All Articles Tagged 'gun' (22)

Late last year I wrote about the what's old is new again craze of mounting illumination to weapons. Nearly a year later I am diving back into the idea of weapon's accesories, but this time the idea…

A simple backwoods gun, something that has two calibers that can handle anything you throw at it. A true American style firearms coveted by woodsmen that roved the continent for hundreds of years. In Europe 'Drilling" guns are well known. Here in the US they're a bit more a niche, something you carry as a backwoods…

Some time ago I wrote about the stylized and long lived MAT-49 SMG from France. But it wasn't the only collapsing weapon to come from the minds of Gallic engineers.

The Hotchkiss Universal Type submachine…

Magazines come in two basic types, single or double stack, meaning rounds are stacked in a single row or slightly staggered, doubling capacity and creating wider magazine. This is model has been standared for pistols, submachine guns and rifles for 70+ years, with the occasional "stick magazine" aberration.

In…

Despite have a long distinguished firearms heritage, Italian smallarms makers during World War II seemed to have floundered in attempts to make the next great advance in weapons designs. They came close quite often, but inevitably fell short when finding that right next generation weapon. And while other weapons makers…

If you're a gun geek like me, something small, the littlest thing about a weapon can excite you. Sometimes its the method of operation, other times its the inventive way they solve weight or size issues.

For me the Argentinian Halcon M-1943 has a great stock. Yes, you heard me right, this pretty mundane SMG has…

In the world of pistols the .45 ACP still hold sway over all other semi-automatic handgun calibers. Sure there is .357 Desert Eagle. And 10mm from Glock burned a few hundred pages of gun magazines in the 1990s. But outlasting them all is the .45 ACP. Designed in the first decade of the 20th century, the .45 ACP round…

German anti-tank rocket technology took various forms during World War II. Efforts went from the expendable Panzerfaust to the larger more traditional bazooka-type Raketenpanzerbusche. The Ofenrorhr, the latter weapon's nickname due to its stovepipe-like look, launched an 88mm rocket…

Australia went to war as a member of the Commonwealth, fighting primarily with Commonwealth weapons. But as a continent, facing the dropping heel of the Japanese Imperial boot, their military forces needed as many firearms as they could get their hands on. So instead of turning outwards for more guns, they looked…

In HG Wells' "The World Set Free" (1914) flying machines deliver nuclear bombs but their pilots' heaviest defence / attack weapon is a handgun.

The plot is set in 1940s. But reality was well ahead the writer's imagination. If Mr. Wells took a better look around he could notice a flying machine armed with something serious - a cannon. Here is a short extract from "The Cannon Pioneers" by Anthony G…

Speaking of Death from Above, we cannot ignore a recoilless gun developed by Commander Cleland Davis, USN, between 1910 and 1914.

Here I feel like invading Redfezwriter's realm but hope we won't fight about a gun. Let's open an old but still excellent book, "The Machine Gun" by…

By the 1980s the word Uzi became synonymous with bullet spewing death. The gangster connotation attached the Uzi submachine gun, was also the chosen weapon of the Israeli Defense Force, as well as dozens of countries, elite miliary and police agencies. The compact weapon went through three generations, each…

Modern American jet aircraft and some helicopters have been armed with the ancestor of the Gatling gun. Multiple barrels, spun at high rates of speed allowed the feeding and firing of ammunition at astounding rates. The Vulcan aircraft gun and its siblings fire at 8,000 to 9,000 rounds per minute, and relied not…

If you've seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you've seen the Villar-Perosa submachine gun. When the Jones boys take to the air and inadvertently shoot off the tail of their bi-plane, they do so with a Villar-Perosa submachine gun mounted in the plane.

The two barreled weapon, compact, odd and flimsy looking, was in fact considered one of…