Your chance to own a semiauto reproduction StG-44 is coming soon: Hill & Mac Gunworks recently announced that the first of their Sturmgewehr rifles would be shipping before the end of this month. In an announcement made through the latest InRange TV Question & [Read More…]
One of the most interesting firearms for me at the 2017 SHOT Show was Hill & Mac’s quasi-reproduction of the WWII-era StG-44 Sturmgewehr. We’ve covered this weapon twice before at trade shows, including SHOT 2016 and the NRA 2016 Annual Meeting, and I am [Read More…]
Since we’ve covered the two most prominent PDW rounds of today, I want to take a quick detour and look at an interesting – but obscure – personal defense weapon/assault rifle round from history. After World War II, the apparati of the German war [Read More…]
We haven’t done a Historical Intermediate Calibers post in a while, mostly because most of the stuff that’s interesting enough to cover is difficult to find real world examples of. Today, we’ll be looking at one round I had planned to do ever since the [Read More…]
After World War II, the nations of the world retired to lick their wounds and rebuild, but their arms engineers also began thinking about the next war. The war have brought forth a storm of new technologies and inventions, and one of the most significant in the field of [Read More…]
Many would consider this next round to be the first intermediate cartridge ever, and while that isn’t really true, it is one of the most influential rounds of all time, and perhaps the most influential intermediate round ever developed. I am talking of course [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…]
In November of last year, we blogged about an early Soviet encounter with the MKb.42(H), the open bolt machine carbine that would become the famous closed bolt MP/StG.44 assault rifle. Ensign Expendable, author of the Soviet Gun Archives blog that provided the material [Read More…]
The first prototype of what was then the FN Universal Carbine, but that would become the FN FAL (Light Automatic Rifle), was not chambered for the familiar 7.62×51 NATO, nor its competitor round the .280 British, but in the German 7.92x33mm Kurzpatrone round [Read More…]
The still below captures the use of a weapon that some of our readers will immediately recognize, but that might be new to others: The rifle is an MKb.42(H), Haenel’s prototype for what would later become the famous MP-44 Sturmgewehr. The Maschinenkarabiner [Read More…]
For those who thought the GunLab VG1-5 project was très chic, the first example is now complete and awaiting BATFE approval. Even better, Allegheny Arsenal is now accepting preorders! The guns will cost $4,000 each (despite the decidedly inexpensive construction [Read More…]
One of the many projects GunLab has been hard at work completing is producing reproduction VG1-5 (more properly referred to as the Gustloff MP 507) carbines. These were last-ditch carbines, intended to be vastly cheaper to make than either the Kar98K or StG-44 [Read More…]