"Why has the AK-47 become the jihadi terrorist weapon ..." Topic

…of choice?

"In the early years after 9/11 the suicide belt, the car bomb and the homemade explosive device were the weapons of choice for jihadis: hidden, brutal and hard to counter.

But as 2015 heaves to a close, its atrocities littered across the calendar – Charlie Hebdo, Sousse, Garissa, Tunis, Copenhagen and Paris – it is the AK-47 that has come to the fore.

Across Europe more terrorist attacks have been carried out with Kalashnikov-type assault rifles this year than with any other device. In the 13 November Paris attacks, suicide bombers killed few but gunmen killed many. Further afield, in Tunisia and Kenya, it was also automatic weapons that did the damage.

The widespread availability of these guns has been known for years. But it took the scale of death meted out in Paris last month to force Europe to address the threat…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

Well, this is hardly news. The AK, cheap, reliable, easy to operate and available everywhere. Luckily, it's not very accurate in the hands of idiots who rely on the will of Allah rather than the marksmanship principles. The death toll would have been in thousands if they had.

Old african saying "A childs first weapon should be an AK".

It must have been a really slow news day for this little "gem" to make it. Did the AK-47 ever go "out of style"?. Who sells it, give me a break, any arms dealer in the world sells hem, along with tons of legitimate gun dealers. It's been the weapon of choice insurgents and rebels since it was first made and these people are somehow surprised by that?

Surely the point is that say 10 years ago terrorists used bombs to target the West. Now the pattern is the use of firearms (AKs or not, is not really relevant). It is not because bombs are no longer lethal, and if you can get to people to shoot them then you could probably get close enough to use a bomb instead. So why the change?

Mainly because they know that they're going to die. If I wanted to cause mass casualties I would use a bomb and hide it, but I would want to live. I know this doesn't include suicide bombers, but generally suicide bombs on a person don't inflict the high casualty numbers they are looking for. This is due to quite a few factors, such as crowd density, amount of explosive that can be hidden on a body etc.

Boston Marathon – 2 bombs, 3 dead, 264 wounded.

Now the explosive was black powder, but they appear to have gotten a decent radius out of it.

Gabby Gifford shooting attack – 9mm pistol with extended mag (malfunction), 6 dead, 13 injured.

Replace the bombs or pistol with AKs with extra mags and the casualties in either incident would have skyrocketed.