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Wow, that's a lot of great information!
I will second the vote for the AK. The first rifle I ever owned was an AK variant - a Russian-made Saiga with the US/hunter stock set.
Talk about an ugly gun! But it was only $159 plus shipping and transfer, NIB. How many other reliable autoloaders can be had for so little? And it's a LOAD of fun to shoot!!!
And I love the heavy metal-on-metal sound the bolt carrier makes after the initial bang from the powder charge. Of course, the sound of cycling the lever on my new 336 sounds pretty nice too =) =) =)
A hundred dollars and a few months later I did the US-parts + pistol grip & standard mag conversion and now I have a "proper" AK.
It's definitely not a sharpshooter, but I have out-shot kids at the range with bench-queen AR-15's on two occassions. Obviously this more a reflection on their poor shooting technique than anything else (and I would love to have the opportunity to shoot a nice AR one day) but it certainly put a smile on *my* face.
The only things I really don't like about my AK are:
- the crappy open sights & limited options for mounting aperture sights close to your eye where they belong. it seems the only options for accurate/fast sighting are red dots, which just add weight to an already heavy gun.
- i can't aim it with one hand like i can my marlin - not something i expect to do often, but if you ever expect to use it in a defensive or chaotic situation, i think that's a nice feature to have.
- poor selection of expanding ammunition. for an urban self-defense situation i'm not comfortable with a 120+ grn FMJ round that will likely blow through four walls and a street sign before slowing down. one of my coworkers said he was able to fully penetrate a 1" thick steel manhole cover at 30 yards with his Saiga. on a separate occassion he was able to shoot cleanly through both front doors of an old american passenger car without noticable expansion on the final exit hole. great if you need to shoot someone who's trying to run you over with their car, but kinda scary if you have neighbors nearby.
but overall i LOVE my AK. i just wish i had someplace close to shoot that wasn't as structured as the local range - somewhere i could shoot milk jugs, coke cans, tannerite, etc. =)
thanks for the info!
-jacob
I will second the vote for the AK. The first rifle I ever owned was an AK variant - a Russian-made Saiga with the US/hunter stock set.
Talk about an ugly gun! But it was only $159 plus shipping and transfer, NIB. How many other reliable autoloaders can be had for so little? And it's a LOAD of fun to shoot!!!
And I love the heavy metal-on-metal sound the bolt carrier makes after the initial bang from the powder charge. Of course, the sound of cycling the lever on my new 336 sounds pretty nice too =) =) =)
A hundred dollars and a few months later I did the US-parts + pistol grip & standard mag conversion and now I have a "proper" AK.
It's definitely not a sharpshooter, but I have out-shot kids at the range with bench-queen AR-15's on two occassions. Obviously this more a reflection on their poor shooting technique than anything else (and I would love to have the opportunity to shoot a nice AR one day) but it certainly put a smile on *my* face.
The only things I really don't like about my AK are:
- the crappy open sights & limited options for mounting aperture sights close to your eye where they belong. it seems the only options for accurate/fast sighting are red dots, which just add weight to an already heavy gun.
- i can't aim it with one hand like i can my marlin - not something i expect to do often, but if you ever expect to use it in a defensive or chaotic situation, i think that's a nice feature to have.
- poor selection of expanding ammunition. for an urban self-defense situation i'm not comfortable with a 120+ grn FMJ round that will likely blow through four walls and a street sign before slowing down. one of my coworkers said he was able to fully penetrate a 1" thick steel manhole cover at 30 yards with his Saiga. on a separate occassion he was able to shoot cleanly through both front doors of an old american passenger car without noticable expansion on the final exit hole. great if you need to shoot someone who's trying to run you over with their car, but kinda scary if you have neighbors nearby.
but overall i LOVE my AK. i just wish i had someplace close to shoot that wasn't as structured as the local range - somewhere i could shoot milk jugs, coke cans, tannerite, etc. =)
thanks for the info!
-jacob
