Ian McCollum – Forgotten Weapons in Romania [EN]

Ian McCollum from the @ForgottenWeapons youtube channel giving a small speech at the ANCA (Romanian National Association of Gun Collectors) at the Bucharest Military Museum

Home

https://www.anca.com.ro/

Accepted to to come in Romania to to visit us to visit the private collection kir we go to we was to the to the factory factory and for finish sh here at National military museum King card the first he our invited is the honor guest and uh we ask him to to introduce

Himself and uh if that’s possible to ask to our questions so Mr y m thank you very much I don’t know about accepting the invitation it was an honor to be invited it’s fantastic to be able to visit countries outside of the United stat states countries that have a

Fascinating Small Arms history that at least for in my home people just aren’t familiar with and it’s basically been my mission to find small arms and Small Arms history that we’re not widely familiar with and record it make it publicly accessible to people and to the

Best that I can preserve it for future generations to even just in discussions on the internet um for aren’t quite what they used to be but they still exist and they’re still an incredibly valuable place for people to share their specific interests so someone in my position I

Publish a lot of videos about Firearms history enough that I don’t have the time to be doing the really indepth research on every single gun that I’m filming and Publishing I’m Reliant upon individual collectors and Museum staff and Factory uh workers Factory uh uh managers to document the details of

Specific guns and if it weren’t for all of those people the information wouldn’t exist for me to publish for everyone to see so I suppose that makes the collector the second leg of this Trifecta factories are also important although what I’ve found in my experience is that generally factories

Know almost nothing about their old production it’s very valuable to talk to factory employees about guns that are recent for current production um when we went to UMC in Kier we had the chance to take a look at the Model 95 Romanian service pistols and the lp7 made in very

Small quantities um and those are guns where they’re too new to have anything published on the Internet or too new to have anything published in paper there can be some information on the internet but the factory staff because they’re still reasonably current in production the factory staff are very knowledgeable

About them but you get to guns like this you can go to sty and nobody in sty know anything about these whatsoever so this trip really encompassed all three of these important aspects and you the private collectors are a huge part of preserving that history so I know Romanian Firearms law is particularly

Difficult to work with even within the EU itself which is also difficult compared to the United States but it’s fantastic to see a vibrant organization like this dedicated to Firearms collecting even in a place where that is made particularly difficult so I would encourage you to keep it up don’t lose

Heart just because the laws are difficult there’s always the opportunity to improve the laws uh slowly and over time uh but also to take advantage of the the history that you have access here to because no one is going to be as passionate and interested about it as you are because it’s your

History please thank you all very much please tell us [Applause] please give us a slight chronological uh intro info about your career in this domain you please yeah so I’ve been interested in firearms and shooting both uh both the history and the practical application since I was in high school

Uh and I I kind of am interested in this the unusual and the esoteric elements of anything any particular subject so when I became interested in Firearms I fairly quickly got bored with the regular standard Comm you know the thing that everybody else has that everybody knows

About and I was much more drawn to the weird the experimental the Prototype that you might say forgotten weapons so I started um I started forgotten weapons.com as just a text blog um I had some friends who had access to uh photographs mostly from the Adine Proving Grounds where they would

Every time they brought in a gun to do military testing they would take detailed pictures of it all different sides and disassembled and they’re really good reference photographs and they’re not really available online so he had a bunch of those um we had access to some testing reports and I took that

Information I thought it’d be really cool to publish this somewhere where other people can find it and that’s what forgotten weapons was fairly quickly I got I was writing articles and realized it’s very difficult to write a text article describing the action of a firearm even something like this read

Technical description is hard very hard and when you get to really unusual actions and semi-automatic actions where there’s more going on it gets really difficult the much easier way to describe that information is on a video where you can have one there and take it apart and show what all the different

Pieces are doing so I started filming videos uh and that over time became the most popular element of the website so I started I I started a YouTube channel to go along with the website in 2011 and at that point it was YouTube because I couldn’t afford to post all this video

Content on my own website and found YouTube which is this place where like suckers they host it for you and it was all free so I started putting video there and it became more popular over time um I started doing more video and less text writing just because it was an

Easier way for me to convey all the information that I was trying to get across um popularity of the YouTube channel really took off around 2015 or 2016 when I had the opportunity to start working with a couple of auction companies which was a very it was a great symbiotic relationship because

They would bring the Rock Island Auction Company had 5 to 10,000 guns in their facility at any given time and they would cycle them through auctions so I could go there spend a week and pick 25 guns out of the 10,000 available and they were selling interesting guns rare

Guns prototypes all sorts of cool stuff so that that gave me the opportunity to get my hands on a lot of um really interesting examples to film and it just kind of continued from there to the point that now um I still write a short description with each video but I’m not

Really doing full length text articles anymore it’s it’s pretty much entirely a video Channel at this point some people have have asked you know how long it can go before I run out of guns and the answer is I will die before I out of guns there’s so like people would think

