Mikhail Kalashnikov Quotes
I do not consider the AK to be the best-ever assault rifle.
Kalashnikov, Mikhail. The Gun That Changed the World. Polity Press, 2006.
At the time, English ordinary citizens were not allowed to have firearms, but exception was made for the colonists. “Stands” were y-shaped sticks that the gun would rest on as the weight was about 20 pounds.
This quotation is a classic case of conflation. The politician who is asked about the dangers of assault weapons and who is opposed to gun control, observes that a pencil could kill someone and that a terrorist MIGHT attack with a pencil. Therefore she conflates the semiautomatic rifles like AK47s with pencils. No one would think of legislation making it difficult to obtain pencils; therefore she makes the gun control efforts appear trivial and silly. The problem is that many Americans are killed every year by weapons designed for assaulting in battle and killing an enemy. No one can find the a case where anyone ever assaulted and killed another person by stabbing him in the heart with a pencil.
The Congress did not believe that there would be war. Six weeks later Germany invaded Poland.
Even allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration, it is clear that there were many Americans who were personally armed in this period.
Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov was a Soviet and Russian lieutenant general, inventor, military engineer, writer, and small arms designer. He is most famous for developing the AK-47 assault rifle and its improvements, the AKM and AK-74, as well as the PK machine gun and RPK light machine gun.
