AK-47 vs M16: The Duel of the Last 60 Years

We investigate the iconic duel between Mikhail Kalashnikov’s AK-47 and Eugene Stoner’s M16, from the rice paddies of Vietnam to the backstreets of Lebanon, from Afghanistan to Iraq, and even to the suburbs of the West. There are two philosophies: a rustic, simple, and virtually indestructible weapon (AK-47) versus a light, accurate, and technologically advanced rifle (M16).
We follow their inventors, their contexts (USSR, Cold War, US industry), and then their global proliferation: licensing, proxy wars, post-USSR black markets, terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and child soldiers.
Here’s how the image of the two weapons has become imbued with political and cultural symbols, and how they have shaped conflicts and societies.

Director: Frederic Tonolli

The bloodiest duel in the last 60 years saw the Soviet AK-47,
and the American M16, face off. It was in Vietnam that America first
encountered its worst enemy, the AK-47. A gun bearing the name
of its inventor, Kalashnikov. Present and correct in every war,
every battle, every slaughter. The invasion of Afghanistan,
the Israeli-Arab conflict. Guerrilla skirmishes in Africa,
the wars in Iraq. Even in the suburbs
of Europe and the United States, Kalashnikov and M16 were locked
in a tussle for world dominance. The rustic, easy-to-use AK-47,
created by Sergeant Mikhail Kalashnikov, outclassed Eugene Stoner’s
modern, sophisticated M16. At the height of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov was the weapon
that symbolized the Soviet bloc. A veritable legend
associated with every revolution, whereas the M16 armed those dictatorships
supported by the United States. It would seem that someone
who had designed a weapon that was one of the two weapons
that were now the most famous in the world and used against each other, would feel shame
that something that you’ve designed could be so deadly and would kill people. When you design this, in your mind, you are thinking that your country
needs this gun to protect itself and that it will never be used
against innocent people. This footage is already 25 years old. His name is Mikhail Kalashnikov. His gun, the AK-47 that bears his name. Kalashnikov. He has no regrets, he says, as he invented this weapon
to defend his motherland, the USSR. Eugene Stoner is the father of the M16,
the American answer to the Russian gun. One Russian and one American. Two players in the most deadly duel
of the last 60 years. Thank you. Weapons know no frontiers,
neither geographical nor social, nor religious, nor even sexual. In Kurdistan, women have adopted
the Kalashnikov to defend themselves laterally against the troops
of Saddam Hussein, presently against
the religious crackpots of Daesh. Here’s a propaganda postcard of Daesh women
posing with the American M16. These women bear
their arms with our blood. They no longer know how to love. They’ve lost their tenderness
and their humanity. This photo is nothing but propaganda. Daesh took it for its propaganda arsenal. In reality,
these women are trained to kill and do so by blowing themselves up. [Kurdish spoken audio] I freely admit
that ever since my childhood, I have loved the Kalashnikov. It’s exactly the same love
I have for my child. It is my friend,
and it accompanies me always. [Kurdish spoken audio] I love my Kalashnikov dearly,
because since my childhood, I’ve understood
that it was there to save my freedom. [Kurdish spoken audio] They are students,
doctors, and housewives, but they’re also Peshmerga, which in Kurdish means
those who confront death. They’ve come to haunt their adversaries, men convinced
that they won’t go to Paradise if they are killed by a woman. In the United States,
it is enshrined in law. The Second Amendment
authorizes every citizen to keep and bear arms, so carrying, collecting,
and using a Kalashnikov or an M16 is all just part of American daily life. The M16 series rifle has been
the longest-serving US small arm in history,
with over 50 years of service. That has been because of its adaptability
to the modern battlefield, from the jungles of Vietnam
to the deserts of Iraq. Christopher Bartocci owns
one of the finest collections of M16s in Texas, from the first model used in Vietnam, to the version
made for Desert Storm in Iraq. He has them all. This rifle has perhaps
the finest human engineering of any battle rifle
on the market right now. After over 50 years, it still does. Maybe. It’s a gem of technology,
light and precise. A weapon of the all-powerful America. However, it disputes its world dominance
with a fearsome adversary, the Russian AK-47. The story of Mikhail Kalashnikov
can be read in the archives of the newspaper,
Krasnaya Zvezda or Red Star. The son of farmers
deported by Stalin to the Gulag, young Kalashnikov had but one dream,
mechanical engineering, and one ambition
to make farming machinery of all kinds. However, his fate was changed by the war. A staff sergeant, he was commanding a tank when he was seriously
wounded in October 1941. It was heartbreaking for him. [Russian spoken audio] Several times, he said: “But for World War II,” “I’d have invented
something else entirely.” [Russian spoken audio] He could have invented something
that was economically very profitable. In any case, the name of Kalashnikov
would have become famous not as the creator of a machine gun, but as the creator of another
internationally competitive product. He had a gift for it. At the hospital, the wounded talked to him
about the superiority of the German guns, and in particular,
their machine gun, the StG 44. Kalashnikov
duly dismantled and studied it. He became obsessed
with creating the perfect weapon for the defense of his motherland. He didn’t attend university. He couldn’t draw but had
a very imaginative way of thinking. [Russian spoken audio] He would think, build his interior vision, take his decision,
and then try to execute it. He used to say over and over again
that soldiers don’t have degrees, so he built a simple gun, a soldier’s gun. In 1947, Mikhail Kalashnikov
finally presented his prototype, codenamed Avtomat Kalashnikov. The AK-47 was born. A recipient of the Stalin Prize, he was sent
more than 1,000 kilometers from Moscow to the arsenals of the city of Ijevsk, a closed city, not found on the maps. In the summer of ’49, when the Soviet General Staff
chose the AK-47 as the standard issue gun
for the Red Army, mass production of the most deadly weapon
of all time could commence. We worked round the clock,
three eight-hour shifts. We produced 600 guns per year. It always conjures up
the image of a river. The conveyor belt was a river
in which machine guns floated, and all of them worked. It was so well-manufactured
that you could dismantle ten of them, change all the components around, and reassemble ten guns
that would function perfectly. Kalashnikov’s mechanical genius
could be summed up in a few words. Rustic, simple, and solid. The gun had to be resistant
to cold, heat, sand, mud, and water. With its banana-shaped magazine
and its 30 bullets, the gun weighed five kilos
and 117 grams of steel and wood. It boasted a cyclic rate of fire
of 600 rounds per minute. The AK-47 was a revolution,
the perfect weapon for modern warfare. The 1950s were the most intense period
of Kalashnikov production. [Russian spoken audio] That’s because our army needed them, and other countries that had heard of them
were demanding them too. [Russian spoken audio] An enormous throng is massed
in Beijing Square of Heavenly Peace. In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev,
who had succeeded Stalin, gave Mao Zedong’s communist China
the AK-47 license and assembly blueprints. Here is displayed
the totalitarian showmanship that first became familiar in Rome. At the height of the Cold War, the world was divided
into two blocks, West and East. The Kalashnikov and its assembly plants
were also distributed throughout the sister countries
of the Warsaw Pact. The Kalashnikov became the weapon
that symbolized the Communist bloc. This weapon, the Kalashnikov, appeared at a time when the world order
of olden days was collapsing. We were fighting for freedom,
for a new life, for a new world. We were fighting with this gun,
the one built by Kalashnikov. In January 1964, Fidel Castro was received
in the USSR like a bosom buddy. An elk hunt was held with a hunting rifle
for Khrushchev and Kalashnikov for Castro. It was a clear message. Cuba was an ally at the gates of America and America within range of guns
such as the Kalashnikov. It was a time for gifts and feasting. Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea. All anti-colonialists and anti-American,
received their Kalashnikovs. The price of their friendship. The United States took more than ten years
to come up with a riposte to the Kalashnikov. It was called the M16. On the American end,
we are a very highly technical society, a very industrialized society. With this rifle,
we made use of modern materials. Rather than wood and steel, this was revolutionary with the use
of synthetic materials and aluminum. The designer of this rifle
was Eugene Stoner. His background
was in the aerospace industry with the use of aircraft-grade aluminums. This rifle was always considered
to be space-aged. In 1954,
aeronautical engineer George Sullivan set up a small company, Armalite. He invited Eugene Stoner, a young metalworker
with no university baggage, to join him as chief engineer. Their idea was to make guns
rather like they make planes. The first prototypes of the future M16 were assembled
in Sullivan’s factory in California. Stoner was very casual,
and he had a very good sense of humor. His background, he too,
had no college degree in any university. He had been a machinist, but what was called
