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Jesus Christ. I hope they find the guy soon.
AK-47, though. As far as I know, -74s are a lot less common in the U.S.
Edit: I just clicked a WaPo link for “more information” and it expanded one sentence into two. Apparently the only substance on that website was some sort of livestream statement by the FBI. That kind of webpage should be a crime.
Gun nerds are saying SKS
The photos are not super clear, but it does appear to be a sporterized SKS with a scope and modified to take generic AK magazines. This kind of rifle is actually a sort of meme gun in the firearms enthusiast community, though not as much now as in the past.
Gun nerd time: there are actually very few AK-47s in the US and they tend to be collectors items that sell for obscene amounts of money for a few reasons. First, very few were actually made. The gun most people are referring to as an "AK-47" is usually an AKM or an AK-74, all of which belong to the AK family/pattern of rifle. Actual AK 47s were made in 3 generations in the early 50s, were expensive to make due to using block milling operations, and very few made it into the US before the '68 ban on imports. A trophy weapon brought back into the US before the '68 ban sold at auction last year for over $250k.
Before the fall of the USSR, there were very few imported AK pattern guns that had the legal modifications to make them semi-auto only and thus legal for import. Then after the USSR fell, we had the 90s assault weapon ban. You do see some monstrosities from this era around, but they are undesirable for collectors. Wide availability of US legal, semi auto only, AK pattern rifles only start after the expiration of the (absurd) 90s assault weapons ban. The ammo was also hard to find.
But the SKS has always been available as its only ever been a semi auto gun with an internal 10 round magazine, satisfying the legal requirements of even the most hostile states like California. They do look superficially similar to an AK pattern rifle (the mechanical action is different) though, so with some creativity and modifications you can dress one up in the costume of an AK well enough to continue to fool people who don't know much about fire arms right up to the present day.
edit - here's a photo of basic models of the two rifles, SKS on the left. https://i0.wp.com/coldboremiracle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/JAW01066.jpg
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Republican congressional baseball team shooter also had an SKS. Also failed to kill anyone.
It's a fine rifle, SKS owners just aren't sending their best.
Rifle is fine?
Why you want rail for Kalashnikov? Is not good enough as procured from Izhevsk Mechanical Works? You think needs improvement? Then maybe you find job with army of Russia! You have drinks with Mikhail Kalashnikov, trade story of many weapons designed and details of school for engineering!
Or maybe you not do this. Probably is because you never design weapon in whole life. You look at fine Russian rifle, think it need crazy shit stick on all sides of weapon. You have disease of American capitalist, change thing that is fine for no reason except to look different from comrade. You put cheap flashlight of Chinese slave factory on one side, you put bad scope of American middle west on other side, you put front pistol grip on bottom so you are like American movie guy John Rambo. Maybe you put sex dildo on top to fuck yourself in asshole for making shameful travesty of rifle of Mikhail Kalashnikov, no?
Rifle is fine. You fuck it, it only get heavy and you still no hit largest side of barn. Go to firing range, practice with many magazine of cartridge. Then you not need dumb shit put on side of rifle.
(Mods plz no ban this isn't even the active thread anymore)
Thank you. This warms my heart.
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I'm just delighted to see the classics are still appreciated.
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I've shot an SKS a couple times. It is indeed a fine rifle. The stripper clips can be tricky if you are not used to them.
The SKS is the ultimate successor to the Winchester 94- all the same fundamental limitations, same form factor/overall size, same power of cartridge (.30-30 is far weaker than its case size would otherwise suggest).
The AK kind of fits that description too, but only in the sense that it technically has a Win 94 compatibility mode (the Saiga rifles being the best example) rather than having been designed solely with that mode in mind.
Yeah 7.62x39 is not at all a well designed round. They took the old 7.62x54R and shortened the case length until it was small enough. No design process or attempt to optimize for performance. You end up with a moderate sized round with low recoil and poor ballistic performance. They could have instead made a deadlier higher-velocity flatter-shooting round. But they didn't want to.
To leap to the defense of the SKS: it is light, not too long and low recoil. I have a Korean War M1 and that thing is heavy and the ammo is enormous in comparison. Keeping size and weight in mind, I'd want the SKS.
But strange these two would-be murderers didn't bring any modern magazine fed rifle.
Routh spent all his money on flying around. Had he brought quality camo and laid on the ground looking like some slightly wilting local plants he might have gotten off a shot.
He was in the area for cca 12 hours.
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Honestly, no, they couldn't have done that.
They couldn't have done that because they didn't know to do that. There were clues they could have paid attention to- the Federov is chambered in what is basically 6.5 Grendel, after all- but 2400 FPS isn't exactly slow by WW2 military rifles standards (to the point that the British thought ~140 grains at 2400 FPS should become the standard general purpose machine gun round for NATO). And militaries, especially ones that thought their next major war would be fought in Eastern Europe (and the Soviets were indeed correct on that point) do want that little bit of extra range- because that place is all plains.
In fairness to the Soviets it's not like 5.56 is particularly well-designed either considering it's just stretched .222, forgetting that you actually need to leave space for a properly-designed bullet. You can hack around that by loading the cartridge to the fucking moon, which is why the US has to replace its M4 bolts now where it didn't with M193.
I don't know enough about 5.8x42 to shit-talk it.
No cartridge in modern use was truly a clean sheet design. Even the Tround used a .36-caliber (9mm) projectile.
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There are very fine rifles on both sides
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