The Last Gunsmiths of the Khyber Pass | Hacker News Reader

The Last Gunsmiths of the Khyber Pass

silahreport.com

107 points_vbdg80 comments

Oh hey! I'm from that area. If you guys have any queries. :). Also the quality isn't top notch, but for the price you are paying it's ok. You are much better off buying a Russian AK-47 for $1100 like i did than buying it from Khyber for $120.

Quite exotic for me. it’s just rare to find somebody from that area without visiting the place.

Just out of curiosity why did you buy a weapon. Is it a customary / way of life kind of thing or Something else.

Is there a way to lear about these remote region, their people and their Culture , tier day to day life without visiting the place. Do you recommmend any books?

People here LOVE guns. Everyone owns multiple guns in their house. I think it's our pukhtoon culture and a sense of pride and security that comes with owning a gun.

When i was a kid my father used to clean his AK every other week and i would sit by him silently and enjoying as he broke it down into multiple pieces and then make it into one piece after cleaning it.

For me i wanted to have my own original Russian AK because having an original AK instead of one made locally is like having an iPhone 11 pro here. :)

I can imagine that.

So follow up q: if people love their guns how do they use it typically? Shooting random targets In open spaces and that kind or is it more like a samurai sword. You own one and then it’s pretty much caring for it.

Also for a culture that loves guns what kind of gun violence does it see typically if any. I understand these days it’s different due to the region being torn by geopolitics and war but am trying to understand the culture outside of it.

Also do you still live in the region or have moved. If latter how frequently do you visit And how do you typically get there?

Mostly people don't use it that often. Sometimes occasionally when guests from other places come here then they love to fire into shooting targets in open spaces.

Regarding the gun-related crime here in Tribal areas i would say it's almost zero because a thief will never snatch some men's phone because he knows he maybe packing a 9mm. :)

At what age do people generally get a gun? I have friends who's father bought them a gun at 11-12, though personally I think 14-15 might be more appropriate.

At what age did you get your first gun?

Most people get it when they become adults.

For me i bought when i got into college aka became an adult.

In the UK you can join the Army Cadet Force (ACF) at 12, or in an area without middle schools (most of the UK) 11 if your secondary school has a CCF (Combined).

Probably the most controlled way young people get their hands on them here, perhaps also the most common (competition/clay/game shooting clubs being the other possibility).

Cadets use a modified (no magazine, one in the chamber) .22 Lee Enfield for short range target shooting on-site (perhaps not all sites have them) and L98 (A1 was magazine fed but manually cocked, the semi-automatic A2 came in about ten years ago while I was going through) rifles of the SA80 family that's standard issue (L85) in the British Army. They also have, but use more rarely, L86 LSWs, and others not issued but may be encountered at 'summer camps' and the like, with training from regulars/TA.

It is a slightly scary thought looking back on it being older now, I'm not sure I'd fancy being an instructor: imagine being a teacher with a 'difficult' child, except you're instructing them in handling a firearm...

I enjoyed it a lot though, and would recommend it for sure.

I've instructed kids roughly this age. My context was the American Boy Scouts (remember when that still existed?), so I'm sure it was similar to your experience in the ACF.

There are a lot of psychological techniques you pick up on before you even get to the instruction. One of them is setting a firm expectation that "you are becoming a man, this is how men behave, men are accountable for their actions." This works well for kids in a situation where they feel that they have some honor/face to maintain.

The only difficult child I had to handle was one in the scouts who was using a pocket knife in a very unsafe way. I tore up his totin' chip [1] in front of the class and the shame from that and the dressing down his scoutmaster gave him at the evening campfire straightened him up quickly. I only bring that up because it illustrates how I used that shame drive as what I view as the most important mechanism to keep everyone safe.

This was easy for me to intuit because my father introduced me to guns at a young age, .22's under his supervision around 4 or 5, a BB gun without direct supervision around the age of 8, then on to pellets and carrying my own large-caliber rifle while deer hunting around age 12. It was impressed on me that I was going to pay like hell in corporal punishment if I hit something I shouldn't have, and I've ever had a mishap with a gun (knock on wood.)

It's interesting that in these contexts where I've felt most safe there's an almost visceral understanding that removal of group standing and potentially violence are waiting on the other end of negligence on your part.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totin%27_Chip --usually a minor infraction warrants removal of a corner of the chip. A serious infraction warrants complete destruction of the chip.

