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If you want a Mini-14 buy one.

Yes, you don’t own a flying car, but at least some of the promises of the future are coming true: The United States Navy has successfully tested its railgun prototype in multi-shot (autoloading) mode, earlier this summer. Although the US Navy has been testing railguns since 2006, this latest test was the first time such a weapon had fired multiple shots in quick succession, thanks to an autoloading mechanism fitted to the rear. You can see the railgun in action in the video below, released by the Office of Naval Research:

In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers.

By this point, it’s impossible to hide my affinity for early selfloading rifles, and today we have another great video from Forgotten Weapons on an early Italian model that made it all the way to adoption. Though the program was cancelled before it could be produced, the Armaguerra Model 1939 rifle is still an important piece of Italian firearms history. You can learn more about it in Ian’s video embedded below:

The first nation to begin serious work on the problem of an infantry rifle that could load itself between shots was none other than the then-military superpower of France. In 1886, the French revolutionized the infantry weapon by introducing the smokeless-power, repeating Lebel rifle, and no sooner was the rifle in the hands of the troops, than were French designers and planners figuring out what to replace it with. By 1900, the French autoloader program had been kicked into high gear, with designers Etienne Meunier, Rossignol (first name appears to be lost), and Louis Chauchat, among others, all working towards the goal of a practical selfloading weapon that met the French requirements.

It’s no good to discuss how firearms work without also giving the context surrounding the firearms themselves. With that said, let’s talk about the AR-15, its copycats, competitors, and relatives. Together these rifles share space under the loose umbrella of black rifles, a term which references the use of lighter and more durable black polymer gunstocks in place of traditional wood, something that became common from the 1960s onward in military firearms design. Today the term simply means any modern military rifle, or any rifle patterned after a modern military rifle, the two most common of these by far being the AR-15 and AK types. For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the AR-15, but much of what we’ll talk about will be applicable to any black rifle.

A retarded blowback rifle extracts cases from the chamber while they are still under considerable pressure – over 35,000 PSI. Because of this pressure, the walls of the cartridge cases adhere strongly to the barrel’s chamber walls, while the head is forced back. Under normal circumstances, this would cause a catastrophic case head separation, therefore a successful retarded blowback weapon needs some kind of lubrication to free the case walls from the chamber and facilitate extraction at such high pressures.

Beginning in the last decade of the 19th Century, the French government began work on the next great advancement in infantry small arms technology: The selfloading rifle. By 1916, after the outbreak of World War I, they had produced what many consider the most advanced rifle of its time: The Meunier A6 Carbine.

Well, it’s no secret that I am a sucker for early selfloading rifles. The sheer number of ideas that were being explored in the early decades when these rifles were undergoing military trials creates a fascinating body of work for us gun nerds in the modern day to study. One area that doesn’t get enough attention is the developments of gun designers in Central Europe before World War II. We previously posted on the ZH-29, one of the most important milestones in the story of the military selfloading rifle, but today we’ll take a look at a video released by Forgotten Weapons on another rifle designed by the same talented designer, Emmanuel Holek. That rifle is the CZ Model S:

Some of John Browning’s contributions to the effort of the First World War – like the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle and the M1917 Browning Machine Gun – are well-known, but there’s one that never made it to production, or even any substantial degree of recognition: A Browning infantry rifle design, utilizing a totally unique hesitation locked mechanism.

Paul Mauser, the person who with his brother was chiefly responsible for the excellent line of Mauser bolt-action rifles that even today are the pattern for almost all modern bolt-action designs, lost an eye in 1901 during testing of a self-loading rifle which had an inadequate locking mechanism. Mauser had been working on perfecting a military self-loading rifle for about three years at that point, going through many different variations and prototypes in his race to create the first viable military self-loading infantry rifle. The rifle Ian of Forgotten Weapons takes a look at in the video embedded below is not that rifle that cost Mauser his eye, but the rifle that Mauser designed in 1902 upon his recuperation and return to the problem. The prototype in the video is No. 4, and Mauser – undeterred by the loss of a mere eye – kept at the problem until he died in 1914, producing nearly 20 prototypes:

About a month and a half ago, Ryan Michad of the Firearms Radio Network reached out to ask me to do a segment for the Gun Guy Radio show. He wanted to tackle the subject of the selfloading rifle trials that led to the US adoption of the first standard-issue selfloading rifle in the world, the M1 Garand. I was happy to accept, and a few weeks later we recorded the segment, which was released just this past Sunday. In it, we cover ground from the earliest semi-automatic rifle experiments undertaken by the French in the late 19th Century, to the “rockstar” gun designer John D. Pedersen, up to the adoption of the Garand rifle as the U. S. rifle, caliber .30, M1, in 1933. We even tackle some “what ifs?” including “what if Pedersen’s rifle had been adopted instead of Garand’s?” and “how would a standardized .276 caliber have changed US firearms history?”

The Remington Model 8 was the brainchild of none other than John M. Browning himself, and was one of the first semiautomatic rifles to hit the civilian hunting market. One of the most important firearms of the 20th Century, the Model 8’s influence can be felt in rifles from the M1 Garand to the AK-47, and many of these excellent firearms still bag game every season.

This is the second part of a series of posts seeking to describe and analyze the 7.62mm Light Rifle concept promoted by the Americans, and subsequently adopted by NATO in various forms. This series will cover development from before World War II to the present day, but will focus primarily on the period from 1944-1970, which constitutes the span of time from the Light Rifle’s conception until its end in the United States with the standardization of the M16.

Previously here at TFB we discussed a well-designed and well-manufactured Czech rifle that made a big difference in the early history of selfloading rifles, the ZH-29. Tim of the Military Arms Channel discusses another Czech rifle that was a particular example of good engineering and sound implementation, the Czech Vz. 52: