Ian McCollum lives in Arizona, where he spends his time searching out rare, unusual, and experimental firearms for his daily blog at ForgottenWeapons.com. His shooting background is in bullseye pistol, and before becoming a full-time gun writer he worked in the solar power industry.
Yes, Colt will be making brand new-production Model 1903 pocket pistols. The same man responsible for making Colt’s reproduction Gatling guns has been put in charge of producing a limited new run of the classic elegant pocket pistol, the Colt 1903. That’s [Read More…]
Lots of people make add-ons for the AK, but I was actually rather taken aback by the M10X rifle being announced by M+M Industries (at the time of this writing, there is nothing about the new rifle on their web site) at SHOT this year. They really have done something [Read More…]
A new company called RZE (Ross & Zheng Engineering) is introducing a magazine at SHOT this year that I had a chance to take a look at today. It looks like a standard 30-round AR magazine, but it has a clever follower design that allows it to adapt to the angle of a [Read More…]
The Remington R51 is back – Big Green has 4 of them on display in their booth at SHOT. They have made some changes to address some of the gun’s issues, and those changes sound good – but of course it remains an open question whether they will solve the [Read More…]
Yep, that’s right – we will finally again have access to museum-quality new semiauto MP-44 Sturmgewehr rifles from Germany! I spent some time yesterday speaking with Lars Brüggemann with EL BE Tac, who is the US distributor for these rifles, and the [Read More…]
If you have a Swiss K 31 rifle, especially if you bought it recently, you have probably noticed that it’s difficult to find charger clips for it.The original Swiss clips are wax coated cardboard and were intended to be disposable. They used to be easily available [Read More…]
I had the opportunity recently to attend a demonstration of a new ammunition brand coming on the market, which is dedicated to maximum accuracy and consistency. It’s called Eagle Eye, and I came away pretty impressed… A Different Philosophy Eagle Eye [Read More…]
The summer Olympic Games include more than a few shooting competitions – rifle, pistol, and shotgun in several disciplines. But frankly, they are pretty dull to watch. No disrespect to the athletes (who are amazing shooters), but it’s a solitary challenge, [Read More…]
I live down in the Arizona low desert, not really the sort of place where we are eager to add extra layers to clothing during the summer. Whenever possible, I prefer to open carry – it gets the gunout away from my body and makes my big ol’ steel heater much [Read More…]
I’m really not an AR sort of guy. Sure, I’ve handled and shot a bunch of them, but they never really jumped out at me as really cool guns. Probably because they are the most popular rifle design in the US, and I tend to be more interested in the weird and [Read More…]
Taurus has released a new 9mm carbine onto the US market, which prompts the question: why do people buy 9mm carbines? As I see it, the interest in this type of gun comes from two main groups: folks with tactical reasoning in mind, and purely recreational shooters. For [Read More…]
I have gotten enthusiastically into a style of shooting match that focuses on simulating stressful shooting situations, with unorthodox shooting positions, lots of weapon manipulation, and physical challenges to get the shooter tired and degres his/her coordination and [Read More…]
Semiauto rifles are taken for granted today – every military in the world uses them, they are the mainstay of many types of competition, most police forces, and a great many hunters. And yet, the self-loading rifle in a full size military cartridge only became [Read More…]
The Arizona state legislature recently passed a law requiring cities to sell guns they collect in gun buy-backs, rather than destroy them, as is typically done. The law has been passed but not yet gone into effect – so the city of Phoenix and the a group called [Read More…]
There are really no new ideas in firearms design today – some of the best and brightest engineers humanity has produced have spent the last 120+ years figuring out every possible mechanism for building self-loading firearms. What we have today in new guns are [Read More…]
One of the most interesting firearms to come out of World War II is the Fallschirmjaegergewehr 42 – the FG-42. There are so few of them still in existence that they often don’t get the attention they should, but that will all change now. SMG Guns of Decatur, [Read More…]
During this holiday season, perhaps you would like to take a break from visiting with your spouse’s parents – so how about getting to know your rifle’s parents? For a long time, the whole line of long guns made by H&K was all based around a [Read More…]