My experience in the US, for something that's not a BB gun, I'd say 10 or 11, but that's not a hard and fast limit. It's usually a small caliber (like .22) or something. Hunting used to start at 12 way back, although these days I've heard some places allow hunting as early as 8..? The truth is it depends on the individual, and how well they can be trained. This video gives a pretty good overview of "milestones" someone should reach before owning a gun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fRJTyU851Y

I got a shotgun for my 8th birthday, though probably started shooting at age 6. I remember the first gun I shot was an AR-15 M1 (triangular hand guard).

I bought my two kids their own .22 bolt action at 7 and 9. Then my son a .22 AR-15 at 10.

Do you get original ammunition or are they made locally as well? How often do you use it? Or is it a status symbol, primarily? Is it carried along when you generally go out or only on special occasions.

I haven't ever exchanged messages with anyone who owned a gun, let alone an AK47 and the novelty raises a lot of questions!

You can get original ammunition as well as the ones made locally but i would recommend original ones because the local ammunition can not be trusted as they may jam your weapon.

Yes! it can be like a status symbol but you almost never carry it when you go out. And is mostly kept in your house. You can definitely carry a pistol on you though under your shirt.

If you ever get the chance 'The Gun' by CJ Chivers is a fascinating history of the AK47 and its spread around the world.

Are you sure you haven’t?

I’m in Canada which has about 35 civilian guns per hundred people and thanks to the licensing system we know it works out to about 7.5% of the country having licenses here. A lot of the people that own guns would probably surprise you too—for instance, my 65 year old gray haired aunt that works as a nurse in a care home for old people has a cabinet at home with 6 or 8 guns in it.

And obviously the ownership rates among Americans are, uh, quite high as well. Given the heavy North American audience here you’ve almost certainly gotten into a conversation with at least a few gun owners.

Firearms ownership is a way of life or a core part of the identity of some people, but for the vast majority of owners it is not. For those people, it’s rarely something you’d find out about unless there was a reason to. I do tend to bring it up when the conversation steers anywhere towards that direction because I like to try and be an ambassador for the normal, responsible people that own firearms as a contrast to certain vocal minorities, but most people seem to prefer to just fly under the radar.

I’ve got an old (1955) Russian military surplus SKS, a Czech bolt action .22 (CZ455) and a Turkish (ATA Arms) Remington 870 12 gauge pump shotgun clone with a tube magazine and a 14 inch barrel sitting around the house. If it interests you at all, feel free to ask anything you want to know.

Ever had a slamfire on that SKS? I've seen a few videos showing it but am wondering if it's widespread or just an urban legend.

That mostly happens if you forgot to clean the cosmoline out of the firing pin channel.

Many of the SKS sold were military surplus from the various source countries and were usually covered in heavy preservative grease. The grease got into ever nook and cranny (as it was supposed to,) and could prevent the firing pin from moving freely. If you didn't disassemble and clean the bolt and make sure the firing pin could move freely a slam-fire would be possible if the firing pin was stuck sticking out of the bolt face. The other way to cause a slam-fire is if the hammer catch is worn so the hammer isn't caught and held. What happens then is the hammer follows the bolt as the bolt returns to battery and if a new round was chambered the hammer, pressing on the back of the firing pin and forcing the pin to stick out from the bolt face can cause the round to fire. Either way it's bad because both problems can cause the round to fire before the bolt is completely in battery (fully forward with the lugs or locking mechanism engaged and the round fully supported by the chamber.) That can lead to the rear of the cartridge rupturing and venting burning propellant, usually into the magazine.

Interesting, I had heard about the cosmoline issues, but wasn't familiar with the issue with the hammer catch. I guess that is to be expected from combloc surplus. Thanks for the information.

It's definitely not widespread, but it's also not just an urban legend. It's pretty well understood how to intentionally recreate the conditions for a slamfire.

The slamfires happen when the firing pin sticks forward in the bolt due to some sort of contamination which isn't anything unique to the SKS. It's probably more commonly associated with the SKS just because so many people pick them up covered in cosmoline (preservative wax) and just fail to clean them properly. You could probably also do it by slathering oil all over the firing pin and then repeatedly operating the gun in dusty and dirty conditions without cleaning, but really at that point it's kind of on you. (E.g., no slam fires here despite filling the thing with mud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPL1gEqBk0s)

Take care of your tools and they'll take care of you. I've put many thousands of rounds through mine without issue, and I know a lot of people that own them because they're extremely cheap here and I've never run into anyone in meatspace that has experienced a slamfire. And even on the internet many people _warn_ about them, but relatively few claim to have ever experienced one considering how common the rifle is. That said, I still make sure mine is pointed downrange every time I chamber the first round from the magazine because it doesn't hurt to be extra cautious.

