Tag Archives: select fire

The sound of 16 Vickers 303s

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One of the scariest sounds for any of the Kaiser’s foot soldiers in the Great War had to be that of the Vickers gun, ready to rattle away in .303 all day. 

The below amazing eight-minute video is the sight and sound of 16 Vickers machine guns rocking and rolling at a recent event saluting the centenary of the disbandment of the British Army’s Machine Gun Corps. Held at the Century range at Bisley, Surrey, it was pulled off by the Vickers Machinegun Collection and Research Association. Set up as a machine gun company, the guns represented gunners from 1912 through 1968, including one team of female factory testers. 

More on the Vickers 303, and its interesting American connection, after the jump in my column at Guns.com.

“The Kaiser’s necklace, compliments of Camp Lee, Va.” showing Doughboys training with a Vickers gun and holding up one of its 250-round cloth belts. Both the 80th “Blue Ridge” Division, drawn from volunteers from Virginia and western Pennsylvania, as well as the 37th “Buckeye” Division of the Ohio National Guard trained at Camp Lee. (Photo: The Library of Virginia)

I Recently Ran Across a Beautiful Beast of a Machine Gun Suppressor

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One of the most interesting but least talked about aspects of Maxim Defense is its suppressor wing, and I talked to them about their almost spooky quiet GPMG can.

While on a visit to Maxim’s St. Cloud, Minnesota headquarters, spoke with CJ Dugan (late of certain Tier 1 groups) and the gang about the company’s suppressor team. Acquired after the great schism in the suppressor industry in 2017, Maxim’s quiet-time R&D crew includes such legends in the industry as Dr. Phil Dater.

By 2019, the company arrived at SHOT Show with a few prototypes of their integrated suppressed AR uppers as well as a very interesting can for the FN MAG 58/M240 series of 7.62 NATO general-purpose machine guns. Incorporating a series of patent-pending technology, it is treading harsh terrain that has broken other cans.

Besides holding up despite glowing red-hot– it has outlasted the machine guns it has been tested on– it is shown to drop the sound report to 135dB, which is quiet enough to talk in the vicinity of without ear pro.

Now, it is being tested by the Army, with good initial feedback. Not bad for a company that didn’t exist a decade ago.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Behind the scenes at Maxim Defense

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One of the places I stopped at on my trip to Minnesota last month– in the 91-degree heat just a couple hours south of Canada?!– was Maxim Defense. For a company that didn’t exist seven years ago, they have really come out of nowhere and made a name for themselves.

They specialize in the “short space” so to speak, with products like the PDX.

The PDX had its origin in a PDW project for Tier 1 operators which specified a gun that, above all, was extremely compact for close quarter encounters– but still able to fire 5.56mm rounds. Crafted with that use in mind, Maxim’s result was a gun that is as sweet as it gets– just 18.75-inches long overall with a 5.5-inch barrel that ends in a Hatebrake muzzle booster while the collapsible stock is Maxim’s in-house SCW stock system. The PDX includes an integrated BCG with interchangeable buffer weights to maximize performance. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

Check out the video tour and interviews in my column at Guns.com. 

You are going to like this if you are into odd Russian gatts

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From somewhere deep in the Old World’s borscht belt, a Russian with a rough haircut shows off the APS auto pistol and the PP-90 and PP-91 sub guns:

Sgt. Kirill Gorgoth lays mitts first on the wacky Stechkin APS automatic pistol, a hopped-up Makarov-ish handgun capable of dropping 9x18mm at 750rpm.

Next, he rolls deep with the PP-90 folding subgun which looks like a wonky VHS– because VHS is apparently still a thing in the USSR Russia.

Kirill then finishes with a Kedr PP-91 submachine gun, a handy (12-inches folded) blowback SMG designed by Evgeny Dragunov of SVD fame that can rat-a-tat at 1,000rpm.

Eye and ear pro? Nyet. Putin’s workout gloves and sweet full-auto action? Da. So much da.

We’re trading up, says St. Louis Metro PD as they cash out Tommy gun cache

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From the 1920s through the 1960s, many civilian police forces, such as these cops in Tacoma, Wash, had a few Tommy guns on the racks “just in case” phasing them out after Vietnam with 1033 Program M16A1s

The St. Louis Metro Police Department is parting with most of its huge and historic Thompson submachine gun collection in a move to get a good deal on new duty guns.