a tool and die machinist, which is very special and exacting work. Stoner’s stroke of genius
was a revolutionary gas recovery system that avoided the use of a heavy piston. Made of plastics, glass fiber,
composite materials, and aluminum, the finished product
broke all weight records and tipped the scales at 3.12 kilos. The new M16 was a gun unlike any other. It was just too new
for a lot of people to be able to grasp. The result was the army at the time, all US military weapons
were made at US arsenals. The M14 was made by the army at Rock Island Arsenal,
Springfield Armory. They wanted to keep those businesses open
as people’s ranks and jobs depended on it, so they told the army
that there was no use for the M16 rifle. Despite positive tests, the M16 wasn’t picked
for economic and political reasons. The Marines arrived in Vietnam
equipped with old M14 guns. This marked America’s first encounter
with the Kalashnikov, and it came as a shock. The fearsome firepower, the AK-47,
stunned the young Marines. I turned 18 and landed in Vietnam. My older brother, my father,
and my stepbrother were all Marines and all in Vietnam as well. The first time
I heard of the Kalashnikov, the AK-47, was about three or four days
after I got in the country. We opened fire first, and that’s the first time
I knew what that weapon was. This sound was extremely excruciating
and distinctive. Our weapon was bang, bang, if you will. Their weapon was kak, kak, kak,
and it was a totally eerie sound. Quite frankly,
as an 18-year-old, very scary. With hundreds of thousands of units
donated by the Soviet Union and China, the AK-47 was adopted
by Vietnamese farmers. Instructors quickly turned it
into a fearsome weapon. The duel between East and West,
between Kalashnikov and M16, was played out in the jungles
and paddy fields of Vietnam. The weapons were brought in
via the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a 2,000-kilometer lifeline
through the mountains and jungles. Thousands of men, and in particular women, were employed to transport
45 tonnes of material, and the Kalashnikovs
needed to arm the Viet Cong resistance. To combat the AK-47, in 1964, the Pentagon placed
an urgent order for 100,000 M16s. In the general rush,
and for reasons of economy, no user manual
and only a very basic cleaning kit were planned for the new M16s. This situation made
the Marines think that their gun only required a minimum of maintenance. The arrival of the M16 on the battlefield
restored the balance between the forces. In battle, it proved to be more precise
than the Kalashnikov, but very soon, the tough conditions
of jungle mud and humidity laid bare the main weaknesses of the M16. When I was in Vietnam, we captured a couple of weapons,
which were the AK-47s. You could drag AK-47s through the blood
and beer, it would still fire. If the M16 got a little wet or wasn’t oiled, it would jam on you. You had to maintain your M16 very well. That’s why I used to say it was my baby. You had to make sure
it was oiled and clean. You had to ensure
you kept your muzzle protector on it so that it wouldn’t get any sand or dirt. With the AK-47, all the sand, all the dirt,
all the mud, everything else, that weapon would continue to fire. In late April 1967,
the Marines saw action near Kazan. The men had just been issued
with brand-spanking new M16s. The battle for the hills
was turned into carnage, with 150 Marines killed
and several hundred more wounded. The unthinkable had happened. During the fighting, close to 40 percent
of the M16s jammed and stopped firing. The breech blocked. Some officers even asked their soldiers
to prepare to fight with bayonets. They had so many problems with the M16
that some officers wrote letters in, including Generals, saying they would prefer to carry
the North Vietnamese AK-47 than M16s. They saw the AK being used by basically illiterate guerrillas
and conventional soldiers who had had very little training, and didn’t take very good care
of the weapon usually, because of the environment they lived in, the jungle with all the heat,
humidity, rain, mud, and dust. However, it always functioned. No one ever picked up
a jammed AK-47 off the battlefield. For the Marines,
the hangover was dreadful. An openly derisive rumor did the rounds, saying that M16s
weren’t in fact, made by the Colt factory but by the toymaker Mattel. The boys had lost confidence
in their weapon and in America. I was shocked when I read this,
and ashamed. I felt very bad. When you design something
that maybe is for food for the soldiers, and they don’t like it, that’s one thing, but when they get killed
because of the gun, the instrument isn’t good enough,
then you feel ashamed. A young lieutenant, Mike Chervenak,
decided to alert public opinion, even if it meant defying his superiors. I feel it’s my duty and responsibility
to report the truth about this rifle as I’ve seen it. My conscience
