Archive for the 'Antique' category
Austro-Hungarian Gasser Revolver
May 24, 2008 9:09 am
The Gasser Army revolver was an open-framed heavy-bore revolver from the late 19th Century that was adopted as the Austro-Hungarian Cavalry revolver as the Gasser M1870. It holds five rounds of 11.2mm centrefire, a long heavy round known as the 11mm Montenegrin that was used in the earlier Fruwirth carbines.
Steyr-Hahn M12 9mm Automatic
January 21, 2008 6:19 am
This is a very interesting early automatic pistol. The M12 (Steyr-Hahn Model 1912) automatic was adopted by the Austro-Hungarian army in 1912 and has an 8-round internal magazine that is reloaded by stripper-clip instead of the now-standard removable magazines. It is chambered in a proprietary 9mm round, the 9 x 23 mm Steyr. Many of these automatics were raided from armories by German forces in World War II and converted to fire 9mm Parabellum.
.45 ACP M3 Grease Gun
January 3, 2008 6:04 am
The M3 “Grease Gun” replaced the M1 Thompson series of submachine guns in US Military service in time for World War II (with over 600,000 manufactured by the end of the war). Unlike the Thompsons, the M3 was designed to be easily switched to the 9mm Parabellum round used by the Allied European nations in their handguns and submachine guns, and is primarily made of metal stampings, making the entire firearm much easier and cheaper to manufacture. It is an automatic-only blowback operated submachine gun chambered in the .45 ACP round.
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
December 28, 2007 6:34 am
The Tommy gun earned it’s reputation in the hands of gangsters in the 1930’s - back when you could buy one, full auto, from the Sears catalog for roughly $250. The M1928 model shown here has the 100-round drum magazine and wooden furniture that made it notorious in the hands of mobsters the in prohibition and depression eras in Hollywood films. The Thompson submachine gun was originally developed as the “Annihilator”, and was originally intended to fire rifle ammunition, but the limits of the design made it so it could only be manufactured firing .45 ACP.
Today we also added two new pages to the GunPorn site.
- The first is GunPorn on Facebook which contains instructions on how to get your daily dose of gunporn while on Facebook if you are too lazy to surf on over here - as well as how to share your favourite gunporn posts with your Facebook friends.
- The second is Image Macros - a storage page for captioned images that somehow are appropriate to the site, but that do not suit the feel of the front page (ie: they don’t focus on pretty pictures of guns). Think of them as LOLcats, but about guns.
MP38 “Burp Gun”
December 18, 2007 7:27 am
The MP38 was the predecessor to the MP40 made famous by Germany during WWII. The MP40 was designed as a simplified MP38 based on their experience with thousands of MP38’s used in the invasion of Poland. The MP38, in turn, was a simplification of the MP-36, which was a select-fire weapon. Both the MP38 and MP40 are full-automatic only weapons, but with a low rate of fire and very controllable recoil that allowed skilled users to squeeze off single shots when needed. Shown here with the wire stock folded, the MP38 is loaded with a 32-round magazine of 9mm Parabellum. The MP38 and MP40 were assigned primarily to paratroopers and platoon and squad leaders until late in the war.
German “Storm Gun” ushers in new Assault Rifles
December 12, 2007 7:16 am
One of the most important firearms innovations of WWII was the StG-44 - the Storm Rifle that became the design for assault rifles for years to come. Chambered in the intermediary 7.92×33mm round it was designed to operate effectively as a carbine while also filling the support role of a light machine gun, while being light and small enough to also partially fill the role of the submachine gun in close combat environments.
My broom is fully automatic!
December 7, 2007 7:45 am
Last week when I posted the picture of the classic Mauser Broomhandle I was hunting for pictures of this classic machine pistol. Just like the classic German Mauser “Broomhandle” handgun, the M712 (also known as the M1932 - based on the year it was introduced) is chambered in the high powered 7.63×25mm Mauser. However, it uses a detachable 10 or 20 round box magazine and can be set to semi-automatic or full automatic fire. Knock-off versions have been made in China and Spain, and a very limited number of Chinese versions were manufactured chambered for .45 ACP.
German MP-3008 ‘Volks Weapon’ Submachine Gun
December 5, 2007 7:10 am
The MP-3008 was originally made in Germany in the last days of World War II and issued to the Volkssturm - hastily assembled militia groups to fend off the Allied attacks. Overall the design and manufacture is very much like the British STEN gun, but built to accept magazines from the MP-38 and MP-40 in a vertical configuration. Sport-Systeme Dittrich is now manufacturing a semi-automatic fully-functional replica of the weapon for international distribution.
The Mauser C96
November 29, 2007 7:21 am
The Mauser C96 (first introduced in 1896) was the first semi-automatic pistol in widespread use. With it’s long barrel and high powered cartridge it would be a potent package today. Combined with the unique handle and the integral magazine, the C96 “Broomhandle” has a unique profile that is immediately recognizable (well, at least as Han Solo’s blaster, if nothing else). Over the 40 years that it was in service, many variants were manufactured in a variety of calibers, and even some designed for full automatic fire. All were designed with a wooden carrying box that doubled as a stock.
The Original Submachine Gun
June 20, 2007 10:40 am
While talking about my obsession with submachine guns yesterday, I decided to go looking for pictures of the MP-18/I - the first production Submachine Gun. Unfortunately, there seems to be a dearth of good photos of this classic firearm, besides the great one above. To get a good colour shot, I had to grab one from Guns.ru
Both are /3 models, being that they use the 20 round box magazine originally designed to be used with the gun, instead of the 32-round snail magazine the gun was originally equipped with in World War I.
