Regardless of your feelings about automatic rifles and their place in modern society, there is no denying the military utility of such weapons as brutally efficient killing machines. And of the innumerable automatic rifles created in the past seventy five years perhaps none had the impact of Mikhail Kalishnikov's reliable, simple, and effective AK-47 (and its modern variants).
On December 23, 2013 former peasant, World War II veteran, and eventual Lt. Gen. Mikhail T. Kalashnikov passed away in Izhevsk, the capital of the Russian republic of Udmurtia.
