AK-47

One in five small arms are considered to be an AK-47 or AK-patterned rifle. Pretty darn impressive.

If you like to shoot like I do, you’re faced with limited supplies of ammo and high costs (when you can find it). You can’t always reload either, because the most common powders are just not available. I’ve been looking for reloading powder online and at the local sporting goods stores for more than a month. Got everything else, but no powder to send the bullet on its way.

However, there is one rifle cartridge that’s in plentiful supply at very reasonable prices—7.62×39. Developed by the Soviets during WW II, it later became the cartridge of the battle rifle developed by Makhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov. Introduced as the Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947, better known as AK-47, the gun was adopted by the Soviet Armed Forces in 1949 and has since proven itself in 65 years of continuous service in militaries around the world.

All other things being equal, the AK-47 nearly always wins on price. Therefore most of us end up with at least one AK in our gun accumulation. The problem is, all things are not equal with the AK. They are known for reliability that exceeds ridiculous, but they are also known to be horribly inaccurate. If you follow our exploits here at GunsAmerica, you probably read our recent underwater, in the mud test of a high end AK from Century Arms called the PAP, but most of us out here have the inexpensive, garden variety Romanian AK-47 that generally retails for well under $500. These guns are the poster children for no matter what reliability, but they also are known as “spray and pray” guns, though the parameters of spray and pray would vary depending upon who you ask. We have tried to scope the AK-47 with one of many not ready for primetime scope mounting systems over the years, and they are always a disaster. But times have changed. You aren’t going to get anything like good accuracy out of an AK-4, but with the right mount and the right scope you can get accuracy good enough for just about any self defense situation, and even 3-Gun and other tactical rifle competitions, provided the targets aren’t too far away. For this article we review the highly rated rail/scope mounting system from Texas Weapons Systems, $139.99, and the Hi-Lux CMR scope with a new AK762 reticle, $436, which is special made for the ballistics of the 7.62×39 AK-47 cartridge. This combination delivered acceptable accuracy for an AK-47, and is a platform that is as hardcore as the AK-47 itself.

It has been just over a year since we first posted an article about the bump stock from SlideFire Solutions called the SSAR-15. At the time, nobody knew if this cool new toy would still be legal a year later, but here we are. Not only is the SlideFire still legal, it has gone from an obscure product we had to stumble across to nearly a household word for those of us who think of gunshops as our second homes.