I am really excited to announce a new streaming service for historical & education firearms video content: History of Weapons and War. This is a collaboration with seven other firearms channels to put all the best educational gun content in one place - a place that is outside the reach of Youtube.
To sign up, just g...
2023-09-15 16:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
The Netflix film "The Siege of Jadotville" recounts the fighting between Katanga soldiers and mercenaries and Company A of the 35th Irish Infantry Battalion, who were deployed to the Katanga province of Congo in 1961 as part of the UN peacekeeping mission there. The Irish soldiers fought valiantly and won a tactical victory, ...
2023-09-15 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Back by popular demand, we have Neil Vermillion again today. We're talking about his experiences while volunteering as a trainer for troops in Ukraine. We're going to discuss why the Russians underperformed so badly, what the Ukrainians are doing well to adapt and improve, and perhaps why he has a somewhat scorched Wagner pat...
2023-09-12 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
The Vugrek family of Croatia (Marko Sr, Marko Jr, and Ivan) were talented firearms designers, who ended up supplying organized crime. Their best-known development was the Agram 2000 submachine gun, a very well-built weapon submitted to Croatian military trials in the early 1990s. In the wake of prosecution for making the Agra...
2023-09-11 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
The Mateba 6 Unica is the culmination of a series of revolver development by Italian designer Emilio Ghisoni (1937-2008). The Unica 6 is one of only a few self-cocking revolvers to see commercial production and sales (the other two being the Union and the Webley-Fosbery). It was available in .357 Magnum, .44. Magnum (like tod...
2023-09-09 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
"Arming the Dragon" by Dolf Goldsmith is now available and shipping:
https://www.headstamppublishing.com/purchase/arming-the-dragon-by-dolf-l-goldsmith
One of the most common rifles in Warlord...
2023-09-08 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
In 1949, Israel was still fighting its was of independence, and purchasing arms internationally was difficult to do. The recently-formalized IDF wanted sniper rifles, and looked to Hammerli in Switzerland for a variant of the K-31 straight-pull bolt action action. Two different models were purchased; 100 of the ZK-31 with 4x ...
2023-09-06 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostTraining scars: the idea that your practice routine will dictate what you do under stress. Is it real? Yes. Does it need to be? No.
The first objective of basic practice and training is to become proficient at specific tasks, like drawing a pistol or reloading a rifle. Unfortunately, that seems to be where a lot of peop...
2023-09-05 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Training scars: the idea that your practice routine will dictate what you do under stress. Is it real? Yes. Does it need to be? No.
The first objective of basic practice and training is to become proficient at specific tasks, like drawing a pistol or reloading a rifle. Unfortunately, that seems to be where a lot of peop...
2023-09-05 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
There has never been a proper semiauto version of the MP40 available in the US, until now. SSD (Sport-Systeme Dittrich) is a German company that has been making semiauto copies of German WW2 small arms for quite some time, and they now have a US partner in the DK Production Group. They plan to release a variety of different r...
2023-09-04 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
It's time for Day 2 of Finnish Brutality 2023! This year the match is back and better than ever, with a new "Breacher" division for those seeking extra punishment. In addition to wearing armor and kit (minimum 12kg/26lb), Breacher includes a 3-10 minute physical challenge after each stage just to spice things up.
I opte...
2023-09-02 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
It's time for Finnish Brutality 2023! This year the match is back and better than ever, with a new "Breacher" division for those seeking extra punishment. In addition to wearing armor and kit (minimum 12kg/26lb), Breacher includes a 3-10 minute physical challenge after each stage just to spice things up.
I opted t...
2023-09-01 12:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Today we have both 1st and 2nd pattern semiauto FG-42s from SMG out at the range for some comparative shooting. Which is the better one to get?
2023-08-31 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Brno's ZB-26 was one of the best light machine guns of the 1920s, and it was widely adopted by countries that did not have domestic arms design and production capacity (and it would eventually become the British Bren gun as well). It was designed for the 8mm Mauser cartridge, and had a simple fixed gas system that ran very we...
2023-08-30 12:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
The Pleter M91 is a simple design, but a high-quality one that was manufactured by a proper factory production line. The company making it was planning on (hoping for?) large-scale production, and they invested to proper polymer molds and other tools to make the gun. A total of about 4500 were made, making it the most-produce...
