The AK-47: a malevolent ‘super-power’ that changed the course of history

When I lived in southern Sudan, I would hear bursts of [AK-47] gunfire at night three or four times per week,” recalls David Lochhead, senior researcher at the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. “If it was just a three-round burst, you knew it was nothing to worry about,” he says, because shooting off a few bullets is simply an extravagant form of greeting among some Sudanese. It was when the firing became more sustained that Lochhead would start to worry.

The AK-47 is surely the most recognisable rifle in the world. The gun, with its banana-shaped magazine, is used by professional armies, militias, criminals and revolutionaries the world over. Estimates vary, but it’s believed there are at least 100 million of them in circulation today, and countless people have been killed or maimed by the weapon.

Its cultural cachet is immense, too – it appears in computer games, films, music videos, even on the national flag of Mozambique. In many countries, it has attained the status of a prized heirloom. For instance, Lochhead says, in East African pastoralist cultures, the weapon is passed down between generations, just as family swords would have been in the past. “I’ve worked in places where people fire them for celebrations, weddings, or even just to announce ‘I’m back home in the village,’” Lochhead says.