8 ms·

I'm biased by being a gun enthusiast and AK-variant owner myself, but I quite admire him as an engineer. It is an excellent design: simple, robust, time-proven,

I'm biased by being a gun enthusiast and AK-variant owner myself, but I quite admire him as an engineer. It is an excellent design: simple, robust, time-proven, and easy to manufacture. Always a shame when great engineering is shadowed by violence, however. He has said that it should have been a weapon of defense, not offense. "It is painful for me to see when criminal elements of all kinds fire from my weapon".

dharmach 13y ago
How a gun as a weapon of defense differs from a one used as a weapon of offense, from design perspective? Or there are no differences in design?
- lmm 13y ago
  At a civilian level, AIUI law enforcement and the like tend to prefer shorter-range, more accurate weapons than the AK47. In a war situation I'm not sure how much difference there is.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Depends on the war. As I understand matters from the perspective of a civilian who reads a lot of history, the purpose of an assault rifle is to combine at least decent accuracy at medium to long range, so that on a battlefield you can shoot the fellow who's trying to shoot you while he's still a couple hundred meters thataway, with the sort of concentrated firepower previously only available from a machine gun proper, so that you can clear rooms in house-to-house fighting and otherwise deal with close-in situations which call for more firepower than a semi-automatic battle rifle can provide.
- yogo 13y ago
  Whether you are defending or attacking a gun's function is to fire rounds and kill or injure the target. With the exception of certain scenarios like riots, it gets that job done, and that's why armed forces, swat teams, and gangbangers all use them.
- chrissnell 13y ago
  A defensive weapon is typically designed to provide suppressive fire. Suppressive fire is typically high volume (think machine gun) and aimed over a larger area, with the intent of keeping the enemies heads' down (thus not firing), providing covering fire so that friendly forces can maneuver.
  - jkscm 13y ago
    The AK still is an assault rifle and will be used in such way. You seem to referring to heavy machine guns like German MG 1 or 2 which have far bigger magazines. Also suppressive fire is not only an defensive strategy. It binds enemy troops and gives your troops the freedom to prepare an assault.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      Before this comment gets sniped a third time, I'll note that suppressive fire can just as well cover a unit disengaging from action as it can a unit preparing to move into closer contact.
      - jkscm 13y ago
        Yes you are right. I would even go as far as stating that the term "defensive weapon" makes no sense in the context of assault rifles.
        aaronem 13y ago
        I'll go further, and state that "defensive weapon" is a contradiction in terms and semantically null however applied. A weapon is a tool; offense and defense are perhaps the two broadest categories of the ways in which such a tool may be employed.
        mikeash 13y ago
        No doubt true in general, but how about land mines? That seems fairly close to a "defensive weapon".
hyperbovine 13y ago
Another fine example of how smart people can also be so achingly naive and unworldly. Gee, who would've thought criminals would use a machine gun for offensive purposes.
- aaronem 13y ago
  At the time Gospodin Kalashnikov designed the weapon which brought his name to the world's attention, his nation had just suffered an invasion of Germans, which was repelled only at the cost of roughly twenty million of his countrymen's lives -- an invasion, moreover, against which Gospodin Kalashnikov himself fought, and was wounded, as part of a T-34 regiment -- and was by no means certain it would not soon suffer an invasion of far more numerous Chinese. In light of that, perhaps it's not so hard to understand how he could have conceived of his weapon as one of defense. (It is, though, rather difficult to understand how you, or indeed anyone, could with a straight face describe such a man as "naïve and unworldly". Ignorance is the kindest explanation I can devise.)
  - eps 13y ago
    Gospodin is "master" as in "master and servant". It's been out of active use as a salutation for well over a century. Just FYI.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      I've seen it used, albeit not often, in a sense precisely parallel to that of the German Herr or the Spanish Señor, and it is that sense in which I use it. I have never found myself troubled by being regarded as old-fashioned, but if you know a term which would better serve my purpose, I'd be obliged to you for making me aware of it.
      - eps 13y ago
        Salutations are just not that common in modern Russian. It used to be Gospodin or Sudar (сударь) before the Revolution, but these were forcibly replaced by Tovarish (comrade, or rather - friend). Then after collapse of Soviet Union tovarish died out and neither of old salutations came back. In day to day life if you need to attract someone's attention, you'd use an equivalent of "excuse me", "hey" or "hello". In rare cases people would use "man" (мужчина) or "woman" (женщина), but that's very impersonal and frequently antogonistic, so most people avoid it. In press and written language, it's just the last name, preceded by the position when appropriate. Sometimes they will use gospodin, but that would typically be reserved for pompous occasions and when referring to people at important positions, e.g. a president of a bank. And yet it still looks odd and catches the eye. So in the context of your post it's just Kalashnikov. No gospodin.
bradleyjg 13y ago
He was working for Stalin. The man is on a very short list for worst person of the entire 20th century, and it's a tough competition! The "criminal elements" are pikers in comparison.
- _random_ 13y ago
  Yeah, no criminal ever won a World War and no criminal ever industrialized a country the size of USSR.
- Zak 13y ago
  His country had just been invaded by Nazis. Not to imply that Stalin was any better, but if Hitler invaded your country, killed a bunch of people and devastated the land, you might feel the urge to design weapons.
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    It was a no-holds barred war for survival from the POV of both sides; both sides being totalitarian states with fanatics in their ranks. A lot of the bad mojo of the 20th century is basically the fallout of that unimaginably violent and brutal war -- that is the "eastern" front between Germany and the USSR. Hitler's army was there to flat-out exterminate the populace to make room to support a growing population. Battles where a huge chunk of a million men died in just a few days happened again and again and again. Of all the dying that happened in WWII, the Russians did a huge chunk of it.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 13y ago
Violence is a key part of the human experience and unsurprisingly we devote tremendous intellectual resources to the task. Much of the history of engineering is devoted to facilitating violence. I never got engineers who tried to distance themselves from that aspect of the profession.
- emiliobumachar 13y ago
  Excuse me if I'm too forward but I find that hard to believe. Do you really not get, i.e., not understant their position, as opposed to merely disagreeing with it?
  - rayiner 13y ago
    I don't get how they do it. So much of engineering is just driven by the necessities of war. My degree is in aerospace engineering, a field that wouldn't be anything like it is today without war. Heck, we're communicating over the internet, a defense research project developed to help the U.S. military maintain communications in the event of nuclear war. I can understand the wish to disassociate from that aspect of the profession--I don't understand how people do it successfully.
    - gbog 13y ago
      Just go build bridges, open source software, medical tools, civil aircrafts, gadgets, computers, etc. None of these engineering tasks require you to meet war things.
- mertd 13y ago
  In what way is prematurely ending a fellow humans life "key" to my experience?
  - aaronem 13y ago
    If he has set out to prematurely end yours, then it's certainly key to whether your experience continues beyond the point of decision or is abruptly truncated at that juncture, to say the least of the matter.