2023-08-28 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
The AMELI (which is a contraction of "ametralladora ligera", or light machine gun) was introduced by CETME in 1981, and adopted by the Spanish military as the MG82. It was a counterpart LMG to the new CETME-L 5.56mm rifles, and is a mechanically fascinating design.
The AMELI is a roller-delayed blowback system. Although...
2023-08-26 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Johnson M1941 rifles were used in limited numbers by the US Marine Corps in the Pacific theater of World War Two, but they were used - and generally well liked. Interestingly, there was a fairly common field modification done by the Marines, and that was to cut off the front sight wings, and sometimes cut the rear aperture in...
2023-08-25 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostVarustekela is throwing a big 20th anniversary party on Saturday the 26th, and I will be there. If you want to stay hello, please come by! There will be a bunch of other cool folks there as well, and lots of other entertainment as well.
2023-08-23 18:13:44 +0000 UTC View Post
If the FG-42 was such a great gun, then why didn't it get used after the war? Well, two answers...
1) It was crazy expensive to make and there weren't very many lying around for people to use in quantity after the war.
2) It was used; there was at least three post-war development projects based directly on the FG-...
2023-08-23 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
When Taiwan decided to move from the M14 platform (the Type 57 in Taiwanese service) to a 5.56mm rifle, they decided to develop a domestic gas-piston version of the AR. Development began in 1973, with prototypes ready in 1975 and the system formally adopted in 1976. Using the Chinese calendar based on the revolution of 1911, ...
2023-08-21 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
The United States was the only country to use shotguns in World War One in a substantial way. It was not the first time the US had used such guns either; shotguns were used in the Philippines against the Moros and on the Mexican Punitive Expedition. For use in the Great War, however, it was deemed necessary to fit bayonets to...
2023-08-21 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
For this month's BackUp Gun Match, I decided to bring out the CZ38 - one of the top contenders for ugliest service pistol ever adopted. It's a single-stack, double-action-only .380 with a weirdly bulky grip, so it's not winning any ergonomic awards either...
2023-08-19 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
The Llama M87 was Gabilondo y Cia's high-end competition pistols based on the M82 action, and made in both 9mm Parabellum and 7.65mm Parabellum. This was mechanically a copy of the Beretta 92 system, and it was adopted in basic form by the Spanish Army. For the commercial market, Gabilondo took all the upgrades that were bein...
2023-08-18 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Today we are looking at examples of the 1st pattern (Type E) and second pattern (Type G) FG42, comparing their construction and disassembling both to get a close look at the internal differences. Despite sharing the basic mechanism, these two models share zero parts in common, not even the bayonets or magazines. We will also ...
2023-08-16 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
The Alar is an interesting very rare Croatian domestic SMG. It is called the "Alar" after it's designer, Stipe Alar. He first came up with the design in 1971 and built one illegally - which resulted in him going to prison for a time. When the Croatian Homeland War broke out and guns were urgently needed, his design came back ...
2023-08-14 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
I recently picked up one of the Pioneer Arms semiauto PM-63C pistols that are sporadically available here in the US. They have a pretty mediocre reputation and I wasn't expecting much, but the gun is so unusual that I really must have one myself (and the likelihood of me getting an original PM63 machine pistol is basically ni...
2023-08-12 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
The USAS-12, made by Daewoo in South Korea, is one of the better box-fed shotguns available (I use that term loosely; there are not that many of them around). It was available as both a semiauto and a fully automatic model - although the semiautos were arbitrarily defined as Destructive Devices in 1994, and must now be regist...
2023-08-12 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Argentina was one of the first countries to adopt Mauser rifles, with the Model 1891. These were replaced by newer Model 1909 rifles a couple decades later, and in 1913 they bought 500 telescopic sights to make sniper rifles. All of them appear to have been put on cavalry carbines like this one, rather than full-length infant...
2023-08-11 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Tara Aerospace is an arms factory in Montenegro that was privatized around 2013 or 2014, and a major stake in it was purchased by one Heinrich Thomet (formerly of Brugger & Thomet, and then the basis for a character in "War Dogs"). The first firearm the new Tara produced was the TM-9, and it was not very good.
The b...
2023-08-09 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Yugoslavia purchased both 1895 Nagant revolvers and TT33 Tokarev form the Soviet Union after World War Two, but this was only a holdover until domestic pistol production could begin. While Yugoslavia was formally communist, Tito was not a puppet of Moscow, and Yugoslavia did their own development to reverse-engineer the Tokar...
2023-08-07 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
