Revisiting the AK-47, part II

The prior post explained why the AK-47 has approximately four-times the destructive power of standard-issue police firearms. The destructive force of a firearm is the kinetic energy (measured in foot-pounds) it delivers to a target. Kinetic energy is a product of the weight and velocity of bullets expelled by the weapon.

This post provides a coda, by illustrating the destructive power of the AK-47 with a look at the only handgun on the planet that packs equal punch. Smith & Wesson has developed a .50 caliber revolver, purportedly for the big-game hand-gunner market. Three new cartridges have been developed for this 5-shot weapon. This picture shows that the powerful .357 Magnum round (left) looks puny by comparison to the most powerful of the new .50 cal rounds (right).

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You might recall that the .44 magnum round was made famous by Clint Eastwood. Note the "muzzle energy" ratings beneath each round (above). The .50 cal S&W delivers 2,600 ft-lb kinetic energy, slightly more destructive power than is produced by an AK-47 firing 150 grain bullets. So how big is the weapon that fires the new monster bullet? More than big enough to make Dirty Harry want a new gun:

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The only handgun on the planet that equals the AK-47's power is simply huge. Don't be mislead by the "assault rifle" tag. The AK-47 is a device for delivering a level of destructive force that no private citizen needs to possess. It isn't a hunting weapon and other types of firearms are more appropriate for personal defense, e.g., shotguns.

So-called militias, anti-government extremists and violent hate groups love the AK for its power and low cost. Eastern European AK's can be purchased new for as little as $600, about the same cost as a top-name handgun from manufacturers like Glock or Beretta. That's very little money considering the AK-47 packs four-times the punch of the typical handgun and provides the asymmetric firepower that recently killed two police officers.

The 43rd President wrongly allowed the assault weapons ban to lapse. TheRaven expects the 44th President to push comprehensive gun ownership reform in his second term. Expect a firestorm of rhetoric and threats that will make the tea baggers look like a church social. Watch for the lies, don't be confused between the right to bear arms and the non-right to pack more firepower than the police. The President does not intend to take away legitimate hunting and personal defense weapons, but he understands that reform is overdue.

The AK-47 and its kind have got to go.

Revisiting the AK-47

Two police officers make a routine traffic stop. They're both experienced officers. Moments later, they're both dead, murdered by an anti-government lunatic named Jerry Kane. This picture of the murdered officers was taken during an large drug bust that occurred before their tragic end.

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Jerry Kane was driving a white minivan registered to the House of Prayer, a "church" associated with white racist/extremists (TheRaven detests use of "supremacist" to describe pond scum). You can find an audio clip of Jerry interviewed on an Internet call-in show here. This clip is highly recommended, because it reveals much about Kane's state of mind. The first 8 minutes are devoted to Kane raging about two days of incarceration after he failed to produce required documentation for a routine traffic stop. His language is textbook extremism. A comic-book interpretation of law, no understanding of due process and consistent characterization of government, courts and law enforcement as "evil". He refers to the traffic stop as a "nazi checkpoint". The show moves on to Kane's stock and trade - purported advice to beleaguered homeowners.

The House of Prayer is located at 143 West Main Street, New Vienna, OH, in one of the store-fronts along the left-side of this picture. (Doesn't look much like Kabul, does it?)

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The murdered police officers are Sgt. Brandon Paudert (top picture, left) and Officer Bill Evans (right). They were 39 and 38 years old, respectively. The shootout occurred in West Memphis, Arkansas, on route 40. Kane and his son escaped but were cornered 90 minutes later in a nearby Walmart parking lot. They were both killed in a second shoot-out, in which two more officers were injured, one critically. An "unknown wildlife officer with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission", who was part of the manhunt, is credited for possibly saving the lives of both injured officers, here.

A New York Times article states that Kane has "a long police record" and notes that an expert on financial scams who has testified before Congress believes that Kane was perpetrating financial scams. The two-hour call-in show (which TheRaven listened to in entirety) supports this claim. An official of the Southern Poverty Law Center indicates that Kane's debt-avoidance scams are commonly used by racist/extremists to fund their operations. He also notes recent, sudden growth in the number of known racist/extremist groups. Kane's website can be found here and a series of his lectures begins here.