will not let me rest any longer. During a recent fight on the 21st of July, no fewer than 40 men
in my company reported to me that their rifles had malfunctioned
because of failure to extract. It’s written out of concern
for the safety of the men in my company and the great morale problem
that the M16 causes. I will stand and stake my reputation
on the fact that we’ve had men wounded and perhaps killed
because of inoperative rifles. Several copies were sent out
to Senator Robert Kennedy, The Washington Post, and the chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, Richard Ichord. As this began happening
over and over again, reports moved very quickly
to military command, and then, ultimately,
reports found their way into the halls
of the United States Congress. The reports indicated
that the weapon system had major problems. Some of those reports even got read into the United States
Congressional Record, where family members
wrote their congressional representatives and their senators saying:
“My son was killed in the Hill battles.” “His life was lost,
and his friends wrote to me to tell me” “that he died because his M16 rifle
failed on the battlefield.” In October ’67, the Ichord Subcommittee
published a 51-page report whose conclusions were damning. The senators talked of criminal negligence and even of collusion
between the military arsenals and the Colt firm
for using, through greed, munitions unsuited
to the proper functioning of the M16. Stoner and his team were exonerated. First, the rifle was changed. There were two different propellants
used in Vietnam. The rifle was designed
around a propellant called IMR, or Improved Military Rifle. This caused the rate of fire
to be around 600, 650 rounds a minute on the rifle. Without discussing with the designers,
the army decided to go with ballpowder, which they traditionally have used
since World War II and World War I. They had major surpluses
of this propellant. They switched to it
without actually qualifying the rifle. Criminal negligence, knowing that it won’t cycle properly
with the ammunition that it was being issued in combat, the army would rather
deal with that problem just to get production of the rifles out. In the committee’s first symbolic measure, a maintenance manual
in the form of a comic book was published for the Marines. What better way
to learn to clean your rifle, than advice
from a curvaceous cartoon pinup? Everybody had a name for their weapon,
pretty much everybody in the country. Mine was a simple Betsy. I swear by the weapon. It was part of us. It wasn’t just a gun,
but it was part of us. It was very much a part of the family. The improvements
made to the M16 were legion. The chamber and barrel
were chrome-plated to combat rust, and a new powder was used,
but nothing could do the trick. Even though it wasn’t the cause,
the M16 lost the Vietnam War. Saigon fell on April 30th, 1975. An army of peasants with Kalashnikovs
had conquered the all-powerful US army. It was no longer a retreat,
it was a debacle. For a period of time, the AK-47 became a legend that was associated
with revolutionary movements around the world, specifically Marxist
revolutionary movements. In Santiago, Chile, a crowd
has gathered to celebrate the victory of Salvador Allende
in the 1970 presidential elections. Here, he is receiving his friend,
Fidel Castro. With Cuba,
Chile became the second country in the South American continent
to fall under Marxist influence. A Red stain in America’s backyard. Fidel Castro gives a Kalashnikov
to his comrade in the struggle, a gift with a symbolic value. I think we have to look
at the United States when it had direct military programs
in countries like South America. You see South Americans
and their police carrying M16s. You see any number of countries where the United States
is backing a dictator. The United States supports where you look at a dictatorship. The coup d’etat took place
on the morning of September 11th, 1973. Encouraged by the CIA,
the Chilean military junta, led by General Pinochet
attacked the presidential palace. The last known photograph
of the president, still alive, surrounded by his bodyguards, he is holding the Kalashnikov,
given by Castro. During the attack,
President Allende was murdered, though they called it suicide,
with his own Kalashnikov. The repression was terrible. More than 300,000 people were arrested, tortured, executed,
and as the prisons were full, the stadiums were filled
under the guard of M16s. In the mid-1970s, the war between the M16
and the Kalashnikov found a new front in Lebanon. M16s for the Israeli army, the Lebanese army,
and the Christian militia. Kalashnikovs for the Syrian troops, the Shiite militia,
and the Palestinian OLP. In this urban war, the weapons wielded are a badge
of political and religious affiliation. Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine
