#Semi-automatic

Since prehistory, hunters have  covered their bodies and faces in materials to camouflage themselves from their prey. When you’re putting food on the table, you want as many advantages as possible. Combining both of these ideas, Browning has introduced the 12 gauge Maxus II Camo, which comes in a variety of patterns and offers a number of advantages. If ducks don’t have nightmares, they’re about to start.

As Seen at SHOT Show 2018 – Weighing 1.9 oz, the Carbon Black Pistol Grip’s weight is barely noticeable, even on lightweight builds (compare to the Magpul MOE+ Grip at 3.4 ounces). Dozens of mold iterations have produced a stable, tactile grip that is incredibly lightweight. The molded surfaces are designed to support the palm, not thumb web, for repeatable trigger pulls.

Introduced earlier this year, the SL5 shotgun represents Sauer’s entry into the market of inertia operated semi-auto shotguns. The actual mechanism of this shotgun is designed in cooperation with Italian Breda company. Sauer engineers built the rest of the gun around the Breda action.

Marcolmar makes semi-automatic, legal copies of the Czech Uk.59, and similar copies of the Soviet PKM General Purpose Machine Gun. So why not clone the two together and bring the resulting creation into the 21st Century, with polymer furniture, an updated design, and Picatinny rails? Meet the UKM, Marcolmar’s attempt to bring civilians a legal belt fed design that incorporates elements of both the PKM and the Uk.59 without losing any of the capabilities of either, and modernizing the design. For those who are still interested in the traditional belt-fed look, the older designers are out there on the market, but this UKM is for a newer crowd of gun owners that want a little bit extra.

If you are looking for a high quality airgun in pistol form, HatsanUSA has a new offering that might be of interest. The new Sortie is a semi-automatic air pistol that is available in .177, .22 and .25 caliber.

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:

Geissele has taken the step from manufacturing accessories, to making the guns themselves: The company released its new VSASS semiautomatic sniper rifle system at the Modern Day Marine 2017 industry demonstration. News of the new rifle was first broken by Soldier Systems Daily, via an article available at this link. The VSASS (which stands for Very-long-range Semi-Automatic Sniper System) is a Stoner-type direct gas impingement system built from the ground up by Geissele, utilizing very few off-the-shelf components. It sports a number of refinements, including an extended length barrel extension, hardened steel cam pin raceway, cobalt alloy cam pin, and other improvements to the operating group. Many internal surfaces are coated in the durable solid lubricant by Nano Composite Coatings, which appears to be owned by Bill Geissele. The VSASS uses SR-25 magazines, as well as Geissele’s SSA-E trigger. It weighs 12.3 pounds unloaded and without optic, according to the Soldier Systems article, with variants chambered for .260 Remington, 6.5 Creedmoor, and 7.62x51mm NATO.

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.

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.

As part of Kalashnikov Concern’s new product rollout for the Russian government’s ARMY 2016 military technology conference, the company has announced a new designated marksman’s rifle, named the SVK. Earlier this year, an article in PopMech.ru showed off a Kalashnikov Concern design called “SK-16”, but an anonymous source told TFB that development of that rifle has ceased, due to problems with the design, and the new SVK will be taking its place. The SVK uses similar receiver architecture to the Kalashnikov Concern MA, also announced this week, with a steel upper receiver spine supporting a Picatinny-type rail and providing a guide rod for the operating group, as well as rigidity for the whole firearm. The rest of the receiver is made of polymer (aluminum on the prototypes), and contains the fire control group and the magazine housing.

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 content on the web. However, yesterday Ian released a the first of multiple videos on a rifle family that is very near and dear to my heart, that being the Winchester G30 line of development. For a rare look at the rifle as helmed by Ed Browning (half-brother to the famous John Moses Browning), watch the video below:

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.