During the Second World War, Britain’s volunteer militia, the Home Guard, were extensively issued with American .30 calibre Browning M1917 machine guns. These water-cool medium machine guns contributed significant firepower to the Home Guard fighting units. They began to enter service in late 1940 and by November 1942 there were some 6,330 in service. For a force initially (and relatively briefly depending on the location of the unit) armed with makeshift weapons and old rifles, the M1917 Brownings were a formidable weapon.

Photo Of The Day: Some duties in the military may be rather boring, but machine gun training must be on top of the list of how much fun you can have. Here we’re looking at U.S. Marines with the 2d Battalion, 2d Marines, as they conduct a live-fire with the M2 .50 caliber machine gun during Fuji Viper 21.4. The location is the Combined Arms Training Center, Camp Fuji in Japan.

Shootah (a portmanteau of “shoot” and “Utah”) is an annual range day featuring Utah-based gun businesses. Shootah 2021 was hosted at the Garth Killpack shooting range in Springville, Utah. The range sits at the mouth of Hobble Creek Canyon and has recently undergone an expansion.

Yesterday, we took a look at the new Snipex Monomakh anti-material rifle released by this Ukrainian company at the Arms and Security 2021 exhibition recently held in Kyiv, Ukraine. Besides this expansion of their anti-materiel rifle line, the company has also introduced a new belt-fed heavy machine gun chambered in 12.7x108mm. The new HMG is called Laska K-2. It does look similar to the M2 Browning machine gun but many key design elements are completely different. Let’s take a closer look.

Today we have some really good pictures from a unit we haven’t seen on TFB before: the Latvian Sauszemes spēku Mehanizētā kājnieku brigāde. My Latvian language skills are a bit poor, but it should be the “Mechanized Infantry Brigade of the Land Forces” translated to English. As you can see, they are using their standard-issue Heckler & Koch G36C s. The standard-issue light machine gun is the FN Minimi.

Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs for the GOA announced via his Twitter yesterday (June 25th, 2021) that the previous judgment regarding Gun Owners of America v. Garland has been vacated via a three-judge panel. This essentially means that the panel ruled that bump stocks are not machine guns. This is a victory for the 2nd Amendment community even if you’re not a fan of the bump stock. The battle determining the legality of bump stocks has been raging on for quite some time and the GOA has been working to restore these firearms accessories back to legal status as non-machineguns since they were first banned on March 26th of 2019.

Machine gun enthusiasts received a bit of bad news recently with a News Alert from Kenny Sumner – the owner of the Knob Creek Gun Range. This year’s October 2021 Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot will be the last one. The news was discovered via a picture of a printed and signed letter breaking the sad news – the end of the shoot. For years people have been coming to the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot to get the rare opportunity to shoot full-auto and other NFA firearms that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get their hands on.

FN America have been awarded a $92 million contract by the US Army to produce M240 series general purpose machine guns. The firm fixed price contract awarded 8 June calls for an estimated completion date of June 2026. FN confirmed that the contract will cover M240 provisions not just for the US Army but also other Department of Defense programs.

The US Army’s ongoing Next Generation Squad Weapon program has spawned capable designs from three companies. While the NGSW program has not yet selected a winner it was inevitable that the companies would begin to offer their weapons to other nations seeking to upgrade their infantry small arms. It appears that the first may be the NGSW prototypes from SIG Sauer.

In case you missed it,  FN Herstal has a new ultralight machine gun called EVOLYS. The weight for the 5.56mm is just 5.5 kilograms and 6 kg for the 7.62mm. Compared to the FN Minimi and similar competitors, it is up to 30% lighter, and as you know, low weight is one of the most important factors when it comes to moving from A to B. We managed to find some new pictures of FN EVOLYS, perfect for our Photo Of The Day.

True Velocity have made a very interesting announcement about their 6.8 TVCM ammunition which was originally developed for the US Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program. True Velocity have successfully chambered several 7.62x51mm chambered weapon systems in the new 6.8mm TVCM round.

FN Herstal recently announced a new Ultralight Machine Gun called  EVOLYS. But the focus of today’s Photo Of The Day is the FN Minimi (seen above) and the Heckler & Koch HK416.

Introduced in 1990, the FN P90 is a select-fire personal defense weapon (PDW) designed to defeat body armor.  Designed to be a replacement for 9mm chambered firearms, this requirement yielded an entirely new weapons system.  The P90 uses a top-loading 50 round standard capacity magazine and is chambered in 5.7x28mm. To see just how well this weapons system had aged, I headed out to the desert with Jake and Chris from 1911 Syndicate to put the P90 through its paces.

Chambered in 4.6x30mm, the HK MP7 was designed in the ’90s specifically to defeat Kevlar body armor.  With no civilian version available, the MP7 has developed a cult-like following over the years.  As opportunities are few and far between to shoot these, I’ll jump at the chance to shoot an MP7 whenever possible.  Lucky for me, Jake from 1911 Syndicate reached out recently about doing a video on this iconic machine pistol.

The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon or SAW is one of the most iconic crew-served weapons in current use.  Designed in 1976 by FN Herstal, the M249 SAW has seen use in the Gulf War, Somalia, and the current War on Terror.  The design has been modified slightly over the years to include mission-specific variants like the 249 Para, and Mk46.  Thanks to an invite from Jake at 1911 Syndicate I was able to shoot this classic crew-served weapon, but with a new SAW-specific silencer.

