Free Republic

FRANKFORT — Standing in the namesake building of his foe in last year’s U.S. Senate primary, Republican gubernatorial nominee Matt Bevin said Friday any perceived grudges in the GOP are overstated. Bevin headlined a press conference at Republican Party of Kentucky headquarters featuring other GOP candidates for constitutional office, hoping to demonstrate party unity ahead of a state Lincoln Day dinner in Lexington on Saturday. Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, who conceded the race Friday after a recanvass showed no change in Bevin’s 83-vote margin of victory, promised in a statement to “do everything I can to see that he wins...

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...

Cowboys take up AK47s to combat drug runners on Mexican frontier By Philip Sherwell, near Nogales, Arizona (Filed: 20/11/2005) As he careered along the rock-strewn gulley towards his silver mine deep in the Sonoran desert of southern Arizona, Roger McCaslin first checked his bowie knife, then his pistol, and finally his Kalashnikov. From the road, he had already noticed that something was wrong. Under the harsh sun, Mr McCaslin's black cowboy hat cast a shadow over his droopy moustache and a face so deeply creased that it resembled cracked saddle leather. Welcome to the Wild West 2005, where modern-day cowboys...

CHARLESTON (AP) -- Hundreds of machine gun owners plan to meet at a remote, abandoned strip-mine site near Shinnston this weekend to shoot their weapons. ''We call it 'Thunder in the Hills,' '' said Frank Watson, the event's promoter. ''Basically, it's a chance for machine gun owners to spend three days shooting lead and shooting the bull.'' Billed as a ''shoot and show,'' the event is open to owners of all types of automatic firearms. Military buffs will get a chance to see everything from the British-made Lewis gun of World War I to the M-60 now used by the...

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...