Reddit reviews The Gun
We found 25 Reddit comments about The Gun. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Simon Schuster
Reddit reviews The GunWe found 25 Reddit comments about The Gun. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Read The Gun by CJ Chivers. Very interesting book on the history and people involved in the creation of the AK.
I've not read that one yet, but I did just finish "The Gun" by CJ Chivers, which covers a lot of the same ground. Also excellent in my estimation.
http://amzn.com/0743271734
If you are really interested, I really recommend The Gun by CJ Chivers
C.J. Chiver's novel The Gun is a fantastic read about the AK's conception and how it was designed vs. the M-16, which had parts with tight
tolerancesclearances, causing them to readily jam in harsh (think Vietnam) conditions.edit thanks for /u/csl512 for the correction
Not to mention the lower recoil and minimized muzzle rise.
If anyone is interested in the history and distinctions between Battle Rifles and Assault Rifles as well as the development of the efficient modern man-killing machine that is the M series rifle, I recommend CJ Chivers' book, "The Gun." It will erase any doubt you may have that the modern assault rifle is a designed-by-committee literal weapon of mass death. Gun nuts like to 'hurr hurr, scary just because it's black,' but as a dude with a lot of guns, I promise you the tech in these things is sophisticated, refined, and tailored for the express person of killing people as efficiently and quickly as possible.
I found CJ Chiver's book The Gun to be a fascinating investigation of the AK47's design and history. It also covers the development process of the AR10, which of course became XM16A1. The first generation of that gun was... not good. Constant fouling due to dirty rounds, cleaning equipment rarely issued with rifles, the exact wrong physical environment for maintenance, the list goes on.
The later revisions were a big improvement, and today's M16 is a far cry from the ones fielded in Vietnam. But in the first years of the war, the AKs carried by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were far more effective than the M16 supplied to American armed services.
Conosco relativamente bene la storia dell'AK47 e dei suoi successori (tra le altre cose avendo letto questo libro).
Il mio punto e' che per lanciarsi in macchina contro dei pedoni o per attaccare dei passanti con un coltello da cucina non e' necessario avere gli "agganci giusti", come dici tu.
Quindi il folle isolato che si e' invasato a forza di vedere video jhiadisti su youtube e seguire gli account twitter dei simpatizzanti dell'ISIS in questi casi e' verosimile.
Procurarsi due Khalasnikov in Francia nel 2015 invece penso sia almeno un tantinello piu' complicato, ci vogliono gli "agganci", e quindi per questo mi sembra che questo attacco sia un atto di un livello un po' diverso.
> Assault rifles are precision machines, and they're actually designed to function with as little action (movement) as possible - that's why they're so fast.
I will buy you this book if you send me your address.
I'm a 19-year-old boy from Ottawa, Canada (you may have heard of our little country :P ). While I was not homeschooled per se during my public school years (I went to regular English schools), I definitely learned more quickly, more thoroughly and more widely due to my parents' constant efforts to teach me things that went way above and beyond what I was "learning" at my high school.
My parents are both high school teachers, and have each spent roughly 30 years teaching their respective subjects.
My dad actually just retired last year, but he taught most of the Social Studies curriculum during the course of his career (History, Philosophy, Psychology, World Religions, etc.). He is a bilingual Francophone from Ottawa, so he taught at one of the French Catholic high schools in our area. He also happens to be somewhat skeptical of religion (not an atheist, but damned close). Odd combination, yes, but it has resulted in him introducing me to
military history, everything from the Roman legions to the Knights Templar to the Taliban.
My mother was born in Ottawa, to Greek parents who had left Greece after the Second World War; my grandparents are from a village about 20 minutes away from the modern city of Sparti (Sparta). During the war, the village was at some point occupied by Axis forces (I'm not sure when or to what extent, because my grandparents' English is not great and only my mother speaks Greek).
I decided to include a list (below) of works that I've found particularly interesting (I've never actually written down a list of my favs before, so this may be somewhat... sprawling and will be in no particular order :P ). Depending on the ages of your kids, some of this stuff might be inappropriate for them right now, but they can always check it out when they're older. It's mostly military/wartime history that interests me (it's what I plan on studying in university), but I've learned so many little tidbits about other things as well from having access to these works. Since your kids are all boys, I hope they'll find at least some of this stuff to be interesting :) .
Books
Movies and TV
This is all non-fiction. If you like this list, let me know, and I can expand on it further, and also include my favourite works from other genres, as well as my favourite fiction books as well :) . I left out tons of stuff that I'm too much of a lazy teenager to type in here, lol.
I would like to participate.
Here are three books that might fit the theme.
CJ Chivers "The Gun" - Well written and details the development of the AK-47 which has impacted men's lives for three generations now.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
Geoff Colvin "Talent Is Overrated" - We are all trying to change ourselves for the better. That takes focus and determination. This book is definitely echoing that view.
http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class-Performers/dp/1591842948
Dean Karnazes, "Ultramarathon Man" - Good biography about a man transforming himself. Lots of fuck yeah moments.
http://www.amazon.com/Ultramarathon-Man-Confessions-All-Night-Runner/dp/1585424803
*All three of these have audiobook versions availible from Audible so that could be a boon for the dyslexic amoungst us who have issues reading.
Of the three I would say Talent Is Overrated would probably prompt more discussion. The Ultramarathon Man might be good for a working out themed choice. The Gun is just a damn good book that combines politics, engineering and war.
