Oddball Chinese M16 clones popping up in the strangest places
CJ Chivers (author of ‘The Gun’ about the AK-47) over at the New York Times has this really interesting piece on where from ISIS gets its weapons
Early one morning in late February, a European investigator working in Kobani, the northern Syrian city that for months had been a battleground between Kurdish fighters and militants from the Islamic State, stepped outside the building where he was staying and saw something unusual. A Kurd on the street was carrying a long black assault rifle that the investigator thought was an American-made M-16….
–But Wait–
The rifle, which its current owner said had been captured from the Islamic State last year, was not an M-16. It was a Chinese CQ, an M-16 knockoff that resembles its predecessor but has a starkly different arms-trafficking history…
Interesting, a recent Aljazeera article has a photo of a Vietnamese honor guard carrying what looks like new M4’s with suppressors.
Are the days of the AK ending while the world turns to the Colt?
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/04/vietnam-40-years-fall-saigon-150429100025151.html