Liberation Organization declared, I come bearing an olive branch in one hand and the freedom fighter’s gun
in the other. Do not let the olive branch
fall from my hand. To maintain peace at the UN’s behest, 200 French paratroopers
landed in Beirut in April 1978. Their mission was to intervene
between the Israeli army and the Palestinian fedayeen
in South Lebanon. The French army
made its first acquaintance with the Kalashnikov
on the evening of May 1st. It was a deadly encounter. We clashed with a group
and three of them broke away. They were armed with Kalashnikovs. A Palestinian officer
tried to calm them down, and so did I, but they immediately
cocked their rifles and opened fire. The three guys opposite me
were armed with Kalashnikovs, and they fired all together,
simultaneously. Two paratroopers were killed instantly. Colonel Salvan, seriously wounded, was evacuated
by helicopter to a hospital in Gaza. Colonel Salvan,
head of the French Blue Helmets in south Lebanon, is over the worst. At least, that’s his verdict. This paratrooper officer
had been shot ten times in the legs. Depending
on the various surgeons treating me, I took between 18 and 12
from the soles of my feet up to my nose, which was injured once again. I probably felt
the hand of God on me that day. In Moscow, statues in parks
are a reminder to passersby of the Russian soldiers
who died in combat in Afghanistan. I was in Afghanistan
for over two years, from 1984 to 1986. I spent the two years
clutching my Kalashnikov. I would never say
that it was just an inanimate object. I owed my existence, my life,
and those of my friends to that object. There’s no doubt that there was an intimate communication
with the Kalashnikov. From the start,
consciously or subconsciously, it was, don’t let me down, darling,
help me out here. That was the strength of it. Sure of its power, the Red Army entered Afghanistan
on December 24th, 1979. Its mission was to support
Kabul’s communist regime. Mikhail Kalashnikov
paid a surprise visit to the front. He wanted to evaluate
his weapon, the new AK-74, in the field amongst the soldiers. When our soldiers went to Afghanistan, they fought the enemy with this weapon,
and then came and talked to him. For an inventor, it was a great moment,
but he was always asked for their remarks. It was part of his perfectionism. [Russian spoken audio] He always said: “Soldiers have no diplomas
and I created a soldier’s weapon.” However, I think it was a soldier
who created a soldier’s weapon. If I’m asked to compare
the Kalashnikov and the M16, my first impression
was that the M16 rifle was a young lady who was fairly capricious,
delicate, and irritable. [Russian spoken audio] As for the Kalashnikov, he’s a poor, stern Russian peasant
who does his job in such a way, that whoever stands in his way
will pay the price. That’s my view of these weapons. The future of the war in Afghanistan
was played out in the United States, with the CIA holding the controls. They looked to arm the Afghan resistance,
and with perfect cynicism, they chose the Kalashnikov
rather than the M16 to defeat the Soviets. There was a conscious decision
to arm the Afghans to use Kalashnikovs. A lot of these Kalashnikovs were simply
recycled through several arms dealers and ended up in Pakistan. What we didn’t want on the Kalashnikovs
is any American fingerprint, literal or otherwise,
and certainly not the serial numbers. There was a revenge factor because you had the Soviet Union
handing out Kalashnikovs, for instance, in Angola, and we were simply turning
their national resistance movements against them. Now, we were saying: “Here are your weapons back,
have a good time.” On the Afghan border in Pakistan, the CIA, with the help
of the Pakistani secret services and the financial backing of Saudi Arabia, organized the delivery of weapons
to the training camps. Osama bin Laden,
working for the Americans, was in charge of recruiting men
to fight the Soviets. In an irony of history, bin Laden, a tool of the CIA, was executed in 2008
by American commandos armed with M16s. Bin Laden still had his trusty Kalashnikov
by his side. Along with Kalashnikovs, the Americans also delivered
Stinger missiles to the Afghan rebels. The Red Army soon lost its mastery
of the skies and with it, the war. I think that Afghanistan
was the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. There are a lot of reasons
why the Soviet Union collapsed. One of them was the sheer expanse of the war in Afghanistan. It wasn’t heavy weapons
that beat the Russians. It was the Kalashnikov, their own weapon. On February 15th, 1989, ten years after its arrival,
the Red Army, defeated, left Afghanistan. In a terrible domino effect,
the Berlin Wall fell, and the USSR collapsed. In the post-Soviet chaos,
the doors to the arsenals were opened, and huge stocks of Kalashnikovs
became available to the highest bidder. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a large surplus
