1. Maharaj K. Koul, âKalashnikov: A weapon of choiceâ, The Tribune (India), November 15, 1998, http://www.tribuneindia.com/1998/98nov15/sunday/head7.htm.
2. United Nations, Report of the Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms, A/52/298, http://www.un.org/Depts/ddar/Firstcom/SGreport52/a52298.html.
3. Nick Paton Walsh, âI sleep soundlyâ, The Guardian Unlimited, October 10, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0.3604,1059879,00.html.
4. Robert Fisk, âDealerâs Choiceâ, The Independent, April 22, 2001, pp. 10â14.
5. Chris McNab, The AK-47 (St. Paul: MBI Publishing, 2001), pp. 15â16; Duncan Long, AK-47: The Complete Kalashnikov Family of Assault Rifles (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1988), pp. 9â10; Val Shilin and Charlie Cutshaw, Legends and Reality of the AK: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the History, Design, and Impact of the Kalashnikov Family of Weapons (Boulder: Paladin Press, 2000), pp. 19â21.
6. Terry Gander, Guerrilla Warfare Weapons: The Modern Underground Fighterâs Armory (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 1990), p. 52; Shilin and Cutshaw, Legends and Reality of the AK, pp. 19â21; Long, AK-47, pp. 9â10.
7. Walsh, âI sleep soundlyâ.
8. Gander, Guerrilla Warfare Weapons, p. 53; Long, AK-47, p. 13; David Miller, Illustrated Directory of 20th Century Guns (London: Salamander Books Ltd., 2001), pp. 262â263.
9. Ministry of Defense of the USSR, The Official Soviet AKM Manual: Operating instructions for the 7.62 mm Modernized Kalashnikov Rifle (AKM and AKMS), translated and with original illustrations by Maj. James F. Gebhardt, US Army (retired) (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1999); Shilin and Cutshaw, Legends and Reality of the AK, p. 37; Gander, Guerrilla Warfare Weapons, p. 56.
10. Fisk, âDealerâs Choiceâ; Tom Parfitt, âKalashnikov gives name to âmanlyâ but less lethal productsâ, The Scotsman, February 19, 2003, p. 15.
11. Larry Kahaner, AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006).
12. McNab, The AK-47, pp. 54â57; Kahaner, The AK-47, Chapter 3.
13. Author correspondence with A.A. Zavarzin, October 20, 2005. According to the Director of Foreign Economic Activity Department for Izhmash, the company that produces the AK-47, up until the 1980s the Soviet Union supplied AK-47 factories and rights to manufacture the AK-47 to twelve countries. Other countries also produced AKs without obtaining licenses. However, those rights and licenses have expired and Izhmash believes no countries or companies currently have any rights to produce AKs or use the AK brand.; Kahaner, The AK-47, Chapter 2; McNab, The AK-47, pp. 54â57; Shilin and Cutshaw, Legends and Reality of the AK, p. 34.
14. Walsh, âI sleep soundlyâ.
15. Worldwide, there are between one and ten million Uzis and approximately seven million M-16s in circulation. Rachel Stohl and William Hartung, âHired gunsâ, Foreign Policy, May/June 2004, pp. 28â29; Abdel Fatau Musah and Robert Castle, âEastern Europeâs arsenal on the loose: Managing light weapons flows to conflict zonesâ, BASIC Occasional Paper 26, May 1998.
16. Michael Wines, âSymbols are important. So what does a gun symbolize?â, The New York Times, October 7, 2005, p. A4.
17. Anti-Defamation League, âInternational Terrorist Symbols Databaseâ, 2006, http://www.adl.org/terrorism/symbols/default.asp; Fisk, âDealerâs Choiceâ.
18. Sami Faltas and Wolf-Christian Paes, âExchanging guns for tools: The TAE approach to practical disarmamentâAn assessment of the TAE project in Mozambiqueâ, Bonn International Centre for Conversion Brief 29, April 2004, p. 7, http://www.bicc.de/publications/briefs/brief29/brief29.pdf; Parfitt, ââManlyâ But Less Lethal Productsâ.
19. Fisk, âDealerâs Choiceâ.
20. Kahaner, The AK-47, Preface; Walsh, âI sleep soundlyâ.
21. McNab, The AK-47, p. 63; Kahaner, The AK-47, Chapter 2.
22. John Walcott and David Rogers, âShip used to send arms to Contras said to aid delivery of East-Bloc arms to USâ, Wall Street Journal, February 13, 1987, p. 1; William Godnick, Robert Muggah, and Camilla Waszink, âStray bullets: The Impact of Small Arms Misuse in Central Americaâ, Small Arms Survey Occasional Paper 5, October 2002, p. 5, http://hei.unige.ch/sas/OPs/OP05CentralAmerica.pdf; George Gedda, âContras obtain 10,000 Polish AK-47s rifles, US Officials Sayâ, Associated Press, August 31, 1985.
23. Kahaner, The AK-47, Chapter 5; Frank Smyth, âMysterious influx of Soviet and Chinese arms for Salvador rebelsâ, The Sacramento Bee, June 4, 1989.
24. Gedda, âContras Obtain 10,000 Polish AK-47sâ; United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Final Report of the Independent Counsel For Iran Contra Matters, 1993, Chapter 2, http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh.
25. Godnick, Muggah, and Waszink, âStray bulletsâ, p. 6.
26. Godnick, Muggah, and Waszink, âStray bulletsâ, pp. 11 and 26; âFirearms Deaths Declineâ, Canadian Medical Association Journal, 169, (10), 2003, http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/169/10/1064-a.