“If a rifle could not be trusted, its other characteristics were moot. Being a bayonet holder was not enough.” — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“The AK-47 was christened with blood not as a tool for liberation or to defend the Soviet Union from invaders. It made its debut smashing freedom movements. It was repression’s chosen gun, the rifle of the occupier and the police… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“The sentence was death. His appeal was rejected. At 7:18 A.M on April 9, 1959, József Tibor Fejes was hanged. He was suspended on… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“It is said that when men have made up their mind to die they act and speak like gods.” — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“the Russian assault rifle would see its first combat use—both by conventional forces and by insurgents. The United States military, all the while, would… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“McNamara’s Pentagon was right on one point. The M-14 was not the best all-purpose rifle for what war had become, especially in a tropical… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“In sum, the United States had armed its foes, indirectly but surely. The war echoed edicts of Mao: “Guerrillas must not depend too much… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“The rules of war established by pen soldiers do not form the basis of actual operations in the field,” he wrote.” — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“If a rifle could not be trusted, its other characteristics were moot. Being a bayonet holder was not enough.” — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“enough weapons had been shown to enough military officers, and distributed to enough armies and navies, that given time even the most stupid of… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“Within a very few years the Kalashnikov’s attributes—its mechanical characteristics combined with its unprecedented availability—transformed Stalin’s rifle, conceived as a tool of the state,… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“The M-16 sure is a marvelous gun, and in a god-awful war it provides some keen fun. The bullet it fires appears too small… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“By 1944, three years later, the ordeal and the turnabout had both been spectacular. The Soviet Union had lost as many as 20 million… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“He gave them nicknames, including a series of people he assigned the name Stupid.” — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“Often Soviet soldiers located insurgents only by drawing their fire—the 1956 version of a perilous form of combat patrol, known among soldiers as the… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“Captain Madonna’s assessment of Colt’s assault rifle, circa 1967. “It was a pretty good bayonet holder,” he said. “I knew those weapons were failing.… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
“The government had spent more than a decade bringing forward the M-14, only to discover in simulations and in Vietnam that soldiers equipped with… — C.J. Chivers Copy Share Image
