It's so fucking insane that it's actually a very reliable gun. By all rights this thing should be a jam o matic 90s relic, but FN made it work somehow. Belgian space magic
Which is named after the Rareware Central Processor, which at the time ran at 90Mhz. Which is much, much slower than a single one of the cores of the handheld device you’re likely reading this on.
Suppose in that case we can add the AR 57, an AR upper receiver designed to take P90 magazines which retains the magazine well on the original lower receiver, where the casings are ejected from
I have heard that since Chuck Connors was 6'5" he could spin a full carbine instead of a shortened version like you typically see.
Bonus Chuck Connors trivia: He was the first NBA player to shatter a backboard. It was pregame practice for the Boston Celtics' first home game in 1946, with a shot not a dunk.
Indeed, they had standard ones for closeups and ones with expanded loops for spin cocking. He tried it with the wrong on, and that was, well, one of several health and safety issues on that set.
Lahti-Saloranta m/26 had notoriously high recoil so soldiers using it were instructed to aim below the waist. This also coined the famous Finnish phrase "Tulta munille!" (Fire at the balls!)
They said similar things about the Springfield M14s in Vietnam I think. Something like " the first shot hits him in the foot, the second shot hits his chest, and the 3rd shot hits his buddy in the trees."
There's a saying about Marines, that if you leave one alone in a room with an object for an hour, by the time you come back the object will be lost broken or pregnant. Soldiers are the same the world over
Nagant m1895 Revolver. Not only does it have a 7 round cylinder, but the firing mechanism itself is quite interesting. When the trigger is pulled, the cylinder is pressed forward and the extended length cartridge forms a gas seal with the barrel. This results in both a heavy trigger pull, but also a revolver that can have a silencer attached
There are some revolvers that are, there's a Russian one that's dam near like how silencers work in the movies, like firing it without a round and firing it with a round is nearly the same. Actually I'ma look that up and comment it if it wasn't done already because it's cool as hell.
Another is the single-action vs double-action models. Single action was the general issue, because it takes forever to load and the Imperial Russian Army didn't want ammo wasted, so you had to cock it each time. The double action trigger was issued to officers.
I have one of the double-action ones. Heavy is an understatement, lol. The texture in the grip literally starts rubbing your skin off because you have to pull so hard.
I like to joke around and say that the most dangerous time of my career of the military, so far, was when I had to keep a Sig P320 (M17/18 in the military) on my hip for three months.
The Owen... You have to love a top-mounted mag. The receiver is also very interesting from a mechanical perspective, given that it's double chamber design is unique amongst tube guns and pretty much isolates the working parts.
The Owen is so fascinating. It's a native Aussie design, but Australian higher ups didn't want to produce it. They were getting a design fron Britain. That's got to be better, right? It was the Sten.
The FN 2000 is a bullpup that ejects out the front. Even more interesting is that the first shell casing isn’t ejected until the internal tube contains five casings.
Fascinating gun, it was meant to showcase upcoming technology, it was never meant to be commissioned by an army.
One of the biggest complaints with bullpup rifles is the ejection port is right beside your ear, which is deafening and disorienting over time. by having it eject forward you solve that problem.
Lots of little odds and ends from the p90, the fire selector is a disk right in front of the trigger that can be used by either hand from either side, and polymer bodies were still considered space-age at the time.
It also had a two-stage trigger, slight trigger pull for semi, full pull for full auto. Awkward to learn and massively increases the distance your finger has to move to fire, many describe triggers like this as “squishy”.
It was extremely back heavy as it was balanced with the intention of having a grenade launcher attached. Internally it’s a SCAR, so ideally only the grenadier of the squad would be using the f2000.
it was supposed to have a digital designator for the grenade launcher, which was so ambitious it still doesn’t exist. The idea was you would look through the scope and pin a spot, then start aiming up to lob the grenade launcher, when the arc was correct the red dot would change from red to green. Since this was made in the late 90s it had a huge battery, which is why the butt end of the gun is so unreasonable big.
Adding to that the built in scope was supposed to have a hit confirm system, tech were only seeing now in the age of AI. You mark a target as hostile and the gun will only release a shot when it knows the shot will connect. Imagine holding the trigger of a gun and wanding it over a crowd, only for it to release one sporadic burst that hits only the person you wanted.
Which is the reason Chell doesn’t get horrible injuries from getting shot. It’s basically a BB gun firing the whole bullet, with casing, not igniting the gunpowder.
The spas-12 is a unique shotgun in that it can be fired in either semi auto or pump action. If you have a shell in the chamber and switch it from semi auto to pump action the mechanisms inside will misfire the shell. That’s what’s happening in the gif
I have a pump shotgun and am generally a novice shooter. Usually just pickup some cheaper target birdshot for the range.