I can't recommend the book THE GUN enough. Amazing story about the AK47:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
The Gun by CJ Chivers is a really excellent and thorough history of the Kalashnikov and its significance. One of my favorite books and authors.
No rain, no mud, no sand. You might enjoy reading this: https://www.amazon.ca/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
As other uses have pointed out, it didn't change things very much, but was more an adaptation to a battlefield that had already changed thanks to the increased deadliness of supporting arms.
I just wanted to add some supplementary materials you might be interested in.
The Gun is a pretty exhaustive history of the AK-47 and automatic weapons in general
On Infantry is a very dry study of infantry tactics from late 1890s through the 1970s. It is a bit out of date, but covers the period you are asking about.
There is also FM 3-21.8 which covers the US Army Infantry Platoon and squad organization and fighting style. It would be useful to understand exactly how a modern army expects its units to fight and how it organizes them to do so.
> what do you do with your creations?
Never made a thing.
I was bad at carpentry when I was a kid - the birdhouse and flowerbox I made fell apart quite quickly.
> do you destroy them or sell them?
Nothing to sell, or destroy.
> if you sell them, who do you sell them to?
Cant' sell something that doesn't exist.
> who is aware of what you are doing
Uh, most of my professors have actually taught me what I know. One of them is good friends with CJ Chivers, a renowned, Pulitzer-winning weapons expert - he's written a great book about the AK. My professor's specialization is nuclear weaponry. She's very good at wargames, she went to Cornell, and she's taught at Harvard and Stanford.
> and what is the security level on your workshop?
I have no workshop.
I have the internet, mainly Library of Congress links, or JSTOR documents for uni.
There's so much information on youtube, alone, that you can just use it to learn how to do anything.
If you haven't ever googled/searched on youtube for something you want to learn, then you really should - it's a great learning tool.
Oh, and Forgotten Weapons is an excellent youtube channel, that has a wealth of info about antique weaponry. I highly recommend it.
American Rifle is a good introduction to US military rifles. The Gun is a fantastic introduction to automatic weapons (Chiver's blog is worth a read too). Wolfe Publishing has a deal where you can get PDF copies of their three Magazines for about the price of subscribing to one for physical copies. They are a bit old fashioned but aren't extended ad copy like G&A is. Shooting Times is worth looking at online.
>This is also entirely untrue.
Name a single gun pre-AK that was fully automatic, short, and weighed as much or less.
Also check https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
The author makes a good argument for my point.
Recommended gunnit books?
May I suggest:
https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
and
https://www.amazon.com/War-Flea-Classic-Guerrilla-Warfare/dp/1574885553
If you like more modern stuff, The Gun by C J Chivers was an enjoyable read. It focuses heavily on development of the M-16 and AK-47, but I thought the most interesting bits were on how the automatic rifle has changed battle tactics over the last century.
Surprised I didn't see one comment about "The Gun" by C.J Chivers. Very interesting and comprehensive book about the AK-47 and it's variants and how they have shaped the world. Anyone really interested in the weapon and it's history should check it out.
I recommend a book called 'The Gun'.
https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
Uh, no. A whole design/manufacturing team produced the AK and Comrade Kalashnikov was given the majority of the credit for propaganda purposes. He was possibly the most important contributor, but one of many.
source: the Gun by C.J. Chivers
It won't help much in terms of differentiating all of the variants, but The Gun by CJ Chivers is an absolute must read.
Until I read the OP's post I couldn't reconcile the news, having never seen or heard a verfiable instance of an AR that could shoot more than 30 rounds w/o jamming severely and requiring minutes to unjam.
In Vietnam the AR killed a lot of men because it jammed. The AR is one of the reasons we lost the war. It is tough to fight when you're lying on your back trying to clear a jam with a stick down the barrel of your new M-16 (AR-15) and your enemy is blazing away with ultra-reliable AKs. C. J. Chivers' book, The Gun, and his article in Esquire tell the story. The article is titled "The Gun: A Violent History of the AK-47" but it's about the M-16(AR) too, and the difference between how the two guns came to wars. It's a good read and one necessary to really understand what happened in Vietnam and the limits of blind greed and power.
M-16s (ARs) jammed because they were a poor design, one that never did work properly. Even to this day the AR is far less reliable and less powerful than the AK on a battlefield.
In Vietnam it wasn't the ammo and it wasn't the training that failed, although the manufacturers and military brass would like you to think so - it was the gun that failed our fellow men. Read Chivers' book or read the article to find the ugly truth.
I posted this once before, but it seems that there's a moderator here who sells ARs but not AKs:
The AK-47 is legend for it's reliability.
The AK-47 and the AR15 are likely the reason we lost the Vietnam War: the AK because it worked so well, and the AR because it malfunctioned so quickly and so often that it's user died. Read this article at Esquire magazine. Try to imagine lying in the dirt facing a line of advancing NV troops, your very first shot jams, and the only way to clear the jam is to push a stick down the muzzle:
The Gun: A Violent History of the AK-47
Don't believe what the revisionist AR posers and fanboys say here and elsewhere - the AR was the fully documented jam-o-matic of the Vietnam war, caused the death of countless men in battle and was then, over years, brought to a minimal level of reliability while both DOD and the manufacturers denied that anything was wrong, both to governmental inquiries and to their own men. The story of the AR is one of corruption and denial at high levels of government administration.
You can read about it in C.J. Chivers' book The Gun from which the above article is excerpted.