While sales of high-tech military hardware are soaring, the world’s estimated $7.4 billion market for small arms-rifles and handguns-remains flat, largely immune to innovation, yet fought over by a growing number of increasingly desperate competitors. The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey reported in its 2004 survey that the world market is in decline. Romanian gun maker Romanian recently began making washing and sewing machines. Izhmash, the Russian company that made the Kalashnikov, now sells machine tools. The world’s leading handgun company, Smith & Wesson, last year launched a decidedly feminine line of bedding featuring pillows with cowgirl patterns on them. It lasted only a few months.
Kalashnikov makes nothing from his gun design. The Soviet Union had licensed more than a dozen countries to manufacture his weapons. After 1991 post-communist middlemen began selling stock out of old Soviet armories, and today there are an estimated 100 million AK-47s in circulation. The rifle is featured on the flags of Mozambique and numerous jihadist groups. Knockoffs are everywhere; General Kalashnikov and Izhmash accused the United States this summer of buying pirate AK-47s for the Iraqi police force. And authentic AK-47s remain dirt cheap. “Militarily, the guys who are buying are poor and they’re insurgents and they’re just going to buy AK-47s,” says Old Dominion University professor and small-arms expert Aaron Karp. “They’d be foolish not to.”
Kalashnikov knows it’s too late to re-establish control over his gun designs, so he has moved on. In 2003, he received a 33% stake in the MMI Co. in Germany, which turns out the Kalashnikov umbrellas, watches, penknives, and gold tees. Kalashnikov says he has not seen “a single kopeck” [the Russian monetary unit below the ruble, similar to the penny below the dollar-Editor]. MMI says he will, once the start-up costs are paid, if the line sells.
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