Twenty-seven of the city’s 30 Tommy guns will be sold to Midwest Distributors for $22,000 apiece. All told, the Kentucky-based firm will pay $618,500 for the transferrable .45 ACP s sub guns and some other surplus weapons. This is on top of $597,000 paid by Minneapolis-based Bill Hicks & Co. for 1,748 used Beretta handguns currently carried by the department.

The money will go to offset the cost of new Berettas at $450 a pop to equip every officer with as well as a quantity of AR-15s to be used as patrol rifles.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Looking for a deal on a Tommy gun?

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That stock comes off, you know?

Plymouth Borough, outside of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, isn’t big, but they have had a vintage and transferrable Tommy gun in their city’s arsenal since Prohibition that they want to get rid of if the price is right.

Furthermore, it’s not your average burp gun– it’s a Navy overstamp 1921 Colt-made Thompson.


Often thought of by militaria collectors as the holy grail of U.S. sub guns, the overstamp came about when Auto Ordnance moved to offload their stock of Colt-made M1921 Thompsons and, modifying them slightly by reducing their cyclic rate of fire from 800 rounds per minute to a more pedestrian 600, over-stamped the “1” in 1921 with an “8.”

The Title II/Class 3 weapon is listed on Gunbroker, with a current price of $28,000 and two days to go before the bidding ends.

In recent years several agencies have liquidated their stocks of aging Tommy guns including St.Louis PD who put a cool $1 million worth of the .45 ACP SMGs up for sale in 2014 and another North Carolina department who moved to swap a pair of Thompsons for 88 newer semi-auto Bushmasters.

In 2015, the town of Kinston, North Carolina, who had picked up an overstamp to ward off possible tobacco payroll robbers in 1935, sold their gun for $36,750, which is about average for the model.

Kwajalein calling

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Rock Island Auction House has released some teaser information about their upcoming Premier Auction in May, and it has just about one of every full-auto or select-fire offering on your fave list.

While they do not have the full item descriptions listed yet, they have released some highlight images and what they show– besides the regular fare of 19th Century collectible lever guns and 18th Century dueling pistols– is a cornucopia of Title II/Class 3 items. Outside of the full Call of Duty collection, you aren’t going to find these guns in one place. There is even a Heckler & Koch HK21, a type I haven’t seen since I worked with NASA.

Among the neater pieces I saw was a Japanese Type 11 light machine gun– Kijirō Nambu’s take on the French 8mm Hotchkiss chambered in 6.5x50mm Arisaka. This particular piece was captured on Kwajalein Atoll in 1944 by the Recon troop of the 7th Cav.

captured-by-7th-cav-rcn-trp-kwaj-5-feb-1944-hotchkiss-machine-gun-japanese-ria
More (including a lot more photos) in my column at Guns.com

A veritable NFA buffett

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The NFA Review Channel carefully crafted what they call their “Case of Mayhem” that includes select-fire, SBR, SBS, suppressors and more.

nfa mg glock 17c sbs sbr class 3 title ii
Contents, LtoR: MK18 MOD0 with AAC M42K, SEA Bears Bark 20G SBS, Glock17c with JNC select fire sear, and a Dakota Tactical D54R-N with select fire trigger pack and Silencerco Omega 9K, if you are curious.

The case is a Pelican 1750 with customized B&W Kaizen foam.

Stencil on the outside could be Krylon, color chit unknown.

Grip options for an MP5K, on full-auto burst

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Besides your classic HK-made MP5s, Virginia-based Zenith makes a pretty true to form roller-locked MP5K shorty clone (MKE Z-5K) which can be really fun if you have a post-86 dealer sample select-fire version.

The only problem when zipping around at a very spicy 600+rpms when cyclic is keeping on target. Keep in mind we are talking a magdump in just 2-3 seconds.

Above you see Lea, a nurse by trade, who is working on being a fairly decent gunslinger, try out the vertical foregrip hold as well as a magwell hold to see which works best.

“I prefer the magwell hold as opposed to the VFG, I think my arms are shorter and lets me ‘tuck in’ more and get all tight while shooting,” she notes. “That said, the gun definitely heats up so you need gloves if you are going to utilize that grip.”

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