Snowflakes in Hell

You know you’re a gun nut when you read about Blues Traveler’s John Popper getting arrested for doing 110MPH with load of guns and marijuana in his car, see the media spread on the police table and think, “I can do better than