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Comment by jaclaz | Hacker News Reader

As a side note, the Wikipedia page "Concept" on the AK-47, cites Mikhail Kalashnikov as saying two things that can be generalized to other fields:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47#Concept

#1 "I was a soldier, and I created a machine gun for a soldier."

#2 "A lot of Russian Army soldiers ask me how one can become a constructor, and how new weaponry is designed. These are very difficult questions. Each designer seems to have his own paths, his own successes and failures. But one thing is clear: before attempting to create something new, it is vital to have a good appreciation of everything that already exists in this field. I myself have had many experiences confirming this to be so."

Particularly the latter could be a valid corollary to the Chesterton's Fence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

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He meant assault rifle not machine gun right?

Seems likely to be a translation error, or in reference to how he also worked on designing machine guns and light machine guns. The round the AK-47 uses is used by some machine guns, so that might be how it got mixed up.

The meanings of all the various words describing firearms has been, particularly in the last 100 years or so, fairly loose. There aren't really hard definitions for "assault rifle", "machine gun", "sub machine gun", "pistol", etc, and they're even frequently used interchangeably for some platforms. They mean different things to different people in various legal and social contexts as well, to spite what internet keyboard commandos will say.

In particular, even if you use the "internet keyboard commando" definitions, a real AK-47 is both an assault rifle and a machine gun.

There’s also the fact that Soviet military doctrine actually treated the AK as a sub machine gun. The Red Army in WW2 made heavy use of SMGs, much more than the western armies, perhaps to compensate for their relatively low level of marksmanship and tactical training. Their assaults relied on getting large numbers of soldiers up as close as possible and belting out as many bullets as they could.

I'm not a firearm expert by any means but still have a vague understanding of the those groupings - "assault rifle", "machine gun", "sub machine gun", "pistol" with one excpetion.

Carbine.

The best line I've read on it was something like - it's a relatively low powered shoulder fired weapon but can only be called a carbine if it's manufactured in the Carbine region of France. I thought that was funny but honestly I've got nothing better.

Yeah it's a heavily overused term. Best I can tell, it's come to mean a particular barrel length, somewhere between 14 and 16 inches but it can be any caliber or cartridge type really. It's supposed to be a short handy rifle, where a full size rifle is somewhere at 20+ inches.

I am pretty sure the Russian the word used here was “автомат” which means “automatic gun”. But even if it’s the other word “пулемёт” (what machine guns are called) it would also apply to the ak47 well enough.

And the Lord blesseth the man for his wonderful work with 93 years of full life. /s

Seems he was also battling with guilt most of his life. One year before his death, Mikhail Kalashnikov wrote a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Excerpts:

    “I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people’s lives, then can it be that I… a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?”

    “The longer I live, the more this question drills itself into my brain and the more I wonder why the Lord allowed man to have the devilish desires of envy, greed and aggression.”

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