of these weapons. They were both sold legitimately,
as well as criminally, to the black market. These weapons
wound up in places such as Africa or the Middle East terrorist groups. Anybody who could buy them. There was a black market,
and they could sell them cheaply. In a wholesale sell-off, millions of weapons awaited a customer,
but a few were M16s. Their names were Bount,
Sogonaian, Falcon, and Minin. They were Russian,
Lebanese, French, and Ukrainian. All merchants of death. The most powerful,
an American, was Samuel Cummings. I’m optimistic
because I’m an optimist by nature, but also because I have always believed, and I have no reason
to change that opinion, that the military arms business
is based on human folly, not on human wisdom. We can both agree that human folly
has never been measured and has always existed and always will. The El Dorado of arms dealers was Africa. An annual market of five billion dollars. Smuggled in with fake certificates,
these weapons fueled the civil wars. Dollars, diamonds, gold, and minerals
bought all these Kalashnikovs. There were almost 300,000 child soldiers. For them, a light, easy-to-use
AK-47 was the ideal weapon. Shena was just nine years old
when she was kidnapped by the NRA, a Ugandan militia. Today, her daughter is the same age. I remember always shooting with this gun,
you can never forget. It becomes a stamp on your body, your life, and your memory. You will never forget the sound of this gun. It has a very special sound
and it’s very strange. When you hear this gun shooting, you can always tell
whether it has shot something or it has shot in the air by the different sounds of this gun. Child soldier! He’s a child soldier! We were told that
you had to love your Kalashnikov like it was your mother,
that’s how they put it. Love this gun like it was your mother and love this gun
more than you love yourself. Instead of losing this gun they said, it’s better you lose yourself. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
declared in 2001: “You can buy an AK-47
for 15 dollars or a sack of grains.” “It is easy to use with minimal training,
even a child can use it,” “and it will last for decades.” [Pidgin spoken audio] This gun is responsible
for taking away our childhood, which we will never get, and for taking our memory and history. We’ve lost our childhood friends. We have lost our parents. I have nobody left because of this gun. I think Mikhail Kalashnikov should know but it’s too late for him to have never created this light weapon
that any child can carry. In 1989, Mikhail Kalashnikov,
a simple sergeant, was still an engineer at the plant
where they made his weapon. He was earning
less than 500 dollars a month and still living
in the same two-room apartment when an article in the American press
changed his life. I have the rank of colonel,
and it really was thanks to the Americans. One day, they wrote that a simple sergeant
armed all the Warsaw Pact countries. Therefore, my superiors reacted
and I found myself promoted to colonel. [Russian spoken audio] For Kalashnikov,
it was a year of surprises. Freshly promoted to colonel, he received an invitation
from the United States. The Soviet government improbably accepted. Eugene Stoner, the creator of the M16,
welcomed his arch-rival, Kalashnikov. When Eugene Stoner and Kalashnikov met,
they became friends, which may seem unusual because of the antagonism
between the two countries. Russia and the United States
were bitter enemies during the Cold War. With the Cold War forgotten, the duel was transformed
into a friendly shooting competition. The American Stoner shouldered the AK-47, while Kalashnikov,
the Russian colonel, fired the M16. Once rivals, they were already friends. Let’s get together again real soon. I’m ready for the new meeting. Perhaps we can collaborate
on a new design. [Russian spoken audio] I agree, we could work on it together. The NRA or National Rifle Association would have been thrilled
by such a collaboration. Here in the land of the Second Amendment,
200 million weapons are in circulation. The darling remains the M16. It is even nicknamed Barbie Doll. However, with 200,000 units sold annually, the Kalashnikov AK-47,
formerly the weapon of Communists, is now a bestseller
on the American market. One of the key reasons why
it’s so popular is its cost efficiency. It’s not very expensive to begin with. This one specifically is 665 dollars, whereas an M16-type rifle
generally is going to be somewhere in the realm of 1,200
to 1,500 to 2,000 dollars. The reality is that Hollywood
has produced the image of an AK-47 as a very frightening weapon. In my opinion, it produced a desire
for some of these criminals and thugs to have those same weapons because they think it’s cool
based on what they’ve seen in Hollywood. In Hollywood,
the Kalashnikov was winning the image war. It walked off with the Oscar