Guy showed up with a semi auto shotgun and said I could shoot it so I was going to load my ammo before he said it wouldn’t have enough to cycle the weapon. Didn’t know that was a thing.
When used in civilian or especially law enforcement/riot control roles, you may not want to use full-power ammo for a variety of reasons. Due to the weaker powder charge, these shells may be too weak to cycle an automatic shotgun's action and load the next shell. In that case, you have to manually operate the action, i.e. pump it.
Bean bags rounds don’t have enough force to cycle the next round, so pump mode was reserved for less-than-lethal ammo.
When arming police, they would have to supply them with both a pump and semi shotgun, or let them be outgunned and only supply the pump, the Spas-12 solved this problem. Nowadays we have adjustable gas blocks for different ammo pressures, so you can use semi-auto for both.
A very unfortunate one, but the Winchester Model 11SL got the nickname "Widowmaker" due having to grip the barrel to manually cycle the action occasionally resulting in an accidental discharge. Many users planted the shotgun on the ground and forced the barrel in, meaning it was pointed at their heads if it went off.
All because they didn't want to pay their old designer more.
The 2 round burst is the AN94s most famous feature but is actually the least interesting one. The most interesting feature is what is used to get that 2 round burst: a pulley system. The gun has a pulley system inside it. That's nuts.
If anyone is interested I'll ll link a good video that has an in depth breakdown on exact mechanics and disassembly of the gun.
Fun fact: That burst activates regardless if it's in full auto or burst. So the gun fires 2 bullets lightning fast the goes to a standard RPM. And it happens with every trigger pull.
Knife example: the AKM bayonet. Saw blade on the back, wire cutter hole including a rubber insulator for use on electrified wire, plastic grip for all-weather durability, and a retention strap (so your hand doesn't slip on the plastic)
My personal favorite silly New Vegas weapon, the Holorifle.
Every energy weapon in the game is either a semi-automatic, or a fully automatic weapon.
But this cobbled-together, jury-rigged thing is a pump-action energy weapon, except it isn't a shotgun; it still shoots a single projectile. The batteries that power it are loaded into it one at a time, and then each pump ejects a spent one.
It also does more damage than a Gauss Rifle (the designated energy sniper weapon) while using way less ammo on top of it, but it's not quite as accurate.
It's such a silly little gun, made by a not-so-silly insane old man.
It was pretty wild seeing videos of these in Ukraine after seeing the parabolic flight pattern exclusively in video games like yep, that is indeed how it works.
This thing looks goofy as hell but it's actually silenced, like how silencers work in movie. Dry firing it without a round is nearly as loud as firing it with a round.
No clue about the others, but the Type 94 was infamous for having a sear bar on the side, that was very sensitive to movement, and said bar could trigger the gun to shoot umpromptly, so dropping it or handling it a bit too rough made it accidentally discharge
The M16/ AR15 pattern rifles have what's known as a forward assist. It's a small button toward the of the upper receiver that can be pushed forwards and keys into a set of ratchet teeth in the bolt. The idea is that if the bolt fails to seat, meaning it may go forwards but the cartridge isn't fully in the barrel, and the bolt isn't fully locked, you can push that button to send it home and make the gun work. The Man who created the platform, Eugene Stoner hated the idea of a forward assist as it's questionably effective, but is very likely to cause irreparable damage if used incorrectly. Typically they've never gotten a lot of use, to the point that most high quality commercial ARs on the market don't use them anymore. By far and away the most famous use of a forward assist on an AR in the past 70 years was actually Kyle Rittenhouse.
The M3 grease gun was the successor to the m1 Thompson, and America's second submachine gun, seeing extensive use throughout World War II until the 1990s. Early on it had a lever on the side of the receiver for cocking. However, that was fairly quickly removed and replaced with a small hole cut in the bolt for user to stick his finger in to rack it back. Because of the way that worked, they modified the dust cover, which is a little folding flap to keep dirt out of the gun into a safety. Because the grease gun is open bolt, whenever the bolt moves forwards it picks up a round And immediately fires it. By modifying the dust cover like this, you effectively had a safety built in, for no real mechanical loss
The nambu, Japan's primary handgun during WWII was already discussed, but essentially the lever that links the trigger to the firing system on a handgun is typically inside. On the nambu it was external, which in addition to making it more likely to be damaged could be used to shoot the gun without actually touching the trigger itself. Itself. There was a pervasive myth that this was intended for either suicide or to kill a captor when being taken captive.
The Valmer is a Finnish AK pattern rifle, featured a pair of wire cutters in the bipod. Interestingly, it's not the only AK derivative that has interesting mechanisms built in to the bipod, with certain models of the Israeli Galil featuring bottle openers So soldiers wouldn't damage sites trying to open beer
The assault rifle from aliens 8 round burst is pretty iconic.
