The gun
The author, a New York Times reporter, traces the invention and mass distribution of the AK-47 assault rifle, and its effects on war. He traces the invention of the assault rifle, following the miniaturization of rapid-fire arms from the American Civil War, through World War I and Vietnam, to present-day Afghanistan, where Kalashnikovs and their knockoffs number as many as 100 million, one for every seventy persons on earth. It is the weapon of state repression, as well as revolution, civil war, genocide, drug wars, and religious wars; and it is the arms of terrorists, guerrillas, boy soldiers, and thugs. From its inception to its use by more than fifty national armies around the world, to its role in modern-day Afghanistan, he discusses how the deadly weapon has helped alter world history.
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What Hacker News says
- If this article was interesting to you, I strongly recommend "The Gun", by C.J. Chivers.
It's a history of the "AK family of rifles", and the AK-47 in particular. It starts well before that, with the impact of automatic weapons on warfare in general, but quickly comes back to the development of the AK. It covers a lot of interesting details around the social, political, and technical environment that led to the creation of the AK and its development since.
From a US-centric political perspective, the author seems pretty obviously "anti-gun". That said, it's one of those rare books where the author's political perspective is pretty much irrelevant. It's extremely well-researched and well-written. It's honestly an enjoyable read if you're at all interested in history, politics, warfare, or industrial design.
- If you ever get the chance 'The Gun' by CJ Chivers is a fascinating history of the AK47 and its spread around the world.
- You might find "The Gun" but CJ Chivers very interesting. It covers the history you're talking about accurately and in depth.
- It was not open sourced. It was produced and stockpiled in enormous quantities by state militaries, the Soviet Union tended to license the blueprints instead of shipping examples to its satellites, and then when all the assorted states using it collapsed they lost control of their stockpiles.
A good book for the history of it is The Gun (https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734). Its essential point is that weapons of war are usually very durable goods, and outlive the geopolitical purposes for which they are produced and originally distributed. Kalashnikov-family rifles happen to have arrived in particularly unstable places.
EDIT: Weapons built by local forces tend to be more... idiosyncratic. Though compatibility with AK ammunition is a desirable feature. https://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/taliban-gun-locke...
Also, another example of this durability is the Humvees that have ended up in Syrian government hands after going through three different owners - US, Iraq, ISIS, Syria.
- "The Gun" by C.J. Chivers (https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734)
I read it not so much as a historical text but as a story about dramatic shifts in power attributed to technological advancement and strategy.
- "The Gun" by C.J. Chivers is about the history of the AK47 and how it changed war. The AK remains an affordable, durable piece of technology that anyone could use, and effectively do so with minimal training, while in the process disrupting structures of power.
