The AK is perhaps the most widespread firearm in the world. Carried by American enemies and allies alike since , it is the standard infantry weapon for countries. There are an estimated million AKs of a number of variations round the world. It's a popular weapon among firearms enthusiasts, professional soldiers and terrorists alike. In the United States, it has a reputation as the "bad guy" weapon, given its history and usage among so many former enemies.
Its Russian name is Avtomat Kalashnikova -- also known simply as the Kalashnikov. It was named for its inventor, Senior Sergeant Mikhail Kalashnikov.
According to legend, he admired the weapons made by the Nazis. After five years of engineering, the former agricultural engineer made his famous weapon. It was based on a number of other designs floating around at the time, mostly Germany's Sturmgewehr Called StG for short, the Sturmgewehr was the first real mid-range infantry rifle.
It didn't shoot a heavy round but could still lay down heavy fire. The AK was designed to do the same. But the true brilliance of Kalashnikov's invention was in its simplicity.
It was designed for all-around ease of use: easy to repair, easy to unjam if it ever does , easy to maintain. If a round is chambered in an AK, chances are good that weapon is going to fire.
His creation was so simple and dependable that the Soviet Union began exporting the weapon en masse. The country made so much money from exporting the weapon that Kalashnikov received special treatment in the USSR and later Russia for the rest of his life. The legality of the AK depends on what country you're reading this in. AK model weapons are also dirt cheap in many places around the world -- but the further away you are from the production centers, the more expensive it can be.
The price of an AK family firearm in Africa is an exception to that general rule. It's usually much cheaper in many African countries because the demand is so high that markets are usually flooded.
Learn about the infamous AK or the Russian built assault rifle and its origins as a military weapon in this episode of "Bullet Points: AK As for American wannabe AK owners, it also depends on what state you live in. In general, however, a true AK has a fully automatic setting, which is illegal in the United States.
Models with semi-automatic settings are available and legal in the U. Manufacturers cannot make or import fully automatic weapons for the civilian market. Any automatic weapon fully registered before May , with the passage of the Firearm Owners Protection Act, can be purchased or sold. This means there is a market of an estimated , legal automatic weapons in the United States.
The AK is the deadliest weapon ever built, on the whole. Its kill count even tops nuclear weapons in sheer numbers. But the first AKs were very heavy and weren't really built for aiming. Kalashnikov wanted to develop a compact weapon that still delivered firepower within meters that could bring a blaze of bullets with ammunition light enough that soldiers could carry a lot of it.
The AKM's stamped sheet-metal receiver simplified production and reduced the rifle's weight to about 8 pounds. The integrated gas piston and bolt carrier's parts were designed to fit loosely in the receiver, making the mechanism less susceptible to the effects of carbon buildup, rust and dirt—and thus less prone to jamming.
Kalashnikov claimed credit for these ideas, but they were actually adopted from other Soviet designs of the time, including Alexey Sudayev's AS After Sudayev died in , his "loose fit" concept was used by other designers. The AKM has three modes of firing regulated by the selector switch: safe, when it cannot fire; semiautomatic, for the squeezing off of single shots; and automatic, to spit lead at a rate of rounds per minute.
The AK's combined bolt carrier and gas piston design—taken from a competitor—gives the gun's operating system more energy. As each round is fired, gas rushes into a chamber via a port in the top of the barrel, driving back a piston that withdraws the bolt from the chamber and ejects the spent cartridge.
The spring-loaded magazine forces the next cartridge into place; a return spring thrusts the piston and bolt assembly forward, chambering the cartridge and preparing the rifle to fire again. The system's stroke is 50 percent longer than necessary, so the weapon often functions even when impeded by fouling, foreign substances or lack of lubrication.
The banana-shaped cartridge holder is a borrowed design, in keeping with the AK's cobbled-together makeup. But the Soviet Union found that this design was less likely to jam, in part because its shape fit the 7. Like its intentionally loose design, the rifle's rust-resistant phosphate coating increased its reliability. In addition, the barrel and chamber were chromed on the inside, another rust retardant.
Anti-corrosive features are literally life-saving; in Vietnam, the U. Army thought they had a kind of steel that wasn't susceptible to corrosion," Chivers says. After the U. Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories.
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