The FAL is a rifle that needs no introduction for our readers. The tilt-locking, short-stroke piston operated 7.62mm Belgian light rifle has been accepted by so many nations and seen so much combat opposite the ubiquitous Soviet AK rifle that it has earned the nickname “the right arm of the free world”.

Retired Delta operator, firearms instructor, 1911 gunsmith, and TFB friend Larry Vickers has as many of our readers by now know been releasing a series of videos featuring high quality high speed footage of firearms in action. His latest, though, sets the bar above even the previous work put out by his channel. The video is embedded below, but I highly recommend readers watch the video full screen and loading the highest resolution, because what you’re about to see is absolutely gorgeous high speed footage:

The rifle Larry is shooting in the video is a German G1 select fire rifle. The rifle is recognizable by its distinctive long flash hider, otherwise resembling closely the later Austrian StG. 58 model. This rifle was adopted as standard issue by the Bundeswehr in 1956, but supplanted in 1959 by the CETME rifle, a development that originated in Germany itself at the end of WWII as the Gerät 06, but was fostered in France after the war, and finalized in Spain in the late 1950s. It was the Belgian decision to not allow Germany (a nation that had invaded Belgium twice in the last half-century) to license-produce the FAL that resulted in the rifle’s replacement in German service.