Free Republic

PALM BAY — Just down the road from a Krispy Krunchy fried chicken store, in a nondescript Brevard County business park, a 60,000-square-foot factory produces about 2,500 AK-47 rifles a month. The Tampa Bay Times reports that Ulrich "Uli" Wiegand, a German immigrant who started the company called Inter Ordinance Inc., sees a bright future for the American-made version of the Kalashnikov, the classic Soviet-bloc weapon with the iconic banana-shaped ammo magazine. It is the world's most popular weapon. There were as many as 150 million Kalashnikovs as of 2012, according to Aaron Karp, senior consultant to the Small Arms...

Moscow, January 13, Interfax -Legendary weapons constructor Mikhail Kalashnikov deceased in December wrote a letter to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and Russia half a year before his death, the Izvestia paper wrote on Monday. "My soul aches, it is unbearable, I face the same unsolvable question: if my gun killed people, then I, Mikhailo Kalashnikov, ninety three years old, a peasant's son, a Christian and Orthodox believer, is guilty in people's death, even if they were enemies," the edition quotes Kalashnikov's letter. Besides, his inner emotions, the letter also contains his thoughts about the future of the country and humanity....

Legendary gunmaker Kalashnikov flown to Moscow for treatment Mikhail Kalashnikov, world famous inventor, with an AK-47 assault rifle. (RIA Novosti / Vladimir Vyatkin) Russia 93-year-old Mikhail Kalashnikov has been flown to Moscow for hospital treatment on an Emergencies Ministry plane after being taken ill in his home city of Izhevsk. The iconic gunsmith is said to be in a serious condition. The inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle endured the flight well and has been sent to undergo medical treatment in a Central military hospital in the Russian capital, reports Itar-Tass. Kalashnikov had been admitted to a cardiology hospital in...

A villager in provincial Russia has caused a national scandal after finding 79 Kalashnikov assault rifles in crates that he bought to use as firewood, Russian media reported on Friday. A truck driver was supposed to take the crates for disposal from the factory in the central city of Izhevsk where Kalashnikovs are manufactured, but instead sold them to the unnamed villager, thinking they were empty. The man who had hoped to use the wood as fuel for his stove called the police and an investigation was launched amid concerns about security at the nationally-renowned Izhmash arms factory, local police...

By Larry Kahaner Sunday, November 26, 2006; B01 In the grand narrative of World War II, the Battle of Bryansk is a minor conflict, barely deserving of a footnote. But Bryansk has another place in history. It was there that a then-unknown tank commander named Mikhail Kalashnikov decided that his Russian comrades would never again be defeated. In the years following the Great Patriotic War, as Soviet propagandists dubbed it, he was to conceive and fabricate a weapon so simple, and yet so revolutionary, that it would change the way wars were fought and won. It was the AK-47 assault...

Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the world's most popular assault rifle, says that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are using his invention in preference to their own weapons, proving that his gun is still the best. "Even after lying in a swamp you can pick up this rifle, aim it and shoot. That's the best job description there is for a gun. Real soldiers know that and understand it," the 86-year-old gunmaker told a weekend news conference in Moscow. "In Vietnam, American soldiers threw away their M-16 rifles and used [Kalashnikov] AK-47s from dead Vietnamese soldiers, with bullets they captured. That was...

I recently purchased a mak90 sporter. I don't really like the thumbhole stock and I am interested in replacing it with a folding/fixed stock w/ a pistol grip. Can anyone give me their take on how to legally do so? Would there be any problem with replacing the thumbhole stock w/ a US stock and pistol grip?

Two weeks ago, IDF purchased several hundred state-of-the-art rifle scopes, manufactured by the Israeli Metrolight company at a cost of $5 million. The intention is to equip all fighters with the new scope before the end of the year. “The scope was awarded the first prize at an international competition,” said an IDF warfare equipment expert. “It does not use a battery and is charged from a light source through an optic fiber. The fighter aims with the help of a red dot, keeping both eyes open”. The Golani Brigade soldiers have already received the scopes. Soldiers who have used...

His name is synonymous with both death and excellence, and for years it was associated with the "enemy" on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Maj. Gen. Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47 automatic rifle, opened an exhibit of his life's work at the Military Museum in Delft on Thursday. The rare public showing, called "Rifle Without Borders," features dozens of variants of the weapon. It also includes multimedia displays on the various wars in which the AK-47 has played a major role, including ongoing conflicts in Africa where child soldiers sometimes carry Kalashnikovs. Introduced in 1949, the...