Other than the “.45 or 9mm” debate, few questions have caused so much heartburn in the gun community as the paternity of the AK47.

For those not familiar with the ongoing debate, German firearms wonk Hugo Schmeisser, responsible for inventing the MP18 Bergmann submachine gun and the StG44 among others, spent six years on a vacation he could not decline in the Soviet Union after the end of WWII. The fact that he was there while Kalashnikov was finishing his AK47 has produced any number of lingering arguments that Schmeisser may have had a hand it the famous rifle’s design.

Maxim Popenker, who (disclosure) works for the Kalashnikov Concern and has maintained the expansive historical gun site Modern Firearms since 2000, has  weighed in on the subject extensively in the past, detailing the developmental history of Kalashnikov’s AK-46,  which was largely complete before Schmeisser came to the Soviet Union and was even tested head to head against Alexey Sudayev’s 7.62×39mm AS-44 rifle, with the subsequent redesign into the AK-47 winning out due to its better reliability. Further, he holds that while Schmeisser was in Izhevsk under close custody, Kalashnikov was finishing his rifle at Kovrov which was some 900 km away and the two had no contact.

To give the debate a fresh look is KC’s Vladimir Onokoy in the above video, who gets kinda snarky when he reads comments about the international argument into who the AK’s daddy really is. To support his case, he has an StG44 and Kalash to compare directly, in his look for shared DNA. Interestingly, he coughs up an M1 to bark up that tree as well– and brings out some Soviet documents about Schmeisser’s Izhevsk vacation.

In the end, the video was made by Kalashnikov, so don’t be too surprised by the outcome.

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