It's right here where I'll stir the bubbling pot and bring up the most successful caliber of all time: the 7.62x39. Shoot it once, shoot it 45 times, it's accounted for more of everything than everything else likely combined. It is the prime African cartridge, readily available in every market on a robust and hard-working cheap and ultrareliable platform, the AK-47. No weapon yet devised can compare with its simplicity or ease of cleaning. Best of all it's easily fired and maintained by the whole family, from eight years old to eighty, men and women alike -- and if some videos are to be believed, a chimpanzee. Whether you're hunting elephants or eland, if one shot doesn't do it, forty more will! And you'll be fed for a month.

Popularized by such trends as Violence In Hot Places, videogames, books, movies, and broader culture, this little cartridge and its charming platform is the emblem on two official flags and unnofficially others; it is the synonym for brute strength. It remains the apex of the trifecta of technology, and wherever there is killing the 7.62x39 rains (bullets) supreme. For there seem to be three constants in this world: Toyota Hilux, the Mercedes O617 diesel, and the AK-47.

Jack O'Conner or not.

Though bullet expansion can be an issue...

Merry Christmas! 🙏