I Have This Old Gun

Engineers at the Fémáru és Szerszámgépgyár NV (Metal Products and Machine Tool Factory Company) in Budapest developed a military-appropriate sidearm by combining the R-61’s lightweight alloy frame with a 4" barrel in 9 mm Makarov, which is how the PA-63 was born.

Six years after his tape primer’s appearance, Dr. Maynard debuted a unique drop-barrel carbine. It was light, simple and easy to operate. One merely lowered a lever to permit the gun’s barrel to tilt downward off the frame and expose the chamber.

Like its exposed-hammer predecessor, the Model 1897, the Winchester Model 12 transitioned from peacetime popularity to wartime warrior and back again. The Model 12’s journey from battlefields to hunting fields and trap and skeet ranges spanned more than 50 years.

In an effort to outdo Smith & Wesson’s fast-loading, top-break revolvers, Colt brought a solid-frame, swing-out-cylinder revolver to the market in 1889. Its initial models were large-frame handguns in .38 and .41 calibers designed for military use.

Approximately 80,000 Model 12 trench guns were manufactured between 1941 and 1944, and later production featured a Parkerized metal finish. Careful inspection will reveal four rows of holes in the handguard for barrel heat venting, changed from six during 1917.

Until the mid-19th century, Japan was a feudal society living in self-imposed isolation. Excepting a controlled, limited relationship with Portuguese traders, contact with the West was considered anathema by the Japanese rulers.

Following many European militaries’ trend toward the adoption of semi-automatic pistols, in 1907, the United States Army held a series of trials with the aim of selecting a self-loader for its own forces.

Watch this American Rifleman Television segment of "I Have This Old Gun" from 2020 to learn about the Japanese Type 3 heavy machine gun, the predecessor of the World War II-era Type 92 "woodpecker."

The Winchester 1873 may have been “The Gun That Won The West,” but it was the Winchester Model 1892, with its smoother, stronger action, that soon began outselling the earlier toggle-link lever-action and eventually caused the ‘73’s demise in 1921.