Interview
Jim Sullivan on the M16 in Vietnam
When I have the chance to interview Jim Sullivan, one of the original designers of the AR15, one of the subjects that came up (not surprisingly) was the record of failures of the M16 early […]
United States
Artillery
US M3 37mm Antitank Gun (Video)
The M3 was the first real anti-tank gun adopted by the US military, and it was not formally adopted until 1940 – and was thoroughly obsolete in Europe by 1942. The initial design was based […]
Light MGs
Slow Motion: .303 Lewis Gun
A Lewis Gun, in .303 British, at 2000 frames per second: The Lewis Gun was developed by American Isaac Newton Lewis shortly before WWI, but the US military was not interested in it (in part […]
Prototype
Savage Prototype .25ACP (Video)
So, this is a video I took over a year ago, and then lost track of – a prototype .25ACP Savage pistol. It is plain blowback, not using the rotating-barrel mechanism of the mainstream .32 […]
Fake
1852 Slant-Breech Sharps
Reader Kymm was kind enough to load me this rifle to video, with a particular interest in seeing the amount of gas leakage (or lack thereof) on high-speed footage. This early model of Sharps featured […]
Revolver
Eibar “Spanish Model 92” Revolver
Today’s post is a guest article written by Mike Burns, taking a look at one of the S&W revolver copies made in Eibar for the French military. He compares it to a WWI .455-caliber S&W […]
Manual machine guns
Reproduction Nordenfelt Gun
A few days ago I was at a small machine gun shoot (which wound up being a bit larger than I’d expected), and was happily surprised to discover that one of the attendees had brought […]
Semiauto pistol
American Eagle Lugers at RIA
Many people are aware of the .45 caliber Lugers made for US military field trials – but far fewer people realize that Lugers were both tested by the US military and sold commercially several years […]
Semiauto pistol
Development of the Model 1911 Pistol (Video)
When I was looking through the catalog for this upcoming Rock Island auction, I noticed that there were a lot of early-type Colt automatic pistols listed. I looked a bit closer, and noticed that there […]
Prototype
LeMat Centerfire Pistol and Carbine at RIA
Colonel LeMat is best known for his 9-shot muzzleloading .42 caliber revolver with its 20 gauge shot barrel acting as cylinder axis pin – several thousand of these revolvers were imported and used in the […]