"The Formidable" was the name given to one of many different civilian pocket-carry revolvers made by the French Manufrance firm in St Etienne. This particular model was introduced in 1895, although it went through a significant redesign in 1902. The example I have here is the later pattern, which was sold until 1916 (when arm...
2023-05-13 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
"Pistols of the Warlords" is in stock and shipping: https://www.headstamppublishing.com/chinese-pistols
Today we are looking at a second Chinese Warlord-Era C96 Mauser carbine. These were made as fancy sporting or presentat...
2023-05-12 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Get Entered to WIN this legendary PTR44 Sturmgewehr!
https://go.getenteredtowin.com/forgottenweapons
DEADLINE to ENTER is 05/26/23 @ 11:59pm (PST).
It is often said that Hitler personally cancelled the ...
2023-05-10 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Greenland is a remote and desolate land without a significant industrial base, but there is a demand for hunting rifles there. As the place has long been a Danish colony since 1814, its trade was restricted to Denmark - including rifles. The Danish military received a substantial number of M1917 Enfield rifles in .30-06 calib...
2023-05-08 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Sorry I missed last week - I was on the road photographing for a couple upcoming books.
I did have the chance to watch the recent Finnish movie "Sisu" this weekend, and I highly recommend it. :)
2023-05-07 23:32:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Previously, I did a Totally Scientific (tm) comparison between Bruce Gray's personal SIG P220 Elite and a flock of six of Hi-Point's new 10mm JXP pistols. Today, I want to see how the two compare in a more practical test, so I brought them out to the monthly BackUp Gun Match.
Note 1: What I realized by the end of the ma...
2023-05-06 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys! I am going to Europe for Lynx Brutality at the end of the month, and will be spending some time in Croatia before the match. On Sunday the 21st, I'll be hosting a meetup at the Vintage Industrial Bar at Savska Cesta 160, 10000, Zagreb from 1800-2000 (6pm-8pm). If you are in the area, please come and join me fo...
2023-05-05 23:40:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Thanks to Otis Technology for sponsoring this video!
When I heard about Hi-Point releasing a 10mm pistol (the JXP 10), I knew I needed to do something fun with it. Hi-Point is often derided - and often for good reasons - b...
2023-05-05 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
When I visited Biofire, I was able to spend several hours discussing the history of the gun with its creator, lead designer, and lead engineer. We also completely stripped one of the guns down to its component circuit boards and pins - but much of this information is still under NDA until the guns are available commercially. ...
2023-05-03 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
In 1970 and 1971, China experimented with a stamped-receiver version of the SKS. About 6,000 of these rifles were made each of the two years, and a number of them have come into the US as commercial exports.
We don't have any official records from China about this program, but it seems clear that this was an experiment ...
2023-05-01 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
The Ohio Ordnance HCAR (Heavy Counter Assault Rifle - a rather fanciful name) is what happens when you take the US military development track of the Browning Automatic Rifle, and bring up to the present day. Why would someone choose this particular product to modernize? Well, because eOhio Ordnance was already making standard...
2023-04-29 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
The SIG 320 was adopted by the US Army as its new M17 full-size service pistol, but that was only have of the Modular Handgun System. The other half was the M18, a compact version of the same pistol, with a 3.9" barrel (compared to the 4.7" barrel of the M17). The Army did also adopt the M18 for MP and CID personnel, but the ...
2023-04-28 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
The R-5 was a French-made copy of the Sten produced after the 1944 liberation of France. It was built by Gnome et Rhône, a French company best known for making aircraft engines. The Sten was familiar to French forces, as many had been supplied as military aid to the Free French as well as Resistance organizations - and it wa...
2023-04-26 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
A few months ago FN America was able to import 400 parts sets from original Belgian Gendarmerie FAL rifles. I got one of them, and had it completed by DSA. They made receivers with Gendarmerie markings, as well as the barrel and other parts not included with the kit. So today we'll take a look at the finished rifle and the wo...
2023-04-24 12:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Thanks to the 1 Shepherd cadre for making Midnight Brutality possible! And thanks to our excellent match sponsors:
Tactical Night Vision Company (TNVC)
B.E. Meyers Advanced Photonics
Live Q or Die
Varusteleka
Midnight Brutality was a 6-stage all-nighttime match held at the Echo Valley Training Ce...
2023-04-22 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
The Midnight Brutality match was only feasible because of the assistance of the 1 Shepherd Leadership Institute cadre, and so I want to take a few minutes today to talk about just who they are. It is an organization founded in 1981 that uses infantry tactics and exercises to teach leadership. Intended for a wide variety of au...
