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so what killed the interest in these russian box mag shotguns?


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the unreliability of some of them?

the shotgun study?

the import ban?

the price gouging of gun show fudds with the bolt on non-conversions?

the heaviness of 12 ga ammo?

lack of "practicality" of it in a shtf situation?

the "trump" slump?

the cheap Chinese copies?

 

 

i just cant figure out why folks dont think they as cool as they used to?  some folks still havent even heard of them though..

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I would say the import ban mostly, since there are a lot more people who just go into Cabela's and buy what the guy at the counter sells them than there are people who seek out new and interesting things or put time into researching things.

Reliability would be another major contributing factor in that most people think of an AK as something you could bury in your child's sandbox and pull out at a moment's notice, chamber a round, and dump the mag. My Saiga was my first firearm so I certainly thought that getting into it and it still nags in the back of my mind how unreliable mine can be.

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The tinkering was fun.

Not to the FUDDs. If it chokes it's garbage. They can't see the forest for the trees.
Exactly. Most people want to buy it and shoot it with no problems. I like tinkering with my guns, I only have 2 that haven't been modified or accessorized in some manner.
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I think a lot of it was that the initial interest was novelty and the low prices from 2003-2005, for awhile there a Saiga-12 cost about the same as a single shot break action..

 

When the base gun passed $550 it got outside of a lot of peoples price range... Also there was heavy promotion of the "combat shotgun" due in a large part to three gun matches becoming popular, but the gun games have severely limited box magazine shotguns in the past 5+ years so they have largely fallen out of favor.

 

Another issue is that most people buying into the Saiga-12 start out with promag stick magazines, which basically poison their interest in the shotguns.

 

One other thing that greatly hit the Saiga-12 market was the Vepr-12, the vepr-12 was billed as better in every way, and they are better built but I kinda think the design is kinda poor with no adjustable gas system.. And the magazine well is poorly thought out, it has too many points of contact to be able to reliably make the magazines fit in all shotguns well. The Chinese JTS-12 is bordering on brilliance, they greatly reduced inconsistencies by reducing the points of contact.. But that gun has a few other disadvantages.

Edited by csspecs
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The tinkering was fun.

Not to the FUDDs. If it chokes it's garbage. They can't see the forest for the trees.
Exactly. Most people want to buy it and shoot it with no problems. I like tinkering with my guns, I only have 2 that haven't been modified or accessorized in some manner.

 

 

I really like customizing my guns, it's just unnerving when something you may be betting your life on keeps breaking down.

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Lot of things have come together

The Russia hysteria or just plain old nationalism

The ban

The lack of tool skills in generations following the baby boom.

The fall of, yes it has fallen, the number of people owning firearms despite blips 

AInt that anyone has better for the price for sure

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Your question makes an assumption that there is no interest in Russian Kalashnikov pattern shotguns. Respectfully, that simply isn't true. In fact, we are finding quite the opposite to be true.

 

There is still tremendous interest in the platform. Unfortunately, since the bans, supply is the bottleneck. Scarcity and rising prices for existing stock put the base guns (when you can find them) out of reach for many consumers who would love to own a Russian AK shotgun.

 

There are plenty of Chinese clones floating around, but these will cost the average consumer $600 or more with tax, shipping, and FFL transfer fees. Honesty, there just doesn't seem to be much consumer appetite for Chicom copies which cost about as much as the original went for before the bans.

 

With no end in sight for the existing bans, and tariffs likely to drive up the price of the Chicom clones, the one bright spot seems to be Kalashnikov USA's excellent S12 clones. Now, if they'd only make one in  a Version  030 configuration, with an adjustable gas block....

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^^^What Mike said. I jumped on the bandwagon when the Clinton AWB expired and we were able to put a pistol grip back on these once $200 shotguns. Back then it was pretty much the only choice for a box fed shotgun, now the tides have turned. My interest is still there if they ever start letting them back in the country. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have built so many kits from other countries and would have stacked boxes of Saiga's high.

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If I knew then what I know now I would have bought up all of the Krink kits with original barrel that I could afford. I would have also been sitting on a colossal stack of Pmags for that 2013 panic and sold every single one of them off.

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Before the ban expired, at $200 you couldn't give a Saiga away and for years the only product support came in the form of Dinzag ,Tony, and anything you could fab up in your garage at home. Russian Krink kits would have been a good investment. I built a Yugo M92 at a fairly steep price only to have Serbia release it's clones at a bargain basement price a few years later.sad.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

ya the fun show guys would bolt on tapco crap and lazors and lights and bayonets and jack up the price and fudds would buy and they would fail...

 

 as far as quantifying interest, i just go off the interest on armslist if i had one to trade....  hardly any emails 9 mo ago in wichita....

 

 

the chaos 12 been shelved according to their website...

 

my new hope for mag fed fun, is that $600 sko-12 shorty.  it is i think a PGO, not a shotgun, so can do all manner of arm brace/barrel length shenanigans...  allegedly a drum gonna come out, in its current form its ugly, but i think it has potential...

 

im just disappointed overall cause they just such a fun system.  low recoil, high fun!!

Edited by saltydecimator
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Look what AMD-65s go for now. The kits were $99 in 2004, and that was with the cut receiver, barrel and mag. $320 now, without the barrel, cut rcvr or mag. Mags are $29.95 now too. I wish I had a few hundred of them to resell.

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