From Gatling to the AK-47

Point and Shoot

Excerpts:

Sgt. Mikhail Kalashnikov ... in 1947 built an automatic rifle with just eight moving parts, so stoutly put together that it proved almost impervious to dirt, sand and mud. This was the AK-47, which Michael Hodges celebrates in words as lyrical as Ms. Keller's: "Sublime," he gushes of its design, remarking on "the curve of the magazine, the parallel lines of the barrel and the gas tube."

...
the AK-47 eventually showed itself to be ideal for peasant armies, rebel guerrillas, child soldiers and drug lords. There are millions of Kalashnikov's automatic rifles in combat around the world. So iconic is the gun that it appears on the flag of Mozambique, crossed with a hoe as one of the essential implements of national liberation. For all we read of weapons of mass destruction, the homely AK-47 – costing as little as $100 from a Bulgarian factory – is the true WMD. It has killed far more human beings than all the nuclear, bacteriological and chemical weapons ever employed.

But it is not true, as Mr. Hodges would have us believe, that the AK-47 is the nemesis of American warfighters in Iraq. Most casualties there are inflicted by roadside bombs. "Small arms fire" now ranks third as a slayer of our soldiers and Marines, behind such mundane traumas as traffic accidents.


Comments: I have a close relative (unnamed here as it is not prudent to publically state who has a gun!) who has a beautifully restored M-1 Garand.

More on the:

1. AK-47
   
2. M1 Garand
   
3. M16
   
4. Gatling gun
   

The driving force for weapons technology has been to quickly end war or prevent war. The author of the linked article cites this:

Gatling's patent was filed during the U.S. Civil War. With the naiveté of inventors everywhere, he urged the gun's adoption by the Union army on the grounds that it would not only crush the rebellion but "save lives, wounds and sickness, by lessening the number [of soldiers] subjected to the perils of war."