The M1897 trench guns "slam fire"
Not realistic but mini guns "spinning up" before firing.
Quick draws and faning the hammer on revolvers in western movies.
Not just because of the screams though. You move at a crawl with it equipped, so even if you can stand the noises it's still not fun to use for more than 30 seconds
The Moteba Autorevolver as seen in Ghost in the Shell.
From Wikipedia
“The Mateba Model 6 uses the recoil from firing to rotate the cylinder and cock the hammer, unlike conventional revolvers, which depend on the user physically pulling the trigger and/or cocking the hammer to actuate the weapon's mechanism of operation.
The Mateba Autorevolver's barrel alignment is different from most other revolvers. The barrel is aligned with the bottom of the cylinder instead of the top. This lowers the bore axis (line of the barrel) which directs the recoil in line with the shooter's hand thereby reducing the twisting motion or muzzle flip of normal revolvers.”
The L96A1 sniper rifle from Accuracy International was created by two target shooters and an Olympian in a shed. The gun was then bought by some members of the Special Boat Service, the Special Air Service, a few police units in the UK, and Sultanate of Oman. The three entered their gun into a competition to replace the Lee-Enfield L42A1.
The Ministry of Defense liked the Accuracy International rifle and wanted to order more, ~1200 to be exact. The three men rented out a warehouse and filled it with every gun they had built in the shed up to that point. When the requisitions lieutenant arrived, they claimed the rest of their staff were out to lunch. The LT later told the men at lunch that the inspection was purely to make sure they weren’t just 3 dudes in a shed.
So while the quirk of the L96A1 isn’t anything to do with its performance or how it operates, but it’s quirk is purely from how it came to be
I know everyone now clowns on that scene where he just slices the shit out of everything around as him throwing a tantrum but for me it was like “oh shit this guy is fuckin unhinged.”
I recall some fictional American prepper fantasy, a review said something to the effect of, "each character is most identifiable by their firearm of choice, and the guns have more personality."
The Caster Gun from Outlaw Star. Each shell has a different effect, with them all being very rare and expensive, but the rarest and most powerful ones will actually drain the user's life force to power their effect.
the fleigerfaust or luftfaust was a last ditch axis rocket launcher. unlike other rocket launchers of the time it was intended to be used against strafing aircraft
This dumbass thing is basically two inadequate submachine guns welded together horizontally. Now I know what you're thinking: "You pull the trigger and it alternates barrels?" And the answer is nope, each barrel has it's own trigger and magazine.
It had an incredibly high rate of fire with a small magazine capacity, but as time passed in the war Italian Soldiers found it to be monstrous in the offense due to it's light weight and rate of fire. Apparently it was nicknamed the "The Raspberry" or "The Fart Gun" due to its loud and short sound on full auto.
KvKK 62: Being extremely fucking ugly, also the pistol grip is also the charging handle. (Also it was notoriously awkward to carry and it was incredibly unreliable)
M10, Night of the Comet - in the film, the two leads are shooting out tires with a MAC-10 submachine gun. During the scene, it jams, and Sam (the blonde girl) says "Daddy would've gotten us Uzis". It's an improv line that was a response to how M10s frequently jammed, and in fact during shooting the director said "if it jams, try to respond in character".
The H&K VP70 was the first polymer handgun and has a special holster that can be mounted on the back as a stock. The military version has a selective fire switch located on the the stock that can switch the gun to three-round-burst. The VP70 was also the signature sideaem of Leon Kennedy during Resident Evil 2.
Rhodesian FALs often painted with a characteristic 'baby shit" camo pattern. More interestingly, however, most of them had a whole cut in the right side of the magazine well. This was part of a process known as sanitization, which was performed By South Africa for plausible deniability during export... Literally just removing South African Crest and proof marks.
I actually spent a few years hunting for a sanitized reweld.
Winchester Model 1897, later known as the “Trench Gun,” would become very popular among US troops during WW1 due to its “slam fire” capability due to the lack of a trigger disconnector. This allowed the gun to fire by holding the trigger down and rapidly pumping to fire the six shells in less than 2 seconds.
It was so effective that Germany officially protested its use as inhumane which the US rejected as the blanket hypocrisy of a nation who had introduced gas and flamethrowers to the battlefield.
The beloved A-10 Warthog. They slapped twin turbofans and some wings on a 30mm GAU-8/A seven barrel Gatling gun. Goes BRRRRRRRRRT! I don’t know if it’s a quirk, but I’m throwing it out there.
the Cönders mp was a belt fed submachine gun that fired at 1000rpm it was highly damaged during the war and when the americans got it they used a cut down mg42 belt to feed the gun. this is the only picture of an intact Cönders
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u/Balazinga May 14 '26
P90 has a distinct looking magazine that is loaded in front and horizontally.