for the most frightening weapon. Here, 30,000 people die each year, mown down by a bullet
from one of the five million M16s and Kalashnikovs in circulation. Now, I’m an M16 fan and I collect M16s. I have a number of them,
over ten of them, in fact. In the aftermath of the hurricane,
living in downtown New Orleans, where all law and order
had fallen to the wayside and people were carjacking and looting, this is the firearm
that I chose to carry on me. I can testify
to one important thing about the AK-47. This specific one particularly. That is that
when potential evildoers encountered me on the streets in New Orleans
in the aftermath of that hurricane, and they saw this, they immediately
got away from me as fast as they could. Just the sight of an AK
made them leave me the hell alone. Kalashnikov would say
terrorists aren’t stupid. They choose the best weapons. Gangs in Marseilles
to defend their territory in turf wars, also chose the Kalashnikov, an easily available weapon,
unlike the M16. Kalashnikovs came mainly
from the former Yugoslavia. That’s the simple explanation. Yugoslavia was in a state of unrest
in the early 1990s with conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia. They built up an enormous stock
of weapons of war at that time. When the fighting ceased,
everyone took an inventory. They kept a few weapons
thinking the fighting might start again but they also sold massive quantities. A Kalashnikov that’s now in Marseille
in the hands of a teenager, might already have murdered in Srebrenica or killed an innocent civilian
during the siege of Sarajevo. Guns have no memory. With the war over, the former soldiers
organized an export business. Private cars, coaches and trucks
were the most discreet way of passing the border. A traffic of worker ants
using every available crossing point. In January 2007, a secret arsenal
was discovered in three cachettes in Bouches-du-Rhone and Var. Fifty-one Kalashnikovs,
submachine guns, revolvers. In all, close to 200 weapons. Directing the traffic was Zvonko Lukic,
a Croatian ex-serviceman. Buying a Kalashnikov does cost a bit more. If you want a good-quality weapon
on today’s black market, you’re looking at 2,500 and 3,000 euros. With that, you’ll usually get
one or two charges of 30 bullets. If you find a 500 Euro Kalashnikov,
it’s in a poor state, or there is plenty of blood on the butt. I can’t look at an AK-47 without thinking
of the Beslan school massacre. I can’t look at an AK-47
without thinking of Charlie Hebdo. I can’t look at an AK-47
without thinking of Osama bin Laden. Now, because of the global proliferation
of the Kalashnikov design, every little radical around the world
who can get their hands on this can etch their name
into the log of history by simply taking human lives. January 7th to 9th, 2015. The Kalashnikov
sowed waves of horror in Paris. Amedy Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers
murdered 17 people in the editorial offices
of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and in a kosher grocery in Vincent. On November 13th,
other lunatics, allegedly from Daesh, murdered 130 innocents. The signature on all these massacres
was Kalashnikov, the weapon of terror. The Kalashnikov, the weapon of choice
of religious and other terrorists, is also the weapon of civil wars. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea,
Ukraine has been plunged into a war between loyalist forces
and separatists backed by Moscow. All of those entrenched on the front line
are sustained by the same God, all speak the same language, and all kill each other
with the same gun, the Kalashnikov. A fratricidal war
that divides neighbors, friends, and even members of the same family. You could call it
the curse of the Kalashnikov. I know several families where a son set off with his Kalashnikov
to fight with the Ukrainian army, while the father went with his Kalashnikov
with the separatists. Families, pitting father against son, the same blood with the same guns,
Kalashnikov rifles. At the military cemetery in Quantico,
near Washington, Kalashnikov has come to honor
his rival and friend, Eugene Stoner, with a final visit. Different in every way, Stoner became a multimillionaire,
thanks to the patent on his M16. Kalashnikov
simply gave his name to his gun. Their heritage is massive and monstrous. Ten million M16s
and 100 million Kalashnikovs. Weapons that have escaped
their creators to feature in every war and in every slaughter. The old era of looking at the AK-47 as a symbol of revolution,
I believe, is over with. When most people look at the AK-47 now, they see it, I believe, as a symbol
of a destructive ideology, of terrorism, of an ideology that is being destroyed
by law and order, and law and order carries the M16 now. Now, they’ll be behind the fire. On September 11th, 2001, the Twin Towers collapsed in New York. America was struck at its heart, and the M16
would be the weapon of vengeance, tasked with reestablishing law and order,