After the success of the Mark23 special, Jake from 1911 Syndicate asked if I would help him cover the HK G36C.  Unknown to me, Jake had linked up with SK Arms who was bringing up not one, but two G36s.  Happy to help wherever I was needed, I packed up the truck and headed out to the desert once again.

We visit Freundeskreis Panzerlehrbrigade 9 in Germany in our Photo Of The Day. Above you can spot a Rheinmetall MG 3 machine gun and a Heckler & Koch G36 rifle. While a machine gun may be noisy, it’s nothing compared to the 30 mm automatic cannon on the Puma IFV below.

For a few weeks, the Belgian company FN Herstal have been promoting an event called: “A New Chapter Begins“. As you know, the company already provides an extensive range of firearms for use in the ground role, or mounted on vehicles, ships and aircraft from 5.56mm cal to .50 cal machine guns.

Photo Of The Day: Above you can see some left-handed shooting with the UKM 2020 machine gun. As Poland changed teams and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1999, the challenge to adapt their firearms to common NATO ammunition arose. The PKM machine gun was already being produced in Poland under licence, but it needed a serious redesign to be able to accept the new ammunition (7.62x51mm NATO) as well as the links and belt that hold them.

Underground Arms Watch returns with a brief glance at recently seized craft-produced arms by law enforcement around the globe.

If you’re a firearms enthusiast (as it’s likely that most people reading TFB are), you probably have a list of guns you want. Unless you’re one of the fortunate few to have an arsenal rivaling Heckler and Koch‘s Gray Room, the Rock Island Arsenal Museum, the NRA’s Whittington Center, or this guy that Nick met at a match several years ago, budget and availability are often limiting factors for new gun purchases. Of course, some guns are harder to get than others. Manufacturing runs and timeframes, frustrating legislation, importation challenges, the ravages of time, and a host of other factors can have a significant effect on the availability, accessibility, and price of various guns. The hardest pieces to procure are sometimes referred to as “unobtanium guns”, with the term being a sort of colloquial reference to these firearms’ difficulty (or sometimes impossibility) for us to acquire. Today we’ll explore a handful of the unobtanium weapons on my personal wish list, by no means comprehensive and in no particular order. I’m pretty sure that more than a few of you will find some commonality between my list and yours.

In this episode of TFBTV, James Reeves gets to take the SIG LMG-68 for a test drive at SIG Academy in New Hampshire. We talk to members of the design team about the LMG-68’s development, history, production, and capabilities. As previously reported on The Firearm Blog by Matt Moss:

It has been a while since we had news from the US Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapons program, the last updates we got were on the final prototype and ammunition deliveries being made for the next stage of the Army’s evaluations. Now some interesting news regarding General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems’ bullpup entry the RM277-R and RM227-AR. A new company, LoneStar Future Weapons will be taking the lead on the post-development phase of the weapon.

Between the dates of August 25th, 1921 and September 2nd, 1921, a fierce battle between striking American coal miners and the combined forces of the West Virginia State Police, Logan County Sherrif’s Department, and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency would take place. Being one of the largest domestic battles to take place during the 20th century, the Battle at Blair Mountain would have long-lasting repercussions for both the coal industry as well as the state of labor unions within the United States and is also a strong demonstration of how an armed populace can hold their own against an organized and well-armed force.

Hello and welcome back to another edition of  The Rimfire Report! This ongoing series is all about rimfire firearms, ammunition, practices, and trends. This week we’ll be taking a look at a piece of rimfire belt-fed goodness in the form of a rimfire Ma Deuce or M2. No matter how you take it, belt-fed guns are just somehow more fun. I don’t know if it is just the mechanical complexity behind them or the whole operation of the firearm but I know that anytime I get a chance to shoot a belt-fed, I’ll immediately take it.

Buckle up, buckaroos. We’ve got some dense legalese to get through today. On March 25, 2021, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, reversed and remanded a lower court decision that denied a preliminary injunction against the ATF’s enforcement of the bump stock ban. I know that many of you are thinking the same thing that I had thought. Wait, what? I thought the whole bump stock ban thing was already over and done? A done deal, set in stone, lost and never to return. But it appears this is not the case, so without any further ado, let’s get into the meat of the matter.

For military history buffs, there’s nothing better than a good book. For those interested in firearms history and specifically the use of machine guns during the First World War, there’s some good news. The Vickers MG Collection & Research Association, a not for profit research collection in the UK, has announced the reprinting of a long-lost book about the British Army’s use of the Vickers machine gun during the Great War.

It seems that everyone’s most favorite and benevolent government agency has moved on from pestering solvent trap and Form 1 parts kit manufacturers and upgraded to harassing novelty business card makers. For those that don’t know, AutoKeyCard is or was, a company that simply made and sold metal business cards that featured an outline of the fabled Lightning Link.

Spotted a few days ago on Twitter via user @Progrockfarmer, we saw an entire arsenal being turned in by a Croatian citizen. As you can see from the picture above, the man had quite the armory at his disposal and it is far more than just a handful of rifles and a boatload of ammo. This man’s personal weapons cache also featured artillery rounds, hand grenades, belt-fed machine guns, and much more.

Photo Of The Day and yet another great photo by Hille James Combat Photographer. Today we’re looking at a photo he named “Out In The Cold“. We have a soldier in Multicam and an M2HB .50 Cal equipped with a Leupold scope and lots of other goodies. Just look at the gigantic flash hider.