dharmach 13y ago

How a gun as a weapon of defense differs from a one used as a weapon of offense, from design perspective? Or there are no differences in design?

lmm 13y ago
At a civilian level, AIUI law enforcement and the like tend to prefer shorter-range, more accurate weapons than the AK47. In a war situation I'm not sure how much difference there is.
- aaronem 13y ago
  Depends on the war. As I understand matters from the perspective of a civilian who reads a lot of history, the purpose of an assault rifle is to combine at least decent accuracy at medium to long range, so that on a battlefield you can shoot the fellow who's trying to shoot you while he's still a couple hundred meters thataway, with the sort of concentrated firepower previously only available from a machine gun proper, so that you can clear rooms in house-to-house fighting and otherwise deal with close-in situations which call for more firepower than a semi-automatic battle rifle can provide.
yogo 13y ago
Whether you are defending or attacking a gun's function is to fire rounds and kill or injure the target. With the exception of certain scenarios like riots, it gets that job done, and that's why armed forces, swat teams, and gangbangers all use them.
chrissnell 13y ago
A defensive weapon is typically designed to provide suppressive fire. Suppressive fire is typically high volume (think machine gun) and aimed over a larger area, with the intent of keeping the enemies heads' down (thus not firing), providing covering fire so that friendly forces can maneuver.
- jkscm 13y ago
  The AK still is an assault rifle and will be used in such way. You seem to referring to heavy machine guns like German MG 1 or 2 which have far bigger magazines. Also suppressive fire is not only an defensive strategy. It binds enemy troops and gives your troops the freedom to prepare an assault.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Before this comment gets sniped a third time, I'll note that suppressive fire can just as well cover a unit disengaging from action as it can a unit preparing to move into closer contact.
    - jkscm 13y ago
      Yes you are right. I would even go as far as stating that the term "defensive weapon" makes no sense in the context of assault rifles.
      - aaronem 13y ago
        I'll go further, and state that "defensive weapon" is a contradiction in terms and semantically null however applied. A weapon is a tool; offense and defense are perhaps the two broadest categories of the ways in which such a tool may be employed.
        mikeash 13y ago
        No doubt true in general, but how about land mines? That seems fairly close to a "defensive weapon".