Pax Americana. They set off for Afghanistan, and where the Soviets
with their Kalashnikovs had lost the Battle of Kabul, the Americans thought
they could win it with their M16s. That’s one thing that we saw,
fighting in the desert, it’s just harsh. It’s hard territory. It’s the harshest environment
I’ve ever been in. Our M4s tended to go down a lot. You get a little bit of dust in there
and they’d go down. They’d jam up or they’d overheat. Whenever we went up
against the AK-47 Kalashnikovs in Iraq and Afghanistan, you definitely did have respect for it. We understood
that it was a very powerful weapon. I had friends that were shot by AK-47s
and seeing what it did to you, you had to have respect for it. Respect and disillusionment. Ten years of fighting ended in failure
for the all-powerful US army. The Taliban and their Kalashnikovs
resisted the American M16s throughout. Since the time of Alexander the Great, no army, not the troops
of the British Empire, the Soviet Union, or those of the United States, have been able to conquer
and subdue the Afghans. After Afghanistan, the Star Spangled Banner
was hoisted in Baghdad. Operation Iraqi Freedom was a success. Saddam’s Kalashnikovs
could do nothing against the M16s of the over-equipped US troops. As the price of his arrogance, the bronze statue of Saddam
was cast to the ground. Though the M16 thought
it had won the Battle of Iraq, it has still not won the war. In this urban guerilla combat, the rebels’ Kalashnikovs were a reminder
that peace could only be won down the barrel of an M16. However, in ambushes or surprise attacks, carrying an M16
is no guarantee of safe passage. We have a symbol that every soldier knows, and that’s when
a fallen soldier is remembered. We put a helmet on top
of an M16 next to his boots. The reason why we do that,
the helmet is his protection. His weapon is his baby, and the boots,
no cowboy dies without his boots. On December 18th, 2011,
the American forces pulled out of Iraq. Before leaving, the Americans
had trained the new Iraqi army. They generously left their M16s behind so the Iraqis
could try to maintain the peace in this field of ruins
and hate between tribes, between Shiite and Sunni,
and under the threat of Daesh. Kalashnikovs were passed on
from father to son. Today in Iraqi, Kurdistan, they’d love to swap
for a far more modern M16. However, on the black market
with the threat of Daesh, prices are soaring. The price of a Kalashnikov
is between 1,000 and 1,500 dollars. If it’s new,
it could cost up to 2,000 dollars. An M16 would cost
between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars. I bought mine for 9,800 dollars. The M16 is more powerful
than the Kalashnikov, faster and prettier. As they say, it’s more fashionable. M16s are fashionable
but rare among the Peshmergas. They have only their Kalashnikovs to face
the Islamic state forces of Daesh in Iraq and the Levant. Rich from oil money,
looting, and trafficking, Daesh is fighting with American M16s. Arms bought or stolen from the Iraqi army. Daesh has got M16s because the Iraqi army collapsed. That’s what they got,
but that’s more of a very peculiar symbol in the sense
that the Iraqi army can’t fight. They were given all these weapons
by the United States. New M4s, which is essentially the M16. They were given all these weapons
and they didn’t know how to use them. For Daesh at this point, it’s a source of pride that they have M16
that they disarmed the Iraqi army. Thanks to God, we are now on the border
between Syria and Iraq. Daesh is an evil cancer, born in the desert,
preaching a nebulous Islamist ideology, fed on Arab money, frustration,
hate, and our strategic errors. Under the black banner of Muhammad,
M16s and Kalashnikovs are brandished, and they have lost all symbolic value. In Moscow too,
symbols are aging and disappearing. The last socialist hero, one of the most decorated
and honored men in all of Russia, General Mikhail Kalashnikov, passed away at the age
of 94 on Christmas Eve, 2013. The ceremony was held
at the military Pantheon. The protocol was simple. Words of affection,
an ocean of flowers, military dignitaries, and the head of state
came together in the suburbs of Moscow to pay a final tribute
to Mikhail Kalashnikov. Everybody wanted to honor
this wonderful inventor. A funeral worthy of a hero. Yet in the twilight of his life,
ravaged by doubt, Kalashnikov sought comfort in the church. “My pain is unbearable,” “and I keep asking
this insoluble question.” “My gun has taken away human lives.” “Am I responsible
for the deaths of these humans,” “even though they were enemies?” As a young man, he said
he wanted to invent farm machinery, but he created the perfect weapon. Today, there are more than 100 million
of his deadly creatures throughout the world. Ten times more
than his rival, Stoner’s M16. Kalashnikov certainly won
that lethal game.