Jonathan Ferguson is Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, UK. He is based at the National Firearms Centre, one of the most comprehensive firearms collections in the world and successor to the MoD Pattern Room. His research interests include the use and effect of weapons, and their depiction in folklore and popular culture.
Whilst film buffs complain about the seemingly endless Hollywood cycle of remakes and reboots, those in the firearms world couldn’t be happier when a classic design is revisited for the modern age. Case in point, the new Brügger & Thomet VP-9 pistol, a 21st [Read More…]
It’s a staple of cinema and video games, it looks cool, but as the image above from comedy action movie ‘Hot Fuzz’ reminds us, it’s mostly nonsense. We’re talking ‘dual wielding’, aka ‘guns akimbo’, or the simultaneous [Read More…]
There’s an article title I never thought I’d write! A Victorian grenade launcher? Not quite. It is indeed a Martini-Henry grenade launcher, or to be precise, a Blanch-Chevallier Grenade Discharger. Rather than being designed to combat Zulus on the South African [Read More…]
The Royal Armouries is one of the oldest museums in the world, and is best known for its collection of antique arms and armour. However, we have always collected modern firearms. The Armouries at the Tower of London was an issuing arsenal from the days of King Henry [Read More…]
When General John Thompson completed his iconic submachine gun design in 1919, the world’s governments were weary of war and strapped for cash. With millions of rifles and pistols in their inventories and surplus, there was little room for an unproven, expensive, and [Read More…]
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