If you haven’t been checking Destin at Smarter Everyday on YouTube then you missed his latest video. He was trying to replicate a historic event where two minié balls collided mid-air and fused together. Well, Destin tried to recreate bullets hitting bullets and [Read More…]
The Rock Island Auction Company is well known in gun circles for interesting old, unique, and rare firearms that are auctioned off to private collectors. Established in 1933 by Pat Hogan, RIAC sought to specialize in collectors’ firearms, and militaria, and [Read More…]
Recently, I took the family to a Civil War reenactment in Bradford, Iowa. There were several cannons present, but the crew of this mountain howitzer were happy to share information about the gun. The owners of this reproduction mountain howitzer, Al and Allison, [Read More…]
Wooden handguards fitted for an M16/AR15-patterned rifle are nothing new in the United States among the boutique custom build community. Some folks prefer the older, more nostalgic look of the solid wood grips that used to be so common on firearms of all types prior to [Read More…]
While you’ve probably never heard of him, James Henry Burton is one of the – if not the most – influential gunsmiths of the 19th century. Under his direction, millions of arms made in three countries on two different continents played an essential role in the [Read More…]
Admittedly, the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums was not a place that I expected to have an impressive collection of firearms, both on display and in storage. Located in Fremont, Ohio, the facility, which also includes Hayes’ impressive 31-room [Read More…]
Coke’s slogan is “Taste the Feeling”, but maybe in the Ukraine it should be “the Army’s Rust Remover!” instead. “We use Coca-Cola when the gun is rusty. Coca-Cola takes rust away” says Ukrainian Ground Forces machine [Read More…]
A cool head under fire was on display in a video released just yesterday, in which a female sniper of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ, a part of the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces narrowly avoided the bullet of an ISIS sniper who had her in his [Read More…]
What was the first intermediate cartridge? Who designed it, and why? How did the concept evolve? These are all good questions deserving of thorough, thoughtful answers. Sadly, to give a comprehensive history of the intermediate cartridge concept would require a project [Read More…]
The Spencer Carbine was one of the first successful repeating rifles ever fielded by the US Army, seeing use in the Civil War. Despite being a very advanced design for the period offering firepower well above what muzzleloading rifled-muskets of the period were [Read More…]
Imagine being shot in the head – right between the eyes, no less – and not only surviving, but carrying on with life as usual for three decades. For Civil War soldier Jacob Miller, a member of the 9th Indiana Infantry, that was his reality. Miller took a [Read More…]
In the 1995-1996 Sierra Leone Civil War, South African mercenary company Executive Outcomes was tasked with reclaiming the valuable diamond mines for the country’s government, and crushing the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), who were rebelling with support from [Read More…]
The use of antiques in combat is something that often is overlooked, as many find greater interest in more modern weapons. However, though these older weapons are as obsolete as they are antique, they are still relevant articles of war, and still certainly lethal. [Read More…]
Hungarian YouTuber capandball gives us a look at the world of blackpowder rifled-musket competition shooting, with his original Springfield 1861 Rifle-Musket, manufactured at Bridesburg: The original guns, when coupled with Minie-style projectiles, can provide quite [Read More…]