Kalashnikov (maker of the iconic AK-47) faces bankruptcy | Hacker News Reader

Kalashnikov (maker of the iconic AK-47) faces bankruptcy

theglobeandmail.com

18 pointschaostheory34 comments

I can't say I'm too sad about gun makers going bankrupt.

I guess this is OT but I will say it anyway... Humans will probably always want to kill each other, but humans will also continue to be lazy. When you have to knife someone to death, you get bored before you can do too much damage. When you have easy access to an assault rifle, you may kill more people than you meant to, because it's very very easy to quickly kill lots of people.

So less cheap assault rifles == less killing. And I'm for that.

(As for gun control, I am not really sure. Chicago has a totally unconstitutional law against guns in the city limits. But as a result, you rarely read about people being shot to death on the L... they just have their bags stolen or whatever. I think that is a good thing.)

Point taken, but this story doesn't really indicate that the small arms trade is in decline, just that "knock-offs" have reached sufficient quality levels that they are considered a viable alternative to an authentic product. Same thing that's happened to the auto industry, the software industry (with open source), etc. Guns have become a commodity product.

This has happened to a lot of other guns. There are tons of clones of the AR-15, the Walther PPK, the Dragunov SVD, and the 1911. These are just off the top of my head, so I'm sure there are others. The only reason Colt / Armalite isn't in the same position is probably because our military is way more active than Russia's. That, and AK-47's are notorious for being sold to developing nations, who probably want to maximize their bang for the buck (no pun intended).

What's interesting is that these companies have lower costs because they don't do any R&D like the original inventors do. With no money for research, nobody will invent a more efficient gun. Hopefully.

> With no money for research, nobody will invent a more efficient gun. Hopefully.

You don't have much experience with people.

Like I said in my first post, people enjoy killing each other... sure... but the urge to be lazy is even stronger than the urge to murder people that you don't like.

Then again, the urge to tinker for engineers is greater than the urge to be lazy, so weapons technology will likely improve regardless of the laziness of the general population.

Murderers, however, aren't the people who demand, pay for, or influence the design and manufacture of new weapons. The people who do are involved in a professional capacity, so I'm not sure how laziness applies either.

The only reason Colt / Armalite isn't in the same position is probably because our military is way more active than Russia's.

It's not just our military - dozens of countries import the M-16 and it's variants from Colt or manufacturers who've licensed the IP. There is also a sizable civilian market in the U.S. for AR-15 rifles.

I think there are a few big reasons for AK variants being more widely used than M-16 derivatives:

- 7.62x39 was made popular by the SKS and it made sense for the AK to be compatible. With that as the dominant round in many areas it makes sense to use a compatible rifle.

- The AK variants with stamped receivers are very inexpensive to manufacture.

- The gas piston system is more reliable for rifles that are not cleaned regularly.

The M-16 and derivatives are common within the US's sphere of influence though.

If your theory were true then looking back on history you'd expect to see an inflection point in the graph of killings per capita with the invention (and widespread production) of firearms. While these figures are difficult to come by, every indication seems to be that the opposite is true. (For example, do you live in a city with a wall around it? Why do you think not?)

The problem with weapons that take a lot of effort and/or training to use effectively is that they give the advantage to those who are most motivated to use them. And they make it difficult for people to both work productively in civilized society and take up weapons for their own defense. The historical result was a stark stratification of fighters and civilians, one of the key forces behind barbarism and feudalism.

As for gun control, the genie is more than a little out of the bottle, firearms are not a recent invention. What is more likely to discourage someone from going on a killing spree? The difficulty of illegally obtaining firearms? Or the likelihood that they will run into armed resistance during their spree? Given the predominance of mass shootings in "gun free" zones such as schools, it seems most likely that it's door number 2.

You are kidding yourself. Neither one of those is going to prevent mad person from going on a killing spree. Making sure mad man doesn't get a weapon in the first place will.

How do you do that? By making it illegal? Isn't murder already illegal? Don't you see a flaw in that line of reasoning?

Pearl, Mississippi 1997; Edinboro, Pennsylvania 1998; Appalachian School of Law 2002; Colorado Springs, Colorado 2007; Houston, Texas 2009. All of these places and dates correspond to killing sprees that were stopped by armed citizens. Feel free to search for the facts at your leisure.

I'm glad they were "stopped" by armed citizens. Maybe you would like me to add how many people were killed and wounded in process as well?

How many shooting sprees has Britain had since complete ban on firearms after Hungerford and Dunblane massacres?

"Six teenagers injured in London shooting", September 12, 2009. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6832121.ece

"Teenage boys held after double London shooting", Feb 16, 2009. http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE51F29O20090216

I'd bring up the 2002 Birkby arson that killed 8 people, but that didn't involve guns. So it's obviously irrelevant and not worth mentioning.

> Making sure mad man doesn't get a weapon in the first place will.

And how do you do that?

The most effective mass killers tend to use fire. (I'm surprised at how few people use cars to kill intentionally, but a demo may well change that.)

Rwanda reminded us that knives and clubs are quite effective.

I wasn't talking about any mass killers, I was explicitly referring to people with psychical problems. Firearms still seems to be their weapon of choice, won't you agree?

(btw, what mass killers have used fire?)

> I wasn't talking about any mass killers, I was explicitly referring to people with psychical problems.

Actually, you said "mad". It's unclear whether you meant angry or insane, but either way....

> Firearms still seems to be their weapon of choice, won't you agree?

Not at all. How about some meaningful evidence? ("The ones that I've heard about" isn't meaningful evidence.)

> (btw, what mass killers have used fire?)

McVeigh and Nichols used a fertilizer bomb. Julio Gonzalez used fire (Happy Land Social club - 104 dead). Humberto de la Torre killed 25 with fire. Rogelio Andrade & Allan Lobos killed at least 10, again, with fire.

Sadamichi Hirasawa managed to poison 10 people fatally during a bank robbery.

"But as a result, you rarely read about people being shot to death on the L..."

Yeah, they are just stabbed instead and since law abiding citizens can't own guns they are helpless to stop it.

There is a flipside to this. In my country murders are the highest in the world even though we have extremely strict gun controls.

The problem is that criminals often do not follow the (gun control) laws. And it therefore gives them an advantage (since they are sure that their opponents do not have guns). What also happens is that policemen and soldiers rent their guns or sell their guns.

You should bear in mind that guns are used for less than 50% of murders. The percentages of illegal guns used for this are much lower.

What often happens is that criminals target old people in rural areas. They are often seen as soft targets since they cannot put up physical resistance and they are far from help (police, neighbours, etc…). Our neighbour was murdered with an axe and a panga. I cannot help but think that guns would equalise this situation.

"However, Mr. Kalashnikov's design was never patented and the production agreements were largely handshake deals."

Well, what can I say? Bad luck?

From another article from 2007 - http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL06893771200707...

"People say: 'If you lived in the West you would have been a multi-millionaire by now.'"

"They get hung up on the green stuff, on dollars. But are there not other valuable things in life? Which of the Western weapons makers can say that a bronze statue of them has been built in their home village?"

What I find interesting about the AK is that it is also a logo. The product can be drawn in outline, and you still know what it is. That is the best type of product success.

See the Flag of Mozambique, for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Mozambique

When the Wikipedians say that it "is the only national flag in the world to feature such a modern rifle", it sounds like the Onion video of the faux Chinese minister beaming at the high cancer rates, proud of such a modern disease afflicting the populace.

Although less accurate than other machine guns, the AK-47 is easier to use and more durable. “It's simple, it's cheap, it's indestructible,” Mr. Kahaner said. “You can fix it with a coat hanger and a piece of gum. You can bury it for 10 years in the sand, pick it up out of the ground and it still works.”

You mean it keeps working forever?! How are we supposed to make money out of something like that?

Seriously http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47 has many interesting insights into the design and manufacturing history - given that it's basically a hybrid of the best bits of other guns, much of this information is transferable to other domains.

A friend of mine was shooting AK-47s in a shooting range in asia and he said it jams easily. Dunno how that fits in with "you can bury it for 10 years"

You can bury it for 10 years and afterwards, it will still jam easily.

While on the whole the AK is somewhat prone to jamming, much of that is related to the fact that most AK-47s are made very cheaply in badly equipped workshops not exactly adhering to the strictest of engineering standards. The basic strength of the AK-47 is not so much that it is an amazing rifle, as the fact that it doesn't get any worse by constant abuse.

That probably was a knock-off. I went through 6 months army training camp with one of those (the original), used it almost daily, and it did not jam once.

Good point, actually.

Alternative title: Kalashnikov discovers pirates, et al, unwilling to pay for intellectual property.

but it isn't their intellectual property because they have no copyright -- this design is in the public domain

Kalashnikov never got a penny from it. Izhmash being in trouble probably doesn't effect mister Kalashnikov in any way, so the headline is missleading.

One of the best AK clones, the RK-95 of finnish military is truly good quality, durable and simple weapon. If the barrel is well machined and good ammo is used this weapon is as accurate as any other to 150 yards.

Lots of cheap weapon out there means lots of unnecessary violence. Usually people who are planning a killing spree don't really mind second grade cheap guns and ammo. People who want to defend themselves are usually only satisfied with the best.

Alpha Blondy, who is a reggae artist from the historically war-ravaged West African country, Côte d'Ivoire, has a song called Kalashnikov Love -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgSkpRhP5nI -- which I think speaks to the sort-of mythical level of importance this gun has achieved in the developing world. It's a great song.

Sadly there are plenty of copycats who produce enough AK-47 guns to kill us off twice.

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