C. J. Chivers On The AK-47, AR-15 And Terrorism
BY Herschel Smith
8 years, 4 months ago
C. J. Chivers writing for The New York Times has an extensive piece entitled Tools of Modern Terror: How the AK-47 and AR-15 Evolved into Rifles of Choice for Mass Killers. I recommend that you read it.
Chivers has the usual (for him) admiration for the AK-47 as a weapon that never fails. “The Kalashnikov line was shorter and lighter than traditional rifles. It was inexpensive to manufacture, built for durability and reliable to an extraordinary degree. With few moving parts, and a design that made its disassembly and reassembly almost intuitive, its basics could be mastered by all manner of combatants — from traditionally instructed conscripts to almost wholly untrained guerrillas — in very little time.”
But fail it does. I blogged on OIF and OEF long enough and had enough friends and acquaintances who had done combat tours in Iraq or Afghanistan that I heard some horror stories about AK-47s that wouldn’t fire more than a round or two and have a FTF / FTE, and that a shooter couldn’t hit the “broad side of a barn” with it. I’ve shot one, as have you, and those complaints may be exaggerated, but they are about as exaggerated as the complaints against the AR-15.
Chivers focuses some of his time on the initial failure of the Stoner weapon system in Vietnam, while not spending much time on the Molly-Chrome or Stainless Steel barrels found today in AR-15s. With upgraded buffer springs, enhanced extractor springs, etc., that make the M4/AR-15 weapons so reliable today, we really do have the professional soldier’s weapon that can be used by the masses, or in other words, the tight tolerances, accuracy and recoil-along-the-axis design (as opposed to coupling around the shooter’s hand with the angled buttstock) that makes it such an admirable carbine for shooters of any skill. We’ve had virtually every imaginable torture test, and the high end AR-15s outperform not only AKs but the Garand and Garand variants (M-14). My Rock River Arms AR-15 could be beaten with a sledge hammer, soaked in paint, and dropped in sand and it would still eat and shoot everything I fed it.
But it’s true that the AK-47 found ready acceptance among terror-producing nations and peoples, and Chivers makes no attempt to diagnose why that is. Take a long look at his maps of AK usage versus AR-15 usage. Neither does Chivers make any attempt to diagnose any other element of weapons and terror, such as the possibility that use of the AK or AR for such things marks a shift to CQB versus standoff sniping as with Charles Whitman (with a bolt action rifle). In other words, what if the problem isn’t the AK or the AR, but the heart of sinful mankind that causes these things, with the weapon of choice being a function of tactical choices the shooter makes?
Chivers disappoints me with this paragraph.
Governments have done little to stop the spread of this class of weapons. Often, as in the case of the United States, they have contributed to it. Acts of crime, terror and oppression with Kalashnikovs and AR-15 descendants, endured by civilians under withering fire, have been hard-wired into our times. There is no end in sight.
“Stop the spread of this class of weapons.” As if stopping the spread of any class of weapons among peaceable people who need means of self defense is a bad thing. Chivers is a legitimate military journalist who did a wonderful job on coverage of the campaign in Afghanistan and is a voice for the men in uniform.
But with this one paragraph it appears to me that he has placed his politics squarely on the side of gun controllers who believe that laws, regulations, governmental actions and policies effect behavior and catalyze moral righteousness. Matthew 15:15-20 teach us that weapons don’t defile the man, any more than alcohol makes a drunkard.
But from the end of the gun comes self defense, and Chivers would do well to consider the millions of men, women and children who have been slaughtered as a result of not having means of self defense.
On August 5, 2016 at 9:25 am, Fred said:
He didn’t examine where widespread use of the AK comes from but we all know. Does anybody think that those “civilizations” incapable of creating wealth or even planning past day to day sustenance could design and build such a machine? Of course not. They were given the weapon. Right or wrong the soviet block and American block governments have been arming the world since WW II. Somebody here probably knows the history better than I.
That men should be separated from the weapons that their civilization builds with its own knowledge and wealth is absurd. Be that fruit the wheel, shelter from the elements, or a machine of self defense; that God, by his gracious and boundless love, has blessed us with knowledge, understanding, and the fruit of our toil, would have us standby while uncircumcised philistines separate us from our fruit is even more absurd.
That we would submit to the half idiot, evil worshiping, demon infected hordes that their godless controllers tell us we should “just coexist” with is the most absurd.
You can’t have my weapons and I will not coexist, into extinction, with your camel humping retards either. Folks have been trying to teach them to dig a well, water crops and to
stop shitting in their drinking water for a thousand years. We don’t want to, but when forced, we won’t blame the unassimilated stooges of your regression. We’re coming for you dear leaders and all the facilitators, NGOs, mouthpieces, and pay masters and everybody else involved in bringing these AK wielding hordes into our midst. We will burn this whole fucking thing down. And the foreign retards with an AK? That’s simple to mop up.
Why did Moses kill the egyptian? Because; fuck that imperious prison camp running motherfucker, that’s why.
The undercurrents have it that the eastern european Christians of the former soviet block are preparing to fight back, will you?
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2016/08/02/break-the-cross/
http://gatesofvienna.net/2016/01/the-alienork-way/
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On August 5, 2016 at 9:54 am, Douglas Mortimer said:
Somebody call this elitist/propagandist a waaaambulance. So after years of owning ARs and even building one, my choice to purchase a Yugo AK underfolder was a good one? Diversity in calibers.
On August 5, 2016 at 3:28 pm, Jack said:
How could one get so much wrong so quickly in so few words? I know, don’t ask – just assume that they’re Democratic operatives with bylines (thank you, Dr. Glenn Reynolds)… The article is worth a complete public fisking, but I just don’t have the time today, so I’ll just stick to one point.
“It was inexpensive to manufacture, built for durability and reliable to an extraordinary degree.”
Manufactureability by incompetents was of prime concern, and reliability and accuracy was far down the list.
The AK47 was designed to be manufactured in old, unreliable, incredibly worn post-WWII factories using drunken, uneducated labor – thus, it had incredibly loose tolerances and required very little advanced machining operations. Most of the rifle is bent sheet metal – one can even create an AK from a garden shovel!
Post-WWII, the Soviets maintained their long-held Czarist philosophy that their civilian population was canon fodder. They really didn’t care if the rifle failed and a conscript was killed. They had millions more (men and rifles) to throw into the battle. (The Chinese and Norks followed the same principles.)
One benefit of the loose tolerances is that the rifle is much more accepting of abuse and environmental factors (sand/mud) than modern firearms, to the detriment of accuracy. However, as Herschel has noted, AK47s have been found to be unreliable. And innacurate.
Just as with the AR type rifles, much work has been invested in improving the AK47 by applying modern materials science, modern manufacturing techniques (CAD/CAM/CNC machining), and tight tolerances. The famed IMI Galil rifle (Israel) is a late-1960s modernized, extremely reliable — and accurate — AK47 clone designed for the 5.56 NATO round.
On August 6, 2016 at 2:16 am, TheAlaskan said:
AK’s are shit….good for barrooms and alleys.
On August 6, 2016 at 4:50 pm, badanov said:
I love my AK. The debate is over.
On August 7, 2016 at 8:42 pm, Herschel Smith said:
What debate?
On August 16, 2016 at 1:10 pm, Andrew Miller said:
The level of knowledge in that article was impressive.
However.
Merely having knowledge and properly applying it is two different activities.