hyperbovine 13y ago

Another fine example of how smart people can also be so achingly naive and unworldly. Gee, who would've thought criminals would use a machine gun for offensive purposes.

aaronem 13y ago
At the time Gospodin Kalashnikov designed the weapon which brought his name to the world's attention, his nation had just suffered an invasion of Germans, which was repelled only at the cost of roughly twenty million of his countrymen's lives -- an invasion, moreover, against which Gospodin Kalashnikov himself fought, and was wounded, as part of a T-34 regiment -- and was by no means certain it would not soon suffer an invasion of far more numerous Chinese. In light of that, perhaps it's not so hard to understand how he could have conceived of his weapon as one of defense. (It is, though, rather difficult to understand how you, or indeed anyone, could with a straight face describe such a man as "naïve and unworldly". Ignorance is the kindest explanation I can devise.)
- eps 13y ago
  Gospodin is "master" as in "master and servant". It's been out of active use as a salutation for well over a century. Just FYI.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    I've seen it used, albeit not often, in a sense precisely parallel to that of the German Herr or the Spanish Señor, and it is that sense in which I use it. I have never found myself troubled by being regarded as old-fashioned, but if you know a term which would better serve my purpose, I'd be obliged to you for making me aware of it.
    - eps 13y ago
      Salutations are just not that common in modern Russian. It used to be Gospodin or Sudar (сударь) before the Revolution, but these were forcibly replaced by Tovarish (comrade, or rather - friend). Then after collapse of Soviet Union tovarish died out and neither of old salutations came back. In day to day life if you need to attract someone's attention, you'd use an equivalent of "excuse me", "hey" or "hello". In rare cases people would use "man" (мужчина) or "woman" (женщина), but that's very impersonal and frequently antogonistic, so most people avoid it. In press and written language, it's just the last name, preceded by the position when appropriate. Sometimes they will use gospodin, but that would typically be reserved for pompous occasions and when referring to people at important positions, e.g. a president of a bank. And yet it still looks odd and catches the eye. So in the context of your post it's just Kalashnikov. No gospodin.

bradleyjg 13y ago

He was working for Stalin. The man is on a very short list for worst person of the entire 20th century, and it's a tough competition! The "criminal elements" are pikers in comparison.

_random_ 13y ago
Yeah, no criminal ever won a World War and no criminal ever industrialized a country the size of USSR.
Zak 13y ago
His country had just been invaded by Nazis. Not to imply that Stalin was any better, but if Hitler invaded your country, killed a bunch of people and devastated the land, you might feel the urge to design weapons.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  It was a no-holds barred war for survival from the POV of both sides; both sides being totalitarian states with fanatics in their ranks. A lot of the bad mojo of the 20th century is basically the fallout of that unimaginably violent and brutal war -- that is the "eastern" front between Germany and the USSR. Hitler's army was there to flat-out exterminate the populace to make room to support a growing population. Battles where a huge chunk of a million men died in just a few days happened again and again and again. Of all the dying that happened in WWII, the Russians did a huge chunk of it.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 13y ago

Violence is a key part of the human experience and unsurprisingly we devote tremendous intellectual resources to the task. Much of the history of engineering is devoted to facilitating violence. I never got engineers who tried to distance themselves from that aspect of the profession.

emiliobumachar 13y ago
Excuse me if I'm too forward but I find that hard to believe. Do you really not get, i.e., not understant their position, as opposed to merely disagreeing with it?
- rayiner 13y ago
  I don't get how they do it. So much of engineering is just driven by the necessities of war. My degree is in aerospace engineering, a field that wouldn't be anything like it is today without war. Heck, we're communicating over the internet, a defense research project developed to help the U.S. military maintain communications in the event of nuclear war. I can understand the wish to disassociate from that aspect of the profession--I don't understand how people do it successfully.
  - gbog 13y ago
    Just go build bridges, open source software, medical tools, civil aircrafts, gadgets, computers, etc. None of these engineering tasks require you to meet war things.
mertd 13y ago
In what way is prematurely ending a fellow humans life "key" to my experience?
- aaronem 13y ago
  If he has set out to prematurely end yours, then it's certainly key to whether your experience continues beyond the point of decision or is abruptly truncated at that juncture, to say the least of the matter.