About the martini Henry oh that’s one video no there’s one martini Henry but then there’s four different British variations of it and then the stuff that they experimented with turning it into a box magazine fed or you know cartridge holder on the side and then there’s the other countries that also adopted

Different versions of Martini it’s it’s fractal guns at this point but you must know that Mr yum not only vid make but have some some publish books yes yes he’s not he’s not a video man only no no I have three books published at this point um and uh

I’m a partner in a publishing company called headstamp publishing that’s hoping to continue a lot of you hopefully are familiar with collector grade Publications um sadly Blake Stevens who essentially was collector grade Publications he passed away several years ago um head stamp we’re hoping to continue the legacy of high quality and

Also very well photographed Firearms reference books it’s because the what you say the the the books are most important part of your absolutely I have I have a lot of guns in my own collection but I also have a lot of books in my library and if I could only

Have one I wouldn’t the books are much more important than the guns are for what I do it’s one thing to have a gun and look at it but that will not tell you where it came from or how it was I might tell you where it came from but I

Won’t tell you so much about how it was used or how it was developed um the the research that authors put in is invaluable yes I know was pretty challenging for your video career to say because you actually had people sent sending weapons to for your use yes how was the world process

Actually functioning um you mean specifically during the pandemic or just in general yeah because it’s for us it’s pretty hard to understand you can send the weap by May yeses impossible for us all right so I have I have a federal I have a federal firearms license in the United States that is

Essentially the same license that a gun shot would have so in the United States it’s generally very easy to transfer a firearm from one person to another within one state but if you’re mailing a gun between states it has to go to a licensed dealer well I am a licensed

Dealer I don’t actually run gun shop but I have that same sort of license so for me there’s no issue to it you can put any private individual can put a gun in the mail send it to me U and then I can return it either to a dealer in their

State or directly to them depending on some details but but yeah during the pandemic actually the pandemic worked it was scheduled perfectly for me we had just finished photographing a book on Chinese pistols about three weeks before the whole world shut down and I had all the pictures at my

Disposal and I already had the research material and I was able to spend like the first six months of the pandemic at home building a book on Chinese pistols what’s uh sound childish but do you have a favorite Romanian firearm yeah that’s what’s what’s your pistol you would buy

Now that you come back to us based on your triip so I mean this is is going to sound really goofy I suspect but I’m I’m looking for a model 74 car Poops uh because while it’s very common place here we imported some of them from East Germany but not very many it’s a little bit different than all of the other ones out there and honestly to me the one of the things that makes a particular firearm really interesting is

Understanding its history and its story where it came from and what it was used for and so there are a lot of other uh similar pistols copies of the Walter PP but having come here having seen the guns in fact when I first arrived at the Bucharest airport I happen to notice one

Of the Customs agents was carrying like that looks like pa63 but the grip’s a little different and then we go to a private collection we take a look at the the 74 and then the 95 and the 95 gas version and understanding why it was developed and what went into it

That makes the gun very interesting to me and it’s not that expensive for sure it’s important so what I to say maybe someone of you have question yeah so my question would be this um what would you think is the most important or some of the most important

Aspects for growing a community such as this one where you have people passionate about PS trying to share their let’s say unique hobby with the rest of society at large um that’s a very good question I think it’s important to present firearms in a way that they aren’t threatening to

People a lot of people are who aren’t familiar with Firearms who don’t have you know who aren’t around them all the time are frightened by just the nature of of the weapon and I think presenting their story and their context is really helpful in normalizing these things like

This is of no danger to anybody and understanding where it came from and its part in Romania’s history I think that can do a lot to get people interested and to get them to uh to actually open their mind to consider maybe this is something that’s that’s valuable and

Interesting and should be preserved um there’s also I see the same thing happen mechanically I have I’ll see comments on my some of my videos from people who love mechanical things they Tinker with cars they Tinker with model trains or similar things but they’ve never been around guns and they have

This natural feeling that guns are bad and we shouldn’t have guns and then they’ll start to watch some videos on some particularly mechanically unusual firearms and they’ll realize oh wow that’s the same sort of thing and that’s fascinating here’s a machine that will throw a projectile at thousands of

Meters per second using nothing but the self-contained cartridge like it’s a fascinating mechanical device and frankly it’s deeply ingrained in the development of all Industries in fact to it’s it’s a machine it’s used the same principle of the first principle of thermodynamic change the the heat in the

In the the power so the the problem is not the question is very very good but we try on our association and you know it for sure uh we try to relate our passion the guns the any weapons to the culture to the culture and history

Because a gun can fire shoot by himself no we let here 100 year and stay on till someone come to pull the trigger with all the guys like but but is important to relate to relate our patient to culture to history of our country uh for this reason I’m very happy that Military

Museum King 1 the 1 give us a home a home where we can be here uh and uh I hope the the next uh the this this uh this day is is nam a day at the Museum so it’s Mar on our schedule and we hope

