History repeats itself: AK-47-hawking car dealer edition

I'm just getting going on The Gun, a comprehensive history of the automatic Kalashnikov by blog favorite and New York Times war correspondent C.J. Chivers. The book traces the history of automatic weapons and tries to separate fact from fiction in the story of the development and proliferation of the world's most recognizable small arm.

On a what at the time seemed like a completely separate note: there was some buzz last week on Twitter about a Florida car dealer who is offering a $400 voucher toward the purchase of an AK-47 as part of a truck-sales promotion (advertising: "Free AK-47! See dealer for details"), ostensibly in honor of Veterans Day. One can fairly question -- and many have -- how American veterans are honored by the subsidized purchase of a weapon that has killed or wounded tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen, but more on that in a second.

This was interesting enough on its own, but then last night I came across this passage in the prologue to Chivers' book:

In Missouri in mid-2009, when Mark Muller, the owner of a car dealership, wanted to generate interest and lift flagging sales, he offered a voucher for an AK-47 with the purchase of every pickup truck. The offer was a gimmick. True AK-47s cannot be legally owned by most people in the United States, and the dealership offered a coupon worth only half the price of the semiautomatic version sold in American gun shops. Once again, as is often the case in conversations related to the Kalashnikov, facts did not matter. Nonsense prevailed. Muller's sales promotion generated international attention: a broadcast team from Al Jazeera turned up, as did another from Russian state television news. The coverage triggered old arguments. What does this weapon mean? Is it the sinister product of sinister forms of government, set loose on the world via dark processes that were, and often remain, all but unchecked? Or does its reliability and simplicity make it a symbol of the virtue of our best tools, a companion to the utility of a well-performing pickup truck? Muller was pleased. He appeared before the cameras brandishing a Kalashnikov in its semiautomatic form, enjoying free publicity while spurring business and tweaking the anti-gun crowd at the same time. Like many a man who has used a Kalashnikov, he held up his rifle for the cameras and grinned--the rascal's pose. The Kalashnikov was put to yet another use. (p. 15)

Makes you wonder whether the manager of this Florida dealership is a fast reader, or just unoriginal.

So why choose to promote the Kalashnikov? Why not advertise a free M1911, the .45-caliber handgun developed by Browning and first produced by Colt almost 100 years ago, the U.S.-issue service pistol for three-quarters of a century? For me it seems clear that -- as Chivers suggested about the Missouri promotion -- the choice of an AK-47 is designed to tweak anti-gun folks. The ship has basically sailed on handgun ownership, but the question of the Second Amendment and assault rifles is still a charged and controversial one. By selecting the AK, the car dealer is not only saying "I support gun ownership by private citizens," but is also taking an assertive stand in the more controversial part of the Second Amendment debate.

But then why an AK and not an M-16 or an M-4, U.S.-produced and -fielded assault rifles? For one thing, the ubiquity of the Kalashnikov makes it instantly recognizable. But a combination of myth and fact makes the Eastern bloc's weapon of choice the ultimate in workmanlike reliability in the public mind, and probably makes it a more appropriate match to the truck owner's blue-collar, working-man's self-image than the uniquely military Colt firearms. Basically, it's just as Chivers tells us: the AK-47 and its derivatives have become Everyman's Rifle, for good or ill, around the world.

Let there be light, so that I can kill you with it

Tonight's big story is that Trijicon, a U.S. defense contractor, has been stamping letter and number sequences that refer to Bible verses on the ACOG sights they've been supplying to the U.S. military for years.

The inscriptions are subtle and appear in raised lettering at the end of the stock number. Trijicon's rifle sights use tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, to create light and help shooters hit what they're aiming for.

Markings on the Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight, which is standard issue to U.S. special operations forces, include "JN8:12," a reference to John 8:12: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, 'I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life,'" according to the King James version of the Bible.

The Trijicon Reflex sight is stamped with 2COR4:6, a reference to part of the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," the King James version reads.

Photos posted on a Defense Department Web site show Iraqi forces training with rifles equipped with the inscribed sights.

The Defense Department is a major customer of Trijicon's. In 2009 alone, the Marine Corps signed deals worth $66 million for the company's products. Trijicon's scopes and optical devices for guns range in cost from a few hundred dollars to $13,000, according to the company's Web site.

Look, I understand the concern here: we don't want it to look like there's any kind of crusading Christian message associated with our operations in Muslim lands. I absolutely agree with that. But seriously, is this something that's worth getting all that worked up about? I'm no Jesus jammer -- hell, I'm precisely the opposite! -- but I just can't spend a whole lot of energy worrying about this. Is an Arabic or Pashto speaker going to worry that "JN8:12" means that the dirty infidel is coming to conquer his lands and convert his people? (If he's been watching Ann Coulter, he's already worried.)

And here's the thing that no one seems to be mentioning: the two inscriptions that are mentioned in the Post article refer to verses dealing with illumination, which is what a tritium night sight is meant to provide! Maybe I'm a little too unserious, but these verses almost strike me as a bit of a joke: may God and this piece of highly sophisticated machinery shine the light on my enemy so that I may smite him!

Pretty much everything you'd ever want to know about the manufacture of M-16s and M-4s

C.J. Chivers tells you all about it, in an update to the series he began late last year. Good pictures, too.

Does the M-16 suck as much as people say it does?

C.J. Chivers, who is awesome (as we have documented in the past), has a two-part post up on the Times "At War" blog (Part 1, Part 2) about the reliability of the M-16 and M-4.

Few issues are more personal to soldiers than the question of whether they can trust their rifles. And few rifles in history have generated more controversy over their reliability than the American M-16 assault rifle and its carbine version, the M-4.

In recent weeks, a fresh round of complaints about weapon malfunctions in Afghanistan, mentioned in an Army historian’s report that documented small-arms jamming during the fierce battle in Wanat last year, has rekindled the discussion. Are the M-16 and M-4 the best rifles available for American troops? Or are they fussy and punchless and less than ideal for war?

Don’t expect a clear answer any time soon. Expect several clear answers at once – many of them contradictory. This is because when talk turns to the M-16 and the M-4, it enters emotionally charged territory. The conversation is burdened by history, cluttered with conflicting anecdotes, and argued over by passionate camps.

This much is indisputable: Since the mid-1960s, when at Gen. William C. Westmoreland’s request an earlier version of the M-16 became the primary American rifle in Vietnam, the reputation of the M-16 family has been checkered.

This isn't new territory for Chivers, who has written on small arms before for the Times and plans to publish a book next Spring called Killing Machine: A Social History of the AK-47, The Rifle of the Revolution from the Cold War to the Jihad. But I'll read pretty much anything this guy writes. Seriously, he could switch to the John & Kate Plus 8 beat and I'd be all over it.

Anyone with experience downrange have opinions on the M-16 controversy?