Vintage photo
Vintage Hotchkiss photo
Just a neat old photo to spice up your Saturday… Think he’s going to hit that airplane?
Articles by Ian McCollum
Uncategorized
Pedersen clip
The main competitor to the Garand rifle in the 1930s was John Pedersen’s toggle-locked rifle. The Pedersen was designed to fire, appropriately, the .276 Pedersen cartridge developed just for it, and it used an en […]
Book review
Blood Brothers: A Biography of Hiram and Hudson Maxim
Today we take a look at Iain McCallum’s Blood Brothers: Hiram and Hudson Maxim: Pioneers of Modern Warfare – a book deserving a place in everyone’s firearms library. Most people don’t realize that Hiram Maxim […]
Light MGs
Mexican Mendoza LMG
So, you might wonder how firearms were procured in Mexico before the ATF was around to hand them out. Would you believe indigenous development? Mexico had a couple notable firearms designers working hard in the […]
Machine pistol
Stechkin Automatic Pistol
The Stechkin automatic pistol was adopted by the Soviet military in 1951, alongside the Makarov pistol. Both are chambered bot the 9x18mm Russian cartridge, and both use simple blowback mechanisms. The Stechkin is a heavier […]
Semiauto Rifles
Early Mauser Semiauto Rifles
We’ve had a few photos of early Mauser semiauto rifles in the Vault for a while, accompanied by a very brief blurb I wrote up. Well, I got a somewhat disgusted-sounding email from a reader […]
Semiauto pistol
The Parabellum Story – Mauser’s Luger
The Luger Pistole Parabellum is one of the most iconic handguns ever designed, and has been enchanting shooters and collectors for many decades. This was no different in the late 1960s, during the golden age […]
Semiauto pistol
Steyr 1912 Video
We have another video to post today – this time about the Steyr 1912 handgun, aka the Steyr-Hahn. We have one in the Reference Collection that we are going to disassemble and discuss, so please […]
Uncategorized
Updates: Heligun & Fusil Mexico
Thanks to some thoughtful readers, we have a couple updates to add to recent posts. From Joe T and with the kind permission of Dan Shea, we have a photo of a Heligun as carried […]
Semiauto Rifles
Smith & Wesson Light Rifle, Model 1940
Some forgotten weapons are lost gems, and some are designs that really never should have gotten off the drawing board. The S&W Model 1940 Light Rifle is the latter, and a company with as much […]