The World's Assault Rifles

 Gary Paul Johnston: Growing up with firearms, Gary Paul Johnston began his career in law enforcement in 1963, and began writing firearms related articles in 1976. Since then, Johnston has published more than 1,700 articles in dozens of firearms periodicals worldwide, plus authoring one book. Johnston considers himself a serious student of firearms, their history, operation, ammunition and application. Now, Gary has put his experience to work co-authoring a new volume of The World’s Assault Rifles, giving enormous credit to his longtime friend, Thomas B. Nelson, co-author of the original volume in 1967. Gary notes that without Mr. Nelson’s perseverance the new volume of this book could have never been written.

Thomas B. Nelson: Noted arms historian Thomas B. Nelson early on developed an avid interest in small arms and particularly automatic weapons. In 1958 Nelson joined the U.S. Army, serving under Col. G. B. Jarrett in the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, and later in Virginia, assigned to the Technical Intelligence Agency headquarters. After military service Nelson was vice president at Interarmco (later Interarms), later founding Collector’s Armoury, Ltd. In 1963 Nelson published The World’s Submachine Guns, which was reprinted six times and sold in excess of 25,000 copies. His second title, The World’s Assault Rifles, which was co-authored with his colleague Dan Musgrave, was published in 1967, followed by two others.