While reassembling the gun, Babb shows us a trick of how to use the cleaning rod as a slave pin to hold the wire spring down while the second of the three pins is reinserted. As the last student gets his AK top cover snapped on, Babb assumes the role of a drill instructor.

“Everyone got their gun back together? Good. Now take ’em apart again!”

The sound of bolts moving, springs sliding, metallic parts pinging, shlack-clacking apart reverberates.

“Got ’em apart? Put ’em back!”

“Do it again!”

“Put ’em back!”

“Do it again!”

We learn through the mother of all skill builders—repetition, repetition, repetition. After the fifth or sixth rep, the guns are coming apart and going back together with a fluidity born of familiarity.

We learn that the “P” on the rear sight, below the “1,” is the battle zero. We are shown why the AK doesn’t have timing issues because the bolt rotates a full 30 degrees before unlocking, giving the just-fired cartridge case time to relax in the chamber. We also see how the gun has a floating firing pin so you don’t get accidental strikes.

We watch a video of an AK firing in full-automatic in super-slow motion with the top cover removed. Don’t try this at home! The bolt is bouncing around, the piston is flexing wildly, and the recoil spring jumps like it’s been goosed.

“You see that? The AK is a sloppy gun. It’s supposed to be a sloppy gun. That’s why it works,” Babb points out.

Now we move to AK variants in a slide show. Matt points out that the AKM is a stamped-receiver gun. “The ‘M’ in any Russian designation means ‘modernized.’ So you have the AKM, PKM, and others,” Matt tells us. We see slides of East German variants with distinctive, side-folding stocks; Hungarian variants with an infinity symbol for full-automatic; Chinese Type 56s; a North Korean Type 68 and an Iraqi Tabuk. Babb says the best of them all is the Yugoslav variant known as the Zastava AK for the plant where it’s made.

He flicks the lights back on and surveys the room with that same secretly sadistic smile. We know what’s coming.

“Take ’em apart!”

“Put ’em back!”

8/13/10

Today we move to the belt-feds. First up is the PKM, which fires the same 7.62x54 mm R as the ancient Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle with which we started the class. The PKM is an air-cooled medium machine gun that fires from an open bolt. The feed belt is made from non-disintegrating links. The machine gunner is expected to reload his own gun.

“Russian doctrine on the PKM is that you don’t have an [assistant gunner]. You’re responsible for your gun. You carry it, you plop down, you feed it. You carry your own ammo,” Babb explains. “My two favorite machine guns are the M60 and the PKM. They just run and run and run,” he adds.

We side-track to a Dragunov, the so-called “sniper rifle” of the Com Bloc, but as we look at several variants of the gun we learn that it’s a five-minute rifle, meaning it shoots a 5-inch group at 100 yards.

“Once again, you see the difference in Soviet military doctrine. We think of snipers as precision shooters taking head shots on a specific target. The Russians simply want to put a bullet into a body. They don’t care what happens after that,” Matt says.

We move to the RPD, a light machine gun firing the 7.62x39 mm cartridge of the AK-47. It too uses non-disintegrating links, and is an open-bolt, air-cooled full-automatic-only machine gun. The bolt works with a Degtyarev locking system of two “ears” that pop out as the bolt closes and engage recesses in the receiver. It’s the same system as that massive brute, the Dushka.

We look at examples of the Skorpion, a .32 ACP machine pistol that Babb sniffs at. “Machine pistols are something that don’t have a lot of use. You pull it out, spray bullets and run away. Machine pistols have very little tactical relevance,” he says.

We gather around an AGS 17 automatic grenade launcher that hurls 30 mm grenades at a relatively sedate pace of 450 rounds per minute. “This is not a cheap date. This thing is heavy,” he says of the tripod-mounted monstrosity, adding with a grin, “I wish we had more time to discuss it instead of … Russian through it!”

The class groans at the painfully bad pun. Tomorrow we hit the range.

8/13/10

The classroom work is complete and today we test-fire some of the arms we’ve learned about. We start with the Tokarev and Makarov pistols. There’s a row of Bianchi plates, and some of us hit more than we miss. The Tokarev, with its bottleneck .30-cal. round, feels like a .38 Super in an M1911. The Makarov with its 9x18 mm in a blowback system feels like a stout .380 ACP. I hit more plates with the little Makarov for some reason.

Next up is the gun everyone loves to hate, the AK-47. We’re each given two 25-round magazines and told to fire a few rounds in semi-automatic before moving the selector to full-automatic. As I rip off a short burst, I feel the clackety-clack of all that flex and jump we’d seen in the slow-motion video. I hold the trigger back and lean into the gun, keeping the muzzle from climbing high and right. The longer the burst, the more I can feel the action slamming about. This is a crude gun, I think. Reliable, but crude.

Now the mats come out and an RPD belt-fed goes down on its bipod. This is the light machine gun firing the same 7.62x39 mm as the AK-47. We each get a 50-round belt. We’d already learned how the RPD, like all Soviet machine guns, uses a non-disintegrating metallic belt. Howard Heeg, LMO’s chief armorer, flips the top cover and shows me how to position the first round on the feed tray in the “ripper,” which pulls a round out of the belt. I slap the top cover down and flip the safety to fire. “Let ’er rip,” Heeg says.

I fire one short burst, feel how the gun is totally controllable, hardly moving on the bipod, and then I squeeze and hold the trigger in a long stream that churns the berm into a cloud of dust. The empty belt spits itself out. “Now that’s a good burst!” Heeg says enthusiastically.

We end with the PKM, a medium machine gun firing the antique 7.62x54 mm R cartridge, the same as the Mosin-Nagant bolt-action, c. 1891. While the round is essentially the same, the modern cartridge is stronger for reliability in machine guns. The PKM is awesome! It shoots smoothly and controllably and spits its rimmed empties out with alacrity. Of all the guns I’ve seen this week, this is the one I want to take home.

We wrap up with a presentation on the RPG 7 by Dan Shea, owner of Long Mountain Outfitters. Contrary to popular belief, RPG does not stand for “rocket-propelled grenade;” it’s a Russian acronym. It’s actually a recoilless rifle firing a rocket-assisted grenade (there’s a difference), which Dan explains along with much more arcane information about this curious weapon system, including how to sabotage one found on the battlefield to give our enemies a little surprise when they go to use it again.