2023-04-21 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Social media is very excited these days about "exploding" SIG 320s...so let's consider what might actually be happening.
Of course, this discussion is invariably clouded by the fact that the P320 did have a legitimate drop-safety problem a few years ago. It was fixed, but many people don't bother to distinguish between ...
2023-04-20 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Don't have medical gear or training? Code "IAN" gets you 10% off med kits and training classes:
About 6 years ago, I had an accident at the range. We talked about it at the time, but didn't say what the gun involve...
2023-04-19 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys - we have a small number of blemished books at Headstamp that we are selling at about a 30% discount - early printings of Chassepot to FAMAS, Thorneycroft to SA80, and Pistols of the Warlords. We are offering them to you folks first; if there are any left at this time tomorrow we will offer them to the public.
...
2023-04-17 19:43:28 +0000 UTC View Post
One of the cool new products we found at SHOT Show this year was the CR9T from Carbon Research. This is a small research company that has figured out how to bond metals to carbon fiber in a way that allows them to build a complete suppressor body and baffle stack out of ultralight carbon fiber and then armor the tips of the b...
2023-04-17 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi-Point has chosen to release a new carbine, the Model 3095 - in 7.65mm French Long! Well, not quite...it's actually in .30 Super Carry. But it will run 7.65mm French Long, so I clearly need to have one...
If you are familiar with the other carbine Hi-Point makes, you will find no surprises in this one. It's the same s...
2023-04-16 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Thanks to the 1 Shepherd cadre for making Midnight Brutality possible! And thanks to our excellent match sponsors:
Tactical Night Vision Company (TNVC)
B.E. Meyers Advanced Photonics
Live Q or Die
Varusteleka
Midnight Brutality was a 6-stage all-nighttime match held at the Echo Valley Training Ce...
2023-04-15 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
0:00 - Purpose of the Fix
6:03 - The 8.6mm Blackout Cartridge
12:33 - Rifle Features
21:13 - Disassembly
29:35 - My Complaints
31:49 - At the Range
There is a ton to go over in this video...I noticed the Fix when it first came out, but it didn't become r...
2023-04-14 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Note: The New Jersey law that would ban sale of regular guns once "smart guns" were deemed commercially viable is no longer on the books.
0:00 - Introduction
4:12 - Electronic elements
6:50 - User "presence" system
8:30 - Mechanical gun elements
11:11 - User enrollment/setup
15:29 - On the ...
2023-04-13 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Today we are looking at one of the surplus US Army M17 pistols that SGI put on the commercial market about 3 years ago. These were some of the very first M17s issued to Army units, and they were turned back in to SIG and replace in late 2019. The obvious difference between these and their replacements was the change from tan ...
2023-04-12 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
My past week was mostly occupied by a trip to visit the new "smart gun" company Biofire. They have a product that is pretty well thought-out and very interesting, but I'm curious to see how people react to it. There's a lot of instinctive antipathy to technology in firearms, especially biometric authentication tech. But we wi...
2023-04-10 22:20:43 +0000 UTC View Post
In 1863, the Confederate military decided to design a new standard pattern of cavalry carbine. The designs was put together rather quickly at the Richmond Arsenal; a 25 inch barrel, brass furniture, and Enfield type lock. Before production could begin, however, Richmond was deemed too risky of a location. The CSA went looking...
2023-04-10 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
When the Bundeswehr was formed, it chose to simply continue using the MG42 as its standard GPMG. This was initially done by converting older MG42s to 7.62x51mm NATO as the MG1 (adopted in 1958), but progressed to production of a brand new version of the gun by Rheinmetall (adopted in 1968). The MG3 included improvements to th...
2023-04-07 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
The Norwegian Kongsberg factory has a history of making firearms-based tools for maritime use, and one of the more recent is the M52 line-throwing gun, introduced in the 1950s and sold through the 1970s. It uses a repurposed Mauser action paired with a new smoothbore barrel and a 12mm blank cartridge to fire a rescue line. A ...
2023-04-05 12:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Dr. Jackson Crawford and I got the idea for our collaborative April fools videos on Viking firearms and gunpowder almost 8 months ago, when we visited Iceland together on the way to Finnish Brutality 2022. We took some time this week to talk about the origins of the videos and some of the Easter eggs in them. This was recorde...
2023-04-04 12:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