This year with the help of uh uh of uh all the the stuff in the museum to make the second edition of a collection with guns from particular collection it was uh I don’t remember now 10 years ago Mr do you remember when they make 10 years

Long long long in in another galaxy yes uh in another galaxy we made the we made the first uh first Expo U it it okay the law let us a little band of course because here is a military unit so in a military unit uh we can come with the

Guns but now the law led us to to come with our guns to show to the peoples to show to uh even the childrens who come to the military museum to to see all this so uh so I I hope I hope it’s up to you it’s

Up to me we are here yes perfect for at least a century yes for Century we’ll we’ll see I will say something I’m sorry U culture as Ian has uh underlined a lot culture is very important to a people to a nation it’s the lack of culture that costs you a lot

It will cost you a lot I will give you a sad story hean found about it we found about it going to UMC kuir they are great professionals one day in 2006 as early as 2006 somebody has told me 3,000 300,000 different items came into the factory to

Be destroyed and that guy who’s a member of our association told us among them there were British m made British firearms from the independence world so it is these or the P buies which so among 300 300,000 there were maxims there were many but probably they destroyed the

100,000 remaining of these this cost us probably half of the uh necessary new assault rifle because a napis A nepolis or kyber hry Martini is $800 high high luxury produced item like this maybe 2,000 if if we at a good auction with a good buyers who even if it’s a

Thousand it’s a lot more than the money you get I bought har M from France it was a Romanian capture by bulgarians 1916 then sold in France then came to bugaria again Romania it cost 1,7 1700 plus the the transport yes so this is the price for the an in good

Condition I think here has a video actually about collecting Firearms as an investment if I remember at least one is dedicated to collecting Firearms as investment I don’t recommend the investment strategy of buying getting the government to destroy all the others in Australia yeah what neither our

Wives yes because it’s a problem when the a collector pass away the problem is say to his wife you you can can sell these guns but the price told to the wife it’s much lower than yes any question yes I’ve always wondered about the let’s say behind the scenes part of your work

And U to my imagination sometimes you’re in the position of going to a place and being presented with some firearms that maybe you want to film maybe not but maybe it’s the first time you see that kind of action or system or model or anything and how do you manage

To deliver a quality video with quality information with such maybe short notice for like research and reading and stuff usually I go to a place already knowing what guns I’m going to film okay and I’ll I’ve done the research beforehand now there are times uh this trip in particular I

Didn’t know what we would find at kuir that I’d be able to film and often in a situation like that I’ll rely on the expertise of people who are around who have detailed information on those yes speaking about kuir it was very interesting everybody helped us help

Help him with the info and you are very it’s it’s a very important SC that Mr mum he wrote on his book all the info read once I understood and then he speak about you cannot do this job if you have haven’t a good memory and the ability to

Speech about the guns probably come in times all this all this uh ability no yeah if I have one skill that’s particularly helpful in in doing what I do it’s being able to listen to the whole story take some notes and then synthesize that into a coherent presentation yes first in this case

Particular case in Romania we stay with him and Yan said if I said something wrong or I forget stop me and we we we we repeat the the the text the scene and the the filming the the movie so normally for a museum and today is a perfect example I have every intention

Of coming back to film here as long as they’ll have me today I have the opportunity to look at the Museum and see what what guns are here that I can film so when I come back instead of oh we have a collection it’s very hard to say what guns do you have

Well we have 12,000 yeah but if I can look at them on a first visit I can make some notes of I definitely want to cover this this this this this and make notes before a return trip so they will return I hope so excellent for just seeing him doing his videos

Filming we basically interacted him very few times like he didn’t say chaes well he didn’t say Meir well but his speech was very fluent for a 20 minutes video all he takes with all the doubles on everything if he has all the info in his head written down it’s 25 minutes he’s very Productive what yes one question please from your expertise how how hard is it or is it even possible for us Romanians uh collectors to buy guns from the United States and ship them back here to Romania the problem the problem is going to be Romanian import law exporting a

Gun from the United States is generally quite easy so if it’s a gun you can own here and you can get a permit to own it and a permit to import it if I very difficult I found companies in the US that are specialized in exporting Firearms to private

Individuals outside the US you pay them $250 $300 they do the paperwork if you have all the paperwork here in Romania they will buy the gun for you make the paperwork and then you just pay for the transport and so it’s it’s not hard I I don’t remember from just just

Look us firearm exports and you’re going to find companies who do exactly that it’s not it’s not just cost money funny thing is I myself by uh Romanian rifle used by the Romanian Army in the second world war which funny enough cannot be found in Romania yes

But all found in United States right because United you should have said we we want to buy yeah um one of the I think it’s Simpson there there’s at least one company that like specializes in demilitarizing arakas and shipping them back to Japan because the United States basically took every arisaka in

Japan how about4 yeah they’re around seen a lot forums see more features on American forums thanan with the exception of particularly unusual patterns and markings they’re not that expensive either speaking about the visit visit of Mr y here we have a guided tour in the museum so