When Islamic State fighters attacked the Afghan government’s communications ministry in Kabul earlier this year, they left behind homemade breaching charges, hand grenades, ammunition still wrapped in paper packaging, cracked cellphones, water bottles filled with gasoline, a kitchen knife and at least three rifles.
During the April 20 gun battle, at least seven people were killed, along with the five attackers. The extremists, who were members of the Islamic State in Khorasan, the terrorist organization’s offshoot in Afghanistan, were shot by Afghan security forces as they tried to enter the high-rise government building with the intention of killing the hundreds of civilian workers inside.
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During a recent trip to Kabul, officers from the 222, an elite Afghan police detachment assigned to protect the capital, talked to The New York Times at the site of the attack. The police, who had fought the militants in the building, provided documents that cataloged the Islamic State fighters’ equipment. The officers also described how the incident unfolded.
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Among the crime-scene evidence was a serial number that pointed to the difficulty of containing attacks in a country that foreign powers have flooded with automatic weapons for decades. This particular terrorist subgroup, formed in 2015, was using a firearm that is known to the world as an AK or Avtomat Kalashnikova. It was likely more than 60 years old.
The serial number, EE9243K, and grainy pictures from the scene suggest that the rifle was machined from solid steel. They also suggest that it was one of the early AKs that were manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1958, behind the doors of the Izhevsk Machine Engineering Plant roughly 700 miles east of Moscow.
Two years before this rifle was manufactured, the world got its first look at this new class of firearm when a Life magazine photographer took a photograph of József Tibor Fejes, a Hungarian revolutionary, clad in a bowler hat and wielding what would become the rifle of choice for insurgencies in years to come. These early AKs preceded the construction and subsequent production of the AKM, which began in 1959. Made from a more efficient stamped-steel process, AKMs became the modern model of the AK that spread to almost every corner of the globe.
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The specific rifle found in Kabul was what some firearms historians call a Type 3 AK. The serial number pattern — two letters, four digits and a final letter — is the configuration for that version of the rifle, with “K” representing the date code, in this case 1958. But aside from the serial number, there are other clues that point to the rifle’s origins.
The first is the rectangular metal cutaway, known as the lightening cut, that is milled into the receiver to make the rifle lighter since it is crafted from milled steel. This design element is not found on Type 1 models, which were first produced in 1949. They were only incorporated into the Type 2 and Type 3 versions that came later.
Second, the photo indicates that the buttstock is directly attached to the receiver and lacks the metal extension that was only a feature of the Type 2 rifle. Third, there is a small sling swivel retaining band on the left hand side of the rifle’s receiver, another design component that wasn’t incorporated into earlier production models. These details narrow down the model possibilities to one: Type 3.
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N. R. Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, a private arms-tracking organization, viewed the images and agreed that the rifle looked like a Type 3 AK. This model “has a couple of close look-alikes, but almost all of these are of a similar era and relative rarity in terms of the Kalashnikov-type rifles commonly documented in conflict zones, ” he said in an email. Without a physical inspection of the rifle, the possibility remains that the rifle was a canny knockoff from a former eastern-bloc country, such as Bulgaria, or from a workshop in Pakistan that replicated the older Soviet model to fetch a higher price.
The rifle, and its many clones, are symbols of the conflicts that transpired during the second half of the 20th century and the bloody wars that followed. There are at least 200 variants of the AK, a gun that has been manufactured in more than a dozen countries, with roughly 70 million in circulation. The weapons are arguably the most prolific firearms in the world and markers of the shortsightedness of governments that handed them out. They are reminders that insurgents and terrorists can be equipped with weapons that were assembled long before they were born.In this Aug. 15, 2012 file photo three variations of the AR-15 assault rifle are displayed at the California Department of Justice in Sacramento, Calif.
Paul Kemp is the co-founder and president of Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership. A lifelong gun owner and hunter, he said he was driven to create the organization after his brother-in-law Steven Forsyth was killed in the Clackamas Town Center shooting in December 2012 in Oregon.
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The gunman in that case, a 22-year-old, opened fire in the crowded shopping mall using a Stag Arms AR-15 rifle he had stolen from an acquaintance. In addition to Forsyth, Cindy Ann Yuille was killed in the incident and 15-year-old Kristina Shevchenko was injured. The gunman died by suicide at the scene.
Police and medics work the scene of a multiple shooting at Clackamas Town Center Mall in Portland, Ore., Dec. 11, 2012. A gunman is dead after opening fire in the Portland, Ore., area shopping mall, killing two people and wounding another, sheriff's deputies said.
The parade of mass shootings since that fateful day in 2012 have stirred up a tide of emotions within Kemp, he said, including the recent massacres in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. And Kemp said his resolve to get measures enacted to keep guns, especially high-powered AR-15-style rifles, out of the hands of those he says shouldn't possess them, becomes stronger with each nightmarish mass shooting.
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People embrace outside the scene of a mass shooting at a Tops supermarket a day earlier, in Buffalo, N.Y., May 15, 2022.
Kemp is one of several longtime gun owners ABC News spoke with who say they want gun control laws and reform. Gun rights extremists, with, they say, the NRA as their bullhorn -- no longer represent the majority of gun owners in the U.S.
But proponents of the guns say that they are essentially no different than other hunting rifles, are used responsibly for sport and are not the weapons of war that opponents make them out to be.
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Flowers, toys, and other objects are seen at a memorial for the victims of the deadliest mass shooting in nearly a decade resulting in the death of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, May 29, 2022.
An AR-15 is a type of semi-automatic rifle, firing one bullet with each pull of the trigger -- a contrast with illegal automatic rifles, which fire continuously as long as the trigger is depressed.
AR-15 style rifles can be made for a variety of bullet calibers and to accept a variety of different capacity ammunition magazines, said Jake Charles, lecturing fellow and executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University School of Law.
Seward, Alaska. Nov 1950.
The guns, which have skyrocketed in popularity, are often referred to as assault rifles, but whether that is an apt description depends on who you ask.
Assault weapon is a legal term of art. Under the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, it was defined as Semiautomatic rifles having the ability to accept a detachable ammunition magazine and at least two of the following traits -- including a bayonet mount or grenade launcher.
Often an assault rifle refers to an automatic rifle, like the military's M4 or M16. In that sense, the AR-15 is not one because it's not an automatic weapon, Charles said. But sometimes an assault rifle is the description for a rifle that is classified as an 'assault weapon' under federal or state laws restricting those weapons. For example, under the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, Colt's AR-15 was specifically listed as a prohibited assault weapon.
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According to Erik Longnecker, the deputy chief of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' office of public and governmental affairs, public affairs division, assault rifle and assault weapon are not defined under current federal firearms law.
Assault rifle and assault weapon are both political terms that are not defined in the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act, he said.
The ATF also does not have a definition for AR-15. That is a specific model of rifle originally manufactured by Colt who also holds the trademark to that term, according to Longnecker.
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According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearm industry trade association: The 'AR' in 'AR-15' rifle stands for ArmaLite rifle, after the company that developed it in the 1950s. 'AR' does NOT stand for 'assault rifle' or 'automatic rifle.' AR-15-style rifles are NOT 'assault weapons' or 'assault rifles.'
Kemp says the ultimate purpose of an