A captured IRA "Zip Gun" goes under Jonathan Ferguson's eye
The latest What Is This Weapon? looks at a crude .22 from the Troubles, and viewers are arguing over three small holes in its barrel.
Royal Armouries
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 161,751 views a day, 12 times a normal first day on this channel (13,841).
The IRA's Homemade .22 "Zip Gun" with firearms expert Jonathan Ferguson
Not every object in the national collection was made by a gunsmith. PR.3824 is a homemade .22, a craft-produced firearm linked to the Provisional IRA and captured by British forces. In the newest episode of What Is This Weapon?, Jonathan Ferguson, the Royal Armouries' Keeper of Firearms and Artillery, takes it apart piece by piece.
Posted on Wednesday, it passed 116,000 views within 13 hours. A new video here usually ends its first day at around 14,000.
The chapters work through the object almost like an inspection: what a "zip gun" is, the inside of the barrel, the firing mechanism, how it was fired and how well it worked. From there the episode widens to the dangers of homemade guns, a test of a zip gun, why the IRA had one and the legacy of the Troubles. The description also corrects the record on one point: a source page shows this very object captioned as Loyalist in origin, and the museum says that caption is wrong.
The most discussed detail in the comments is small. Three holes near the front of the gun have viewers proposing explanations, from a slot for a pin that worked as a crude safety to vents that let air escape as the bolt moves forward. Others compare it to the Liberator, the single-shot pistol of the Second World War. A long thread of older viewers recalls zip guns from school metalwork classes and childhood.
The Spitfire Short Ferguson made the week before had already gone past 300,000 views. This is his more serious side, and the audience is following him there too.
Published on Trari
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- Channel
- Royal Armouries
- Subscribers
- 436,000 ▲ 1,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 941,247
- Channel views, pace per day
- 73,721 (on a normal day: 101,444)
- Video published
- October 7, 2026
- Video views so far
- 116,388 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 161,751
The numbers
Here is how the episode's first hours compare with the channel's usual start, along with the channel's week.
💡 Test your knowledge
The FP-45 Liberator, the cheap single-shot pistol of the Second World War that viewers compare with the zip gun, was mass-produced by a division of which carmaker?
GM's Guide Lamp division made the Liberator in 1942, turning out roughly a million of them in a few months.
