that fired […]

1875 Lee Vertical Action Carbine at RIA

August 22, 2014 Ian McCollum 21

My recent trip to the Rock Island Auction house was spent taking a whole slew of videos on guns that are coming up for sale in their Premier auction on the 12th, 13th, and 14th […]

2-Gun Match: WWII Snipers (Video)

August 18, 2014 Ian McCollum 33

This month for the 2-Gun Action Challenge Match, Karl and I square off with WWII snipers’ rifles. I have a No4 MkI (T) Enfield sniper with a 3.5x No.32 scope, and Karl has a Mauser […]

Slow Motion: Frommer Stop

August 14, 2014 Ian McCollum 35

This week’s slow motion gun is the Frommer Stop, put into production in 1912. The Hungarian designer Rudolf Frommer was responsible for a series of long-recoil pistols, of which the Stop was the last and […]

Mauser 1912/14 Automatic Pistol (Video)

August 11, 2014 Ian McCollum 13

The Mauser 1912/14 automatic pistol was the final stage of a dead-end development track for a military sidearm in 9mm Parabellum made by Mauser. The program began as a plain blowback pistol in 1909, which […]