about 2/3rds of the way down there is a guy wearing a life preserver…that all by itself should tell you that alot of these guys really dont have any training.
Yup. These photos are Liberia from a few years back (I’m fairly certain I know who took them).
What are you talking about? He’s obviously a Liberian SEAL.
A third of the way down, just below a pic of a child soldier; there is one of what looks like a government soldier. He has magazines attached in the “jungle” manner, one of them has actually come off! But he seems to be reasonably trained, he is the only one shown in a correct firing stance, and he seems to be firing in bursts, rather than spray and pray.
Incidentally check out the pics at the very bottom, might explain why its “unsafe for work”.
I’m pretty sure he is just attaching the mags in an alternate way. They are curving opposite directions instead of the same. Not sure what advantage doing it “backwards” has, I’d say in order of likelihood:
- He thinks it looks cool
- Quicker to swap mags
You’ll notice a couple of pics of a dude with a Yugo in a camo jacket with crazy hair doing the same thing.
A few other observations about these pictures:
- The girl hijacking the truck looks kind of hot from behind.
- I wonder where the guy 3/4 of the way down got that Uzi? And why he doesn’t trade it to some sucker for an AK?
- The side with the shirtless guy with red boxers certainly won this battle. I mean, look at this guy. In only a few pictures, probably taking place over less than 10 minutes, the red boxer guy is seen:
a) Shooting an RPD, or something belt fed. Now, this isn’t that big of deal, but notice he is doing it shirtless and screaming while shooting. West African Rambo.
b) While holding his AK, he is placing his hand on a comrade’s shoulder, and is definitely saying something profound about the nature of war.
c) After he pops off an RPG round (still sans shirt) he leaps into the air with a big smile. This is a telltale mark of an elite soldier.
- Without a spacer between mags, to tape them together with the curves matching will put the top of the second mag facing down and forward, and far more exposed to picking up dirt and debris, or damage from being bashed into things. Taping them together as he has done mitigates those risks to some degree.
I think the question has been answered with a few good hypotheses, so I’ll risk the hijack: why are some of the guys in the photos shooting with their AK’s over their head when it appears they’re in the middle of a street?
Shooting over the heads of their (not-pictured) comrades who are in front of them?
With the firing discipline on display, I sure as hell hope not.
The problem with a lot of these bush wars is they are not being fought by regular troops, with training and fire discipline, but instead with guys that learned how to “fight” by watching movies.
It’s sort of the equivalent of the “gangsta” firing position of holding a handgun sideways. Drives me nuts, but there you go!
I’ve seen the “gangsta” handgun style, but that seems to only take a little effort (turning the wrist). So these guys are risking their lives to look cool? I guess I’m sheltered.
I was joking about the “gangsta firing position” with my dad, a retired police officer, and he said, “If somebody comes at me with a gun, I hope they’re holding it like that.” 
I bet there’s a lot of cops alive today because of that technique.
Irregulars like the fellows pictured tend to get badly trounced if they make the mistake of going toe-to-toe with trained soldiers. In the battle of Mogadishu, 160American soldiers inflicted enormous casualties on a Somali force that, by some estimates, may have been as large as 4000 people.
Those little things that even moderately well-trained soldiers do make them enormously more effective than typical irregulars. Things like aim their fire. Conserve their ammo. Work together. Set up interlocking fields of fire. Use support weapons in ways that take full advantage of them…
Except for the fact that some people do end up getting killed, confrontations between groups of irregulars like those pictured would actually be funny. Lots of wild full-auto firing. Lots of running and screaming. Guys with guns doing stupid shit.
WAG: Maybe that single clip was taped together with another and was then cut from the pair, leaving the tape behind.
Based on these photos, I’d be happy to be sheltered.
Life vest / flak vest, tomato / tomahto
Only one guy is firing correctly, the guy in the green camo shirt, below the chold soldier.
To be fair, Ak is a horribly innacurate weapon. Spray and pray is a pretty good tactic, but then a burst of three rounds, like the gentleman above is firing is pretty good too.
No it’s not. Any hand held weapon on full auto is going to be fairly innacurate, that’s what the other position on the selctor lever is for. The AK may be less acurate than a M-16, but it’s certainly not horribly innacurate. Hitting a man sized target at 300 meters is easy.
How on earth can anyone determine that the guy in the green shirt is firing bursts rather than full auto? It’s a still photo. He is holding the rifle in such a way as to potentially hit what he’s aiming at, unlike most of the others, but beyond that?
If we are talking about the guy in the green (non camo shirt), he is firing full auto. The selector switch is in the middle position. All the way down is singles, all the way up is safety. The AK does not have a built in three round burst feature. Either AK84 is using differnt terms than I am familiar with, or he is doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
On edit: there is a guy in a camo shirt with crazy hair with his rifle on singles, but he is not firing, holding the rifle too low, and not pictured directly below the child soldier.