The AK-47 is inarguably Mikhail Kalashnikov’s magnum opus, but it’s not the 1940s anymore, and despite countless memes, rifle is not fine. Don’t get me wrong, I love every iteration of the AK and own the majority of them. But I’m not so enamored with the avtomat that I can’t see its flaws.
Indeed, when I first got into firearms back around 2000, I was obsessed with the AKM — it was the go-to rifle of the so-called bad guys. From those evil Soviets I saw on the news as a kid, to Vietcong fighters in Southeast Asia, to various terror groups waving beat-to-hell guns above their heads defiantly, the AK was the forbidden gun.
I remember reading in countless magazines how the gun was unstoppable, reliable, and rugged but terribly inaccurate. But when I got my first AK back in 2003, I discovered that so-called experts on the gun were often anything but. The gun isn’t flawlessly reliable (though it is pretty damn good), and despite being labeled as inaccurate, it was easily capable of hitting man-sized targets out to 300 yards. Or at least, mine would have been if the sights on it weren’t so canted.
It wasn’t until I got my first out of college that