In all the rounds I've put through mine I've had exactly one failure. An old, corrosive surplus round manufactured in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. It seems to have expanded a little more vigorously than the usual round or something and got stuck in the chamber. Still fired correctly and the extractor did its job and... ripped a chunk out of the lacquered casing trying to pull it out. Had to pound it out through the muzzle with a brass rod.

They're pretty much what you'd expect out of a soviet russian firearm. Overbuilt, rugged, reliable in hands of an untrained peasant, and somehow no two came off the line the same.

What part of Texas did you say ?

LOL

Does a "low quuality" firearm just jam, or are you risking an explosion?

No explosion. Just occasional jamming.

Depends on the quality and what kind of bullet it's chambered for. Alot of them, such as https://youtu.be/zTvxFNRLbiw, are tourist souviners and not intended at all to ever be shot. This one would almost certainly explode.

In the US, AK47s are almost all semi-automatic. When you say AK47 are you talking about the original automatic kind?

Yup! Original fully automatic.

Wow, pretty cool that y'all can get such things. I just looked and it appears y'alls laws allow purchase of automatic weapons with a special license? That's a lot better than here where it could cost $20k+ due to supply being cut off in 1986.

Are you involved in the tech industry in Afghanistan or Pakistan? Is there a local software dev industry there? Would love to hear more!

I've never been to Afghanistan.

Yes! There's a big local software dev industry in Pakistan but i work remotely for foreign companies.

Are there any interesting software projects coming out of Pakistan that you are excited about, but maybe outsiders may not be so familiar with?

I am not OP but similar area. There's quite a few startups. These days is good as there is a fair bit of interest in funding projects.

A few that come to mind that have recently raised funding are Airlift (Ride sharing but more mass transit based), Tello Talk(localized mobile messaging), Eat Mubarak(Food Delivery), PriceOye(online ecommerce), Marham(telehealth), Bykea(main is Rideshare but bikes since traffic cannot stop bikes).

Eat Mubarak is a pretty good pun.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_Mubarak)

Mostly manufacturing. Pakistan, despite its poverty, is a gigantic market.

And endless human resources to man assembly lines.

Hey, if you're looking to find some and don't mind going through incubators and coworking communities, I could refer you to those in my network.

Hey Amin! It's nice to find you here. We exchanged a few emails about a year ago. I was looking for some advice. Thanks man! :)

Hey Arbab, I do, glad to run into you again :)

I read about the Khyber Pass area growing up and it sounds like such a beautiful place with a long and interesting (and unfortunately violent) history.

Do you think there will be a time in our lives that outside visitors will be able to see it? Do you think that would be good or is there more value in the almost globally unique degree of independence the area has maintained going all the way back before Alexander the Great?

Keep in mind I have no clue what the Khyber Pass is actually like except what I read, and I haven't even read too much.

You can visit anytime you want. Outside visitors do come all the time. It's not as dangerous as the media portrays.

Tourists used to visit these places all the time. But they stopped coming as much after 9/11. Nowadays it's pretty much normal and peaceful.

There are alot of foreign YouTubers who have made vlogs. You should check em out.

Is there any buzkashi in your area? Polo? Other equestrian sports? (for instance, similar or different to those in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24304267 )

Any knife/sword dances similar to the circassian https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108561 ?

Also, I have a question downthread looking for music recommendations...

Yes polo is also played but mostly in the chitral and gilgit areas.

Knife/Sword dancing is also a part of pukhtoon culture.

Regarding the music recommendation this[1] is one my favorite song. Also other songs from this band are awesome. Enjoy!

[1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ksJnzQKprzc

[2]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZywPW8t_kUA

Manana! Now I'll also have to look up Hamza Baba...

Two architectural questions about Thama (which spoke to me because the mountains there, as do those of Swat, remind me of my own):

- what are the ruins at 2:42? I would've thought they were english gothic...

- what is the structure at 5:33? My guess would be they are similar to our structures[1] (which I have also seen as far west as spain) meant to store and dry fodder (and incidentally dry and store meat for people). They can be seen at 0:34 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltXpMuH8SI4&t=34

(Is the peasant collecting material to build the walls of these at 2:50 in Hamza? Or are what look like sticks to me for something else?)

[1] Not only was it easier to move animals to feed than feed to animals in the olden days, but multiple independent stores were less susceptible to fire. In troubled times, as most bandits and taxmen stayed down in the bottoms of the valleys, their contents were also more likely to remain in the farmers' hands.

