#Baghdad

More than once, when I argued about gun control with different people, I heard the same argument: “If you want to have your precious “assault weapons” – go live in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Somalia, they have no gun laws, you’ll be happy there owning your silly weapons of war”. However, after working in those places for a while, I realized that all of the above-mentioned countries have extremely restrictive gun laws. And Iraq is perhaps the best example of that.

The Baghdad is a little known about rifle that is still extremely rare to come across both in the United States and even in Iraq. There are definitely more questions than answers when it comes to what we actually know about the rifle:
It appears to have been built using the same machines and tooling as the Rasheed carbine production line. The ‘machine chatter’ as Scott mentions
The rifle has stamped years of production from 1969 to 1977.
There are a number of Egyptian Rasheed carbines that have Baghdad safety toggle blocks.
Differences between the Baghdad and the Rasheed are the buttplate cleaning kit cavity, apparently a slightly different choice of wood for the stock.
Some of the stamping font has been different from rifle years, other times instead of showing an Iraqi acceptance mark there is an eagle of Saladin.

This Photo Of The Day reminds me of some of the photos from the last few days in the Battle for Berlin, during World War II. The picture is taken by the excellent photographer Hille Hillinga, Hille James Combat Photographer. We’re looking at a Dutch sniper overlooking Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. It looks like he’s using a Heckler & Koch HK417, probably with a Schmidt & Bender riflescope on it.

Much of the recent discourse regarding the future of infantry combat has centered around the long engagement distances encountered during the Afghan campaign, and the rise of designated marksmen as key elements in the infantry squad. However, arguably more important than the long-range ambushes of the Taliban were the urban engagements in both that campaign and the operations in Iraq. It seems the highest echelons of the US Army agree, as Chief of Staff General Mark Milley commented recently about the future urbanization of the battlefield (via Military.com):