#MachineGuns

This week, at the Eurosatory defense expo in Paris, the French government signed an agreement to procure the FN EVOLYS lightweight machine gun. While the full details of the procurement are yet to be revealed a contact adjustment will see France procure up to 5,000 EVOLYS as well as a quantity of ammunition. This represents the first major contract for EVOLYS.

The belt-fed M240B features a cold hammer-forged, hard-chromed MIL-SPEC barrel designed for extended service life and improved durability. It uses a machined steel receiver with a top-mounted MIL-STD-1913 rail for optics and accessories. The system has a maximum range of approximately 3,725 meters.

Continuing my coverage of machine guns and automatic rifles, I’ll delve into the history of the Fedorov machine rifle. The 1905 Russo-Japanese War displayed the significance of machine guns, highlighting that a higher volume of fire would pave the way for future weapon developments. In 1905-1906, Vladimir Grigorievich Fedorov developed his first self-loading rifle in 7.62x54. Fast forward to 1913, when he created a semi-automatic self-loading rifle and a new 6.5mm cartridge he designed, which featured improved ballistics but could not be mass-produced due to the outbreak of World War I.

If you dug a hole at your local park, what would you expect to find (besides unwanted, but well-deserved attention from your local police)? In the case of workers at Hastings Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, they found something a lot more exciting than a long-lost toy or even a time capsule. They hit a mother lode of vintage firepower.

Lithuania’s Defence Materiel Agency has selected FN’s 7.62x51mm Minimi Mk3 to replace the KSP-58 (and other FN MAG variants) and MG3s currently in service. The same announcement stated that a new order for Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle ammunition had been made.

One of the best parts of the SHOT Show is being able to get hands on with some really interesting firearms. This year was no different with Heckler & Koch, to my surprise, displaying their belt-fed machine guns: the MG4 and MG5. While I don’t think we’ll be seeing these on the commercial market any time soon, it was great to get to handle them in person.

Welcome back to another Friday Night Lights. Last week I posted about some hidden night vision related gems at SHOT Show 2023. TFB in the Dark returns with full auto M16s, night vision and other machine gun night vision shoots during SHOT Show. There were four night shoots last week including the TFB staff shoot. Let’s see what people played with in the dark.

On 3 July, the ranges at Bisley, the UK’s historic home of shooting, hosted a very special shoot. Vickers Machine Guns fired 16,000 rounds of ammunition with a crowd of nearly 1,000 people gathered to watch. It had been 20 years since the last time this many Vickers Guns had fired together. The event was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the disbandment of the Machine Gun Corps – the British Army’s corps of expert machine gunners formed in 1916 which disbanded in July 1922.

Machine guns make just about every red-blooded American happy. However, access and opportunities to this type of equipment are something that is often difficult to attain for most of us. Local gun ranges often have full-auto rentals for the occasional blast of fun but events like the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot allowed people to not only watch many of their favorite machine guns in action but also join in on the show by taking part themselves in the firing line. Sadly, last year’s Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot was the last one to ever take place. However, today I bring you all a little bit of hope. Today on the show I have with me Rapid Fire Rachel and her father Anonymous Bob. The two of them together are gearing up for what should be an event that will scratch your machine gun shoot itch. Today on the TFB Podcast we talk about this, as well as a bit about both Bob and Rachel and what they love most about shooting and firearms.

Ukraine is converting salvaged Russian PKT machine guns for ground use. There appears to be a car repair shop in Kyiv which is taking in captured and salvaged Russian tank machine guns and adapting them for ground use with an ad-hoc stock and pistol grip assembly. Fascinating ingenuity, but not without historical precedence.

When normal people hear the word “smart gun”, the first thing they usually think of is the guns that require either a fingerprint or some sort of wrist band that allows only that user to shoot it (in theory). However, when cinephiles and hoplophiles hear the same term, only one gun comes to mind – the M56 Smart Gun from the 1986 movie Aliens. In a recent YouTube video I came across from user  KetzuKhan, it seems that he’s managed to cobble together his very own working M56 Smart Gun replica.

One of the biggest hurdles for most people when it comes to buying a suppressor (aside from the high upfront cost) is the fact that suppressors or other ATF Form 4 items usually take somewhere between 6-months to over a year to get back approved. For many, this means that their hard spent cash is sitting in a safe somewhere until a piece of paper with a stamp on it comes back to them almost a year later. However, according to Silencer Shop, the long waits seem to be over with the introduction of the ATF’s eForm process which Silencer Shop has seen bring back approved forms in as little as 6 days.

Maxim Defense is a fairly well-known company within the firearms industry and they are probably most well known for their development of suppressors, and more recently, their development of short-barreled rifle ammunition which tumbles upon impact to increase terminal performance. Today, TFB Editor in Chief has Travis Bundy on the show with him right from the SHOT Show 2022 floor to talk a bit about his history with Gemtech, his background in physics, and of course his work at Maxim Defense and what the company is currently working on for 2022.

A while back we sadly reported that the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot would have its final dates set for October of this year. Having never been to one previously, I really wanted to get out there and attempt to get the full experience. As most of you know, the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot was a yearly event that is basically half gun show and half machine gun range day. The event normally brings in tens of thousands of people but this being its final year, those previous attendance numbers were blown out of the water and gun enthusiasts from all across the country gathered to give the annual event a proper sendoff. Today I’ll share with you some of my experiences from the Last Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot and hopefully, this article will serve as a memoir to what has to be one of the most unique firearms events on the planet.

Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report. This ongoing series is all about the rimfire firearm world and its various firearms, ammunition, and technologies. This week we have a very interesting firearm I didn’t even know existed until fellow writer Doug E sent over a few snippets from  The Gun Digest Book of Assault Weapons 5th Edition. In this book, the Williams/Lisk 22 Rimfire is featured and marked as a design that never quite made it into production. The Williams/Lisk 22 Rimfire was basically an American 180 on steroids but in belt-fed form and I don’t know how you can’t have fun with a belt-fed rifle especially when the ammunition is so inexpensive. So today we’ll dive into the Williams/Lisk 22 Rimfire and see what the impetus was for its invention and also why it never quite made it to the production stage of its life and is now all but a forgotten memory of the firearm world.