On the dance front, encouraged by arbhassan (and sidetracked by Nazia Hassan), so far I've found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E2zKi04Jek

> It's not as dangerous as the media portrays.

I strongly suspect that is a universal truth.

I am from India, and I’d love to explore that beautiful area one day. For several reasons, the historical importance of the region is one. So I had a couple of questions.

How safe is it for Indians to visit the Khyber region? I speak Hindi/Urdu with conversational fluency. Can I get by? What’s the best and shortest route to take to get there?

Thanks to HN, I am conversing with someone from a region which seems so remote its almost been mythologized here in India

> How safe is it for Indians to visit the Khyber region? I speak Hindi/Urdu with conversational fluency. Can I get by? What’s the best and shortest route to take to get there?

As an Indian citizen, it will be basically impossible for you to get a visa to Pakistan, especially to visit Khyber Pass.

Indians are only eligible for business, pilgrim or visitor visas to Pakistan. The pilgrim visa allows Indians to visit 15 sites in Pakistan for religious tourism.

The visitor visa is granted if you have close family members or friends in Pakistan and you can only visit a maximum of 5 cities for 3 months. More so, you will have to register and present yourself to the police every week I think.

If you have a citizenship of some other country, it does become easier but there will be an "eye" kept on you since both Pakistani and Indian governments are quite paranoid about each other's citizens being spies and visiting an area like Khyber Pass invites more suspiciousness.

When I went, there was special permitting required to go up the Khyber Pass but nothing for DAK. So assuming you can get a visa for the country, you should be able to reach DAK easily from Peshawar.

I think foreigners are banned from Kohat Tunnel

It's pretty safe.

I don't know about the visa details etc but being able to speak urdu/hindi fluently should be enough. No one's will be able to tell if you are an Indian as alot of people from Punjab province who speak Urdu and look like indians visit alot.

The locals will mistake you for being a Punjabi. :)

Lahori here, isn't Hindi obviously different from Urdu to the ear? Or is it similar enough to the locals that they can't tell?

I'm pretty sure they can't tell. Some younger ones who may have watched alot of Bollywood movies should be able to but almost no one knows if hindi is only exclusively spoke in India.

I am also from the area. I wonder how many Pakhtuns are on HN? Haha

Forgotten weapons, a YouTube channel that documents lesser known guns, has quite a few videos on khyber pass guns https://youtu.be/rZZTD3w_a5Q https://youtu.be/n5S_qmBL_KM https://youtu.be/zTvxFNRLbiw

His videos on "Chinese mystery pistols" are also quite good

I really like how Ian McCollum (host of Forgotten Weapons) discusses guns without glorifying them. He doesn’t seem to be a war or gun nut, and he doesn’t seem interested (or at least he presents no obvious interest) in violence, death, or destruction. It makes the videos enjoyable for me, as someone who finds the engineering, ingenuity, and historical context interesting.

He treats historical weapons like others treat historical watches. They're amazing feats of precision engineering with a bunch of interesting history attached to them. I was raised with an awareness of fire-arms, and although I'm definitely on the side of gun control and education, I really appreciate the engineering that goes into firearm design. Ian does a fantastic job of showing the design and engineering side, while explaining the history, and avoiding the glorification. Somewhat aptly, his nickname around the various fora is "Gun Jesus".

Both "Forgotten Weapons" and "In Range" are fantastic.

Forgotten Weapons introduced me to a lot of firearms history of which I was totally unaware.

Things like the Liberator[1] and 2-Bore rifles[2], although with the latter, I'm going to assume that you're hunting smaller naval vessels and/or low-rise buildings. Or you're looking for the fastest possible way to bruise the hell out of your shoulder, and want to set fire to a small pile of money at the same time.

In-Range -- which features both Ian from Forgotten Weapons, along with his co-host Karl -- does a lot of other interesting stuff. Tons of different shooting competitions, plus some informative Mythbusters-style segments.

My two favorites are the Shockwave vs Double-Barrel[3] and the mud tests of the AR[4] vs the AK[5] platform.

Both of those are worth watching, but if you want the tl;dr: (1) A double-barrel shotgun is a poor home-defense weapon, but the Shockwave is even worse in pretty much all cases; and, (2) the AR is a more reliable platform than the AK in real-world conditions.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CjndIiZyJo

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYlDgwo52tI

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYjThckYqBQ

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAneTFiz5WU

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX73uXs3xGU

VICE video from 2011 on the same gun markets of Pakistan, I started following VICE after I saw that video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FinRqCocwGE

Is it legal to make your own gun in most places? It's always been a fantasy of mine since I was a little kid, and I finally have the capital and attention span to do it.

Do people ever make non replicas? It would be unbelievably cool to design and Smith an a original weapon.

Totally my opinion - What does legal mean? It’s a relative term just like everything else. Yes there are cultures where “normal” definition of legal might not be adhered to but thst dosnt mean they don’t have laws. In some sense they live (and die ) by their own set of rules. And those rules and laws are as legal we might think of legal things in the west.

Where are you located? It's legal in much of the US, including California (although there are some legal hoops to jump through).

Take a look at the "Gunnit Rust" posts (particularly Tier I) on /r/guns for inspiration.

Thanks, I'm in the US. Will take a look.

I wouldn't suggest starting totally from scratch as a first project, so if you want something more challenging than an AR you might look into surplus parts kits. InrangeTV had a good series covering their CETME-L kits a couple years back.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Pakistan

> Gun laws in Pakistan allow for the wide ownership of firearms there. Only tribal areas of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa permits the ownership of heavy weaponry including the use of rocket-propelled grenades, short, medium, and long-range rockets, anti-aircraft guns, mortars, etc

I am suddenly very envious of Pakistan.

There’s no more tribal areas officially

Fortunately so

The obvious warning - be very careful if you intend to fire it, do your reading first, yadda yadda. It's legal in America, though some states restrict production of certain things. Yes, you can absolutely make a non-replica, but if you want to actually design your own weapon, I recommend reading Chinn's The Machine Gun which has most of the requisite mathematical details.

As far as AKs go, you can buy a receiver flat, barrel and the other parts and make your own. Sites like ak-builder.com, local gun message boards and enough people to have a build party will be enough to roll your own.

AK's are hands down one of the easiest guns to builds. You can build the receiver with fairly simple shop tools, basically a vice, something square like a piece of square tube and a drill. I have built several guns in my time, but I have always been in awe at how simple and functional the AK is. Someone once told me, cleverness is when a person takes something complicated and makes it as simple as possible. The AK is an absolute embodiment of that concept.

In most jurisdictions, there will be a single part that is legally the gun. That will be the main part that any licensing and registration will be attached to. In America it’s the lower receiver, but in some countries it’s the barrel. Once you’ve got the registered part, everything else can be purchased as parts. For the most part if it’s illegal to own, it’ll be illegal to buy as a part (e.g. unregistered automatic sears in America, or high capacity magazines in some states).

The one exception to this will be jurisdictions with restrictions on “assault weapons”, such as California. In these jurisdictions weapons become illegal based on their configuration; adding a pistol grip to a weapon with a removable magazine might make it illegal, for example.

As always, do your own research and ask a lawyer.

See also his post about the AK M4geries (a M4 lookalike with an AK action).

https://silahreport.com/2019/05/28/2663/

That's some incredible skill, especially with such limited tech.

Limited? When they say CNC, I'm imagining something like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfFtPFJWufs&t=170 but maybe I should scale down my expectations?

Edit: OK, not quite as fancy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj1qpAZf3yE

PS. arbhassan, any local music videos you'd recommend?

is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73kBQHabhoY&t=840 a good introduction? (knowing neither pashto nor arabic script, my search-fu is very weak)

Regarding the music recommendation this[1] is one my favorite song. Enjoy!

[1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ksJnzQKprzc

[2]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZywPW8t_kUA

Manana! Now I'll have to also look up Hamza Baba...

Qs about Thama: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24396951

Wow. I'm reminded of De Soto's "The Mystery of Capital" when I see examples of incredible skill and resourcefulness in regions that somehow remain underdeveloped.

The kid running in front of the guy shooting at 10:10 in the video gave me a little scare.

(My wild ass guess is that in the twenty-first century, as in the eighteenth, it takes far more[1] than SALW to mount an insurgency against regulars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZcz589tJ5Q

To me, the fetish for twentieth-century small arms among the various poorly-regulated US militia implies they're more likely to menace a poorly armed populace, or a BATF unit, than any of the well-regulated State units. Then again, as the affadavit above shows, using logic is not exactly the best way to predict these people.)

Any bets as to whether pakistan will join Oceania (as a commonwealth country) or Eastasia (in opposition to india)?

[1] US twentieth-century own goal: providing man-portable seeker missiles to a bunch of guys who had crazy ideas about visibility of women's bodies, alcohol consumption, and the relation between religion and state.

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