How could Jerry Kane, a white racist/extremist financial scammer with "a long police record", accompanied by a 16-year old boy, murder two experienced police officers during a routine traffic stop? Compared with the officer's side-arms, he had vastly superior fire-power. Jerry Kane had one or more AK-47's.

Why are semi-automatic rifles like the AK-47 more lethal than police-issue side arms?

There are two primary reasons:

1) The standard AK-47 magazine holds 30 cartridges vs. 15-17 for typical police side-arms (roughly twice as many)

2) Rifle cartridges pack orders-of-magnitude more explosive force than pistol cartridges. How this extra explosive force translates into destructive power is explained further on.

This picture of shows various types of pistol ammunition and one rifle cartridge (right side).

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The most common pistol ammo is 9 millimeter (9mm) and one of the most powerful is .357 Magnum. Both designations refer to the weapon's bore, i..e, ".357" means the bore is about one-third of an inch across. Note the size difference between the 9mm and .357 cartridges. Now compare both to the .223 round on the right. The .223 is similar to ammunition used by the AK-47, which is shown further on.

The projectile hurled by the cartridge's explosive charge is the actual "bullet". Bullets are measured by weight, in grains. The 9mm bullet above is a relatively light, 115 grain target round. The destructive power of a firearm is a function of the weight and velocity of its bullets. Bullet velocity is measured in feet-per-second (fps). Note the weights (GR) and velocities (f.p.s.) in this illustration of pistol ammunition.

 

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Pistol bullets generally range from 115 up to 200 grains (for .45 caliber) and average roughly 150 grains. A standard-issue 9mm hollow-point is exactly 147 grains. Pistol bullets generally travel at 900-1,200 feet-per-second. The next illustration provides comparable bullet weight & velocity information for several types of AK-47 ammunition. The illustration was obtained from a web site devoted to the AK-47.

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Note that AK-47 bullet weights are comparable to typical pistol ammunition but bullet velocity (2,365-2,800 fps) is more than twice the average for pistols. Similar weight bullets with more than 2x velocity translates to 4x the destructive power, measured by bullet kinetic energy, as shown in this table (obtained here):

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The call-in interview with Kane is two hours long. With the exception of one female caller, who reveals her education through vocabulary, it's a tour through the less-advantaged mindset that accords credibility to people like Jerry Kane. His grade-school metaphors, occasional biblical invocations and banal exhortations do not add up to genuine financial advice.

Kane repackages well-worn racist/extremist notions of anti-government resistance, for example, urging people to file police reports on recorders of deeds for "identity theft". He makes frequent reference to deeds of trust and power of attorney and refers to money as "FRN" (Federal Reserve Notes). His real message is that individuals win only if they "turn the tables" on their oppressors with false and outrageous claims. He urges several callers to bill banks for their personal time (in one case, a child welfare agency) and divines sinister purpose in double-entry bookkeeping. (TheRaven confesses surprise that racist/extremist rhetoric now encompasses double-entry bookkeeping). His argument for billing personal time is "...a lot of them (banks) will pay it if its just a tiny bit". Kane's limited use of language could only impress a high-school dropout.

The AK-47 web site has a top-10 list here. How can one weapon have a top-10 list? Because the AK-47 has been manufactured all over the world. American gun fanciers (the site sponsor is a Tucson gun shop) voted the Polish variant #1, with 1,029 votes, followed by models manufactured in Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and Hungary. It is both a bitter irony and a testament to the congenital ignorance of racist/extremists that they choose to express their notions of freedom with Soviet tools of oppression, which were made available to them through globalization and the triumph of democracy over Stalinism.

Two American police officers are dead because a textbook anti-government lunatic had access to greater firepower. Had he been armed only with a hand gun, odds are the tables would have been turned. There are lessons to be drawn from this tragedy:

1. Anti-gun advocates - all guns are not equal. Stop damning all guns and start picking your shots. Turn the tables on the gun nuts by advocating gun ownership under stringent new, national rules. Reveal the AK-47 as a symbol of anti-American hate and, if you want to help your country, learn some counter-intuitive PR skills.

2. New national rules - TheRaven outlined a seven point national program for legitimate gun ownership in an earlier post. Time to add the 8th requirement: no members of anti-government organizations should be allowed to keep or bear arms, based on the premise of the 2nd amendment.(They can vociferously exercise their 1st amendment rights, we'll keep the guns).

3. Not-for-profits associated with hate groups should be investigated - using a church as cover for racist/extremist activities begs for investigation pursuant to tax-status revocation, back-tax assessment and associated property forfeiture. If RICO plays here, let RICO run.

4. Upgrade police weaponry - New York City police officers carrying assault rifles have became a fairly common sight after 9/11. Highway patrol officers are, on a day-to-day basis, in greater danger. Let officers carry advanced weapons on traffic stops, especially in dangerous areas.

TheRaven salutes Sgt. Brandon Paudert and Officer Bill Evans.

Muslim Brandishes an AK-47 in Michigan

From a New York Times follow-up to the Hutaree bust, we learn that Matt Savino and his father, Jim Gulliksen, left, are Michigan Militia members. Mr. Savino provided a tip that led the authorities to fugitive Hutaree militia members. Mr. Savino, 34, is currently unemployed and was an assistant manager at a GNC nutrition store. He is a Navy veteran who converted to Islam in the late 1990s and believes that he is the only Muslim in the militia.

Estimates of statewide Michigan militia membership range from several hundred people to 500 or more. Mr. Savino and his father, also a Navy Veteran and  the local militia chapter’s chief executive officer say they have worked to distinguish the group from its past. “My goal is to get the militia name clean,” said Mr. Gulliksen, 60, who works as a manager in the paint and hardware department at the local Wal-Mart.

Perhaps they could begin by understanding the AK-47’s history.

“AK-47” is shorthand for “Avtomat Kalashnikova” (Kalashnikov automatic rifle), model of 1947. Mikhail Kalashnikov began his career as a weapon designer while in a hospital recovering from a war wound. The Kalashnikov assault rifle model 1947 proved to be simple and reliable and was adopted by the Soviet Army in 1949. Low manufacturing costs enabled the Soviet Union to supply client states with the AK-47. The Cold War saw the mass export of AK-47s by the Soviet Union and Communist China to pro-communist countries and groups such as the Nicaraguan  Sandinistas and Viet Cong.

The weapon has appeared in a number of conflicts including clashes in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. The AK-47 is now also made in Pakistan's semi-autonomous areas. The World Bank estimates that out of the 500 million total firearms available worldwide, 100 million are of the Kalashnikov family, and three-quarters of that number are AK-47s.

The AK-47 is included in the flags of Mozambique (left) and Hezbollah (below, yellow) and in Iranian Revolutionary Guards logo (below, blue) and has been used by nations and groups opposed to the United States, beginning with the Soviet Army, then Communist states during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The Soviet Union became the principal arms dealer to countries embargoed by the United States, including Syria, Libya and Iran. AK-47s have been more recently associated with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq and FARC guerrillas in Colombia.

Private ownership of fully automatic AK-pattern rifles was regulated by the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934. The Gun Control Act of 1968 ceased the import of foreign-manufactured fully automatic firearms for sale to civilians. An amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act in 1986 prohibited domestic manufacturing of fully automatic weapons for civilian use. Automatic weapons manufactured domestically prior to 1986 or imported prior to 1968 may be legally transferred between civilians.

The 1989 Semi-Automatic Rifle Import Ban and the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban specifically banned the AK-47 in the United States. When ban expired on September 13, 2004 due to Presidential inaction all domestically produced semi-automatic AK-47s became legal. The import of AK-47s with certain features is still banned. States such as California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have specific restrictions which effectively ban new purchases of many semi-automatic rifles.

Perhaps Mr. Savino and Mr. Gulliksen should ponder the 63 year history of the AK-47 and its use against United States armed services personnel in their quest to "get the militia name clean". They should reconsider their tacit endorsement of a weapon that appears on belligerent flags, as Mr. Savino appears in the picture holding a possibly made-in-America product that certainly represents anti-American hatred.