With around one hundred million units currently scattered across the planet, this dubious honor belongs to the AK-47, an acronym for Avtomat Kaláshnikova model 1947 . It is an assault rifle designed in the 1940s by Mikhail Kalashnikov, who died in 2013 at the age of 94 . This Soviet military man solved a conspicuous problem: finding a medium cartridge weapon that combines range and cadence, that is, the amount of projectiles it is capable of firing in a certain period of time.
Simple to use, the AK-47 – better known as Kalashnikov – has been adopted by fifty regular armies, as well as countless militias, guerrillas and terrorist groups that take advantage of its availability on the black market.
When the inventor was reproached for the deadly impact of his creation, he used to reply that he had not devised it to attack, but to defend ; above all, the borders of his homeland, as David Losa recounted in the latest Extra Number of Questions and Answers of Muy Interesante. "I sleep well. Politicians are to blame for not having reached an agreement and resorting to violence," argued Mikhail Kalashnikov in 2007.
With a 7.62mm caliber, the weapon weighs just over five kilos when full in its thirty-round magazine, which can be emptied in just three seconds . Although the license belongs to the Russian company Kalashnikov Corporation, it is currently manufactured in more than thirty countries.
