Why ak 47

When propellant burns at near-explosive speeds, it releases more energy than needed to fire the bullet; the gas system captures some of that energy and puts it to work ejecting spent cartridges and loading fresh ones. The gun's parts are heavy and loose enough to plow through grit or mud.

That reliability comes at the expense of accuracy, but the AK's designers ignored the Western preference for tight-fitting rifles in favor of one that would almost always work.

This elevated sight, which helps shooters see over the gas tube above the barrel, also contributes to the AK's distinctive shape. Similar posts had appeared on previous guns, including the AS, an earlier Soviet project. In , the Soviets captured an unusual cartridge from Nazi soldiers on Germany's eastern front.

The cartridge, roughly midway in size between traditional rifle and pistol ammo, lacked the power for effective long-range shooting but was more than adequate for most combat. It generated less heat and recoil, which meant that guns built around it could be lighter, cheaper, and easier to fire.

The Soviets decided to design their own version of the cartridge—called the M—and then a new weapon to fire it: the Kalashnikov assault rifle. One of the eye-catching traits that gives the Kalashnikov line its iconic profile is the magazine—curved to account for the tapered shape of the cartridges.

Other guns had used curved magazines, but as the AK grew more popular, the shape became associated with the Kalashnikov. The magazine, which has a reinforced metal lip to prevent damage, is one reason the gun rarely jams. This contrasts sharply with the magazines that have fed the American M and M-4 over the years, which have been endlessly redesigned and reissued as late as Big and easy to find, this unmistakable and simple feature allows users to switch between safe, automatic, and semiautomatic fire as well as prevents dust and sand from entering the weapon's chamber.

Mikhail Kalashnikov who, at 90, still lives in Izhevsk, Russia is intensely proud of it, but many dislike it. The switch can be balky, and it often makes a loud click when manipulated. It's also not original—Remington's Model 8, developed several decades before, had a similar mechanism. Position your cursor over each image to see who has wielded the AK, and where, throughout the years. The Kalashnikov was designed to be a tool of the state, with its earliest production runs distributed exclusively to Soviet soldiers.

Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Perhaps you think first of the atomic bomb , estimated to have killed as many as , people when the United States dropped two on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in But another weapon is responsible for far more deaths — numbering up into the millions. Originally developed in secrecy for the Soviet military, an estimated million AKs and its variants have been produced to date. This gun is now found throughout the world, including in the hands of many American civilians, who in bought as many AKs as the Russian police and military.

As a physician, I have witnessed the destruction this weapon can wreak on human flesh. Russian Mikhail Kalashnikov invented the weapon that bears his name in the middle of the 20th century. Born on Nov. While still in the military, he produced several designs that lost out to competitors before eventually producing the first AK In automatic mode it had a rate of fire almost as fast as a true machine gun, yet a lone soldier could carry and operate it. Without intermediate loads, the AK would have been nothing more than a short-lived machine gun suitable only for briefly firing from the hip, like John Wayne with a belt-fed.

With as few as eight moving parts, depending on the version, an AK can be field-stripped and reassembled by an illiterate 8-year-old Ugandan after less than an hour of training. Drag it across a sandy desert, drop it in a muddy swamp, submerge it during a river crossing, forget to clean it for months at a time — no matter.

Numerous reports tell of AKs found half-buried for months in a soggy Vietnamese jungle or abandoned in the Sinai sand that were ready to fire as soon as a boot kick freed the rusty bolt. That its chamber and barrel are chrome-lined to prevent corrosion also helps. Each was designed and built quickly and in vast numbers. Quantity rather than quality was the byword, and in the case of the AK, such proliferation would lead to unintended consequences. It marked the first time this had happened with so sophisticated a military device, though some in the early s had feared the Thompson submachine gun might find a broad civilian market.

In those pre—gun lobby days, Congress in passed the National Firearms Act, which, among other measures, tightly regulated private ownership of automatic weapons.

The AK genie, however, escaped its bottle in the s, both because it was cheap to manufacture and because it was produced in such enormous numbers. Estimates place the number of functioning AKs in existence today at more than 75 million — vastly more than any other family of firearms ever produced.

Through the early postwar years, the AK was just another infantry firearm. It first appeared on the world stage in Vietnam, and its performance was a shock from a weapon Western experts had derided as puny, short-ranged and inaccurate. Initially, the M16 was a disaster. Unlike the AK, it needed to be scrupulously cleaned, but nobody had thought to provide the troops with cleaning kits. Nor were its barrel or chamber chrome-lined like those of the AK, so the early M16s quickly corroded.

The weapon uses a 7. They shatter bones, tear through organs and liquefy other materials as the round tumbles through the body -- often in ways that cannot be repaired. When the M16 rifle was first introduced in the Vietnam War, it had a number of issues. There were so many problems that American troops were killed in combat simply because they couldn't shoot back. Even after the kinks were worked out, a dirty M16 was and is much less likely to operate than a dirty AK When the AK was first introduced, it was such a great weapon that the Red Army actually hid it from the world.

The U. Not that the American military would buy its standard-issue rifle from its main geopolitical foe and potential World War III adversary anyway. These days, the U. Special operations forces from all branches might have to pick up an enemy AK at some point because of the nature of their work -- sometimes help isn't coming. The rifle was designed to be carried, maintained and fired by anyone in the area who happened to need its services.

And if you need a weapon like the AK, you need to be able to use it fast, whether you're a professional soldier or a poorly trained conscript. The worldwide availability and durability of the AK also makes it an attractive weapon for terrorists, militias and other illegal paramilitary organizations. Whether they're trying to take over a military base in frozen tundra or overthrowing a government in Sub-Saharan Africa, the AK works really well in every environment, is always available usually at a steep discount and will still work even if it falls into water, mud, sand or some other muck.

The average lifespan of a terrorist in a gunfight isn't very long, so that rifle is likely going to hit the ground, and someone is going to need it to work when they pick it up.

The terrorist group is definitely going to need a cheap replacement.