History

Sometimes men commit premeditated mass murder based upon pure unfiltered greed. This is the sort of killing we’re investigating today.

Lieutenant Blowers carried nothing more than his six-shot Webley revolver as a personal defense weapon. Crawling through fetid German trenches stacked deep with corpses both fresh and otherwise, Blowers and his crew picked their way across the most dangerous terrain on earth.

During WWII, a man from Nepal held off more than thirty Japanese troops, while armed with just a knife and Lee Enfield rifle. This is the story of Lachhiman Gurung and his rifle.

The British Sten gun was effective at close range, cheap, and easy to make, but nearly botched the assassination of one of Hitler’s henchmen.

The M3 submachine gun was built for WWII. The stamped steel gun was nicknamed the “Grease Gun,” but it cost Uncle Sam only $18 to make.

The M1911 was the finest combat handgun at the time of the World Wars. For close range firepower and reliability, nothing beat the M1917 revolver.

The Thompson Submachine Gun was a weapon respected by Prohibition-era gangsters before being toted across Europe by American soldiers in WWII.

Mechanical systems like small arms evolve in response to myriad forces both industrial and martial. Somebody has an idea that seems to work, and that idea is tweaked, adjusted, and improved over time until it becomes something better, more reliable, and more efficient. The astute student of modern small arms, however, can generally tease out the origins of a mechanism with a little study.

The Walther MPL is the ultimate example of a general utility submachine gun. In the roles filled by the wartime German MP40, American Grease Gun, Russian PPSh, and British Sten the MPL is quite literally ideal. The rate of fire is slow, and the gun is rugged and simple. By contrast, the MP5 fires much faster and is really a specialist’s weapon. In the hands of a trained operator, the MP5 puts a swarm of zippy little 9mm bullets into teacup-sized groups at bad breath ranges. When employed in a swamp or powdery desert environment, however, the complexity of the MP5 becomes a liability.