"By the numbers: most battle-proven weapons" Topic

"When your slogan is "World's most battle-proven firearms," you had better be able to back it up, right? While introducing the question of what company actually has that to a random set of gun guys might yield a lot of answers, most of them would be wrong. Like cars and shoes, people tend to be brand loyal with their firearms without actually crunching the data. But the data in this case leaves only one answer: FN.

FN Herstal, and its subsidiary FN America, have made the weapons that were carried across the beaches of Normandy all the way to the mountains of Afghanistan. While we could have chosen from many arms best suited to back up FN's claim, these top 6 are absolutely stunning in depth. Any one of them could be number one, so consider these in no particular order. A great amount of FN's contributions to this list come from the brilliant mind of John Moses Browning. Later in his life, Fabrique Nationale, now known simply as FN, became the go-to for Browning and is also the owner of his namesake company, Browning…"
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AK 47 – South African army found that it was more reliable than an FN. To quote a friend of mine "you can cover an AK-47 in sand, drive a truck over it, and it will still shoot" (BTW it seems the article only looked at Western weapons, and "This post was sponsored by FN" is a clue ;) ).

Exactly right – the AK 47/74 family are pretty much the gold standard for exportable small arms – I would recommend CJ Chivers book "The Gun" for a great look at what really was a paradigm-changing weapon

In may places in Africa, the Mid East, etc. you can't swing a dead jihadi without hitting an AK47 or one of it's various models.

Was trained to use the AK47. Next to the M16, it would probably be my choice to carry into combat. But like I said they wouldn't be hard to find in many places on the planet. And could be picked up and used fairly easily. There would probably a lot of ammo around too. Even if you just took of the dead. They don't have any use for it anymore … ☠