
An interesting human interest story was posted this morning on Fox News about a second generation gunsmith that is helping the Peshmerga by keeping their weapons working and repairing seized and damaged weapons. While we all collect the latest and greatest out there, and clean our guns so lovingly there is a guy out there with a Makita drill working on old M16′s and AK’s to keep the Peshmerga in the fight against ISIS. Keep up the good fight Bakhtiar Aziz!
From Fox News:
In their fight against ISIS, the Kurdish army known as Peshmerga has a secret weapon – a second-generation gunsmith so skilled he can practically turn a bucket of rusty bolts into a killing machine for the rugged, but cash-strapped, fighting force.
Bakhtiar Aziz works in a dimly lit basement shop in Erbil, refurbishing guns taken from the enemy, bringing broken and even decades-old firearms back to life and helping to outfit an army as short on weapons as it is long on heart. On a recent day, he inspected an M-16A4 assault rifle badly damaged in a coalition airstrike. Pocked with holes, missing a large section of the barrel and with human hair wedged in its moving parts, the gun was found by Peshmerga soldiers near the town of Gwer.
Aziz examined it, and told its story.
“The Americans gave it to the Iraqi Army, then when ISIS came, they took it from the Iraqi Army,” Bakhtiar told the military blog War Is Boring. “Now after the American airstrikes against ISIS, the weapon is in the hands of the Peshmerga.”
Aziz’s shop is outfitted simply with a work bench, chair and tools. An arsenal of firearms, including old muskets, line the walls. He learned his trade from his father, who openly repaired weapons for hunters, and secretly fixed them for Kurds who resisted Saddam Hussein. Now, with the Peshmerga battling ISIS along a 600-mile front line, Aziz is putting his skills to work repairing weapons for the fight against the Islamist terror group.