Thanas wrote:AK-47s are probably cheaper and a lot of those people would probably already own a AR-15 or some derivative?
My experience (admittedly limited) is that a US gun owner is more likely to own an AK-47 than an AR-15, though plenty own both. The lower price has much to do with that.
Not to mention that the SKS, the semi-auto predecessor to the AK, is an extremely popular 'poor man's hunting rifle'. Both use the same round, which I have heard has very similar characteristics to the classic deer round, the 30-30, but is notably cheaper.
Hence an AK is actually quite a sensible prize compared to an AR-15. The real irony here isn't that a Russian weapon is being offered; it's that a military cartridge has oddly turned out to be ideally suited for hunting purposes.
Robert Gilruth to Max Faget on the Apollo program: “Max, we’re going to go back there one day, and when we do, they’re going to find out how tough it is.”
Winston Blake wrote:The real irony here isn't that a Russian weapon is being offered; it's that a military cartridge has oddly turned out to be ideally suited for hunting purposes.
Not really, look at the 30-06, .308, even the .223, all very popular hunting rounds with military backgrounds. After all from a biological perspective the intended targets are roughly 100 to 200 ponds of meat. Human, deer, wild boar, they're all roughly in that same weight range and and all of the rounds can kill equally well on them.
