#Sks

In 1957, the T44E4 rifle was formally adopted by the United States Armed Forces as the United States Rifle, 7.62mm, M14, but this only marked the beginning of the rifle’s troubles. After numerous delays and production crises – including the rejection in December of 1960 of 1,784 of H&R receivers (about ten percent of the receivers that had been made up to that time) that could not withstand the pressure of firing due to a steel mix-up – Robert McNamara made a famous speech on the rifle program in June of 1961, stating: “I think it is a disgrace the way the project was handled. I don’t mean particularly by the Army, but I mean by the nation. This is a relatively simple job, building a rifle, compared to building a satellite or a lunar lander or a missile system.” At that time, there existed a grand total of only 133,386 M14 rifles, despite the type having been adopted four years prior.

Big Daddy Hoffman got a chance to test fire a SKS bullpup from Shernic Gunworks. The kit is rather impressive. Just from the picture, you can see how compact the SKS is compared to a standard collapsed AR-15.

Vice have produced a short film on the rebel snipers operating in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. I couldn’t help but shudder when they showed a 16 year old boy trying to snipe at a long distance with an SKS in the middle of such a heavily populated city. As much as I love the SKS, I would not want to use it in a situation where my target was further away than 100 yards.

Russian gun maker Molot had a very attractive looking SKS rifle on display at Moscow ARMS & Hunting ’12 expo. The rifle (which is of new manufacture, not old surplus) features a carbon fibre stock, picatinny rail, muzzle brake and a factory magazine. I am pleased they went with a traditional “hunting” stock, rather than a tactical style pistol gripped stock that look out of place on an SKS in my opinion. My only complaint would be the long 21.5″ barrel.

[ This guest post was written by Chuckyzord ]

[ This guest post was written by Drefizzle. ]

TimberSmith (A Tapco brand) are now selling a laminated thumbhole SKS stock. The stock counts as two 922r compliant parts.

The SKS rifle has a free floating firing pin. What this means is that there is nothing holding back the firing pin and preventing it moving forward and making contact with the chambered round’s primer. This becomes a problem when the firing pin channel gets gummed up with dirt, jamming the firing pin in the forward position.

Shernic Gun Works have unveiled a new bullpup conversion stock for the SKS rifle.

Travis, an attorney, is suing Norinco and the importer of a Norinco SKS after a person was killed while operating one.

The scenario was as follows. A chambered round failed to fired. The user pulled back the bolt but the round failed to eject. The user then dropped the rifle to the side of their body in order to inspect the action. The detachable 30 round magazine had not been removed and the bolt was let go. The second round slammed into and ignited the primer causing the chambered round’s casing to explode. It sent the bullet down range and a piece of the casing into the users stomach, causing death.

After posting this and doing more image analysis I realized that I was doing the analysis completely wrong. Researcher’s Analysis of al Qaeda Images Reveals Surprises describes what I attempted to do.