С днем рождения .....

... to the Автомат Калашникова образца 1947, a gun that made Mikhail Kalashnikov a household name worldwide. I don't usually post much about guns ..... but this one is different. The AK-47 Assault Rifle in many ways became something of an icon of the Cold War, a symbol of the global conflict between the United States in the West and the Soviet Union in the East. Cheap and easy to maintain, with zillions of them produced and shipped worldwide, it is perhaps the single-most-recognizable firearm in the world ..... it would be hard to find a day, any day, where a television news broadcast, does not include a story from some troubled corner of the globe - chances are someone, somewhere in the video is carrying and/or shooting an AK-47.

In a program on the Military Channel, experts were asked to pick the "Top Ten Combat Rifles" ..... their selection for #1 was the AK-47, calling it "a firearms legend that has probably inflicted more lethal results than any other single weapon system ever produced."

Also, check out this post on WorldBlog by NBC News Producer Yonatan Pomrenze. The ensuing discussion of the AK-47 (and a number of gun-if-not-story-related issues) makes for interesting reading, as well.