When we think of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company we think of lever actions and maybe some of John Browning’s designs. We don’t tend to think of Cold War submachine guns, but in the mid-1950s Winchester developed a 9×19 ‘NATO Burp Gun’. [Read More…]
If I asked you what the first first bullpup rifle was, what would you answer? The Steyr AUG? British EM-2 from the 1950s? The Faucon ‘Balanced Rifle’ from 1911 or maybe the Thorneycroft carbine from the early 1900s? In fact the distinction goes to a much [Read More…]
Generally speaking, firearms laws in the United States are better than those in the United Kingdom – except when it comes to museums. In the US, the Gun Control Act of 1968 offered a brief window for registration of prohibited items (Machine Guns, SBRs, SBSs, etc) [Read More…]
Y-man here – writing a post on Shot Show Day 2, 24th January 2018, and I am actually HERE! Here in Las Vegas, Nevada. It has been an experience, with each additional day being even further exciting… Eye-watering, hair-raising excitement… I feel very [Read More…]
The late 1800s and early 1900s are undoubtedly a period of American firearms design dominated by one man, John Moses Browning. But many of Browning’s contemporaries were no less able and men like Andrew Burgess, William Mason, John Pedersen, Frank Burton and T.C. [Read More…]
It’s not every day that you see a gun that knocks your socks off in terms of history, engineering, rarity, and insanity – but today is that day. At the Institute of Military Technology these are the qualities we look for in firearms – we revel in them [Read More…]
The phrase, “In my opinion, the M1 Rifle is the greatest battle implement ever devised” is possibly one of the more enduring and iconic of all quotes to emerge out of the Second World War in relation to American small arms. The quote itself stems from a [Read More…]
A one hundred and thirty-two year old Winchester lever-action rifle was recently found in Great Basin National Park, near the border of Utah in Nevada. WinchesterGuns.com has a good summary of the find: Many of us harbor pipe dreams of running across an original [Read More…]
Benjamin Tyler Henry can be fairly credited with one of the more significant accomplishments in firearms history. Although he was not the first inventor to ever dabble in lever-action guns, as a few other examples like Colt’s early “ring lever” [Read More…]
Over the weekend Headstamp Publishing launched their second book – Thorneycroft to SA80: British Bullpup Firearms, 1901–2020, written by Jonathan Ferguson of the UK’s Royal Armouries. The new book launched its Kickstarter campaign on the 12th April, it [Read More…]
While browsing the catalog of the upcoming December 2019 Rock Island Premier Firearms Auction for putting together one of TFB’s articles about most interesting firearms seen in largest US auctions, I came across a couple of rather rare yet interesting Colt [Read More…]
The following is a guest article written for TFB by reader Tim about his efforts with his friend Paul to recreate the historical .280 British (7x43mm) round developed for the EM-2 and FAL rifles during the early pre-NATO rifle trials of the late 1940s. Enjoy! [Read More…]
I was planning to write about this firearm in the near future but it always was the last one in the list of such firearms (rare, experimental Soviet/Russian guns) to write an in-depth article about. And the reason is the extremely scarce information available about this [Read More…]
On January 10, 1917, William “Buffalo Bill” Cody died. A larger than life figure of the time, Buffalo Bill’s life was tied to the firearm. First as scout for the US Army in the Utah War and then as a private in the 7th Kansas Cavalry during the Civil [Read More…]
By this point, most of my readers will be familiar with the fabulous work being done (almost single-handedly) by Ian McCollum for his site ForgottenWeapons.com, and those who aren’t should click through and subscribe to his channel for some of the best gun-related [Read More…]
One of several interesting automatic individual weapon designs from World War I, the Winchester Machine Rifle was a concept for a dual-purpose anti-observation-balloon/ground weapon that featured several concepts that, for better or worse, were definitely ahead of their [Read More…]
Whatever one thinks of the proliferation of firearms, it’s a fact that the technology needed to make reliable, effective weapons is well in hand. Even at the lowest levels of industrial capability firearms are practical, manufacturable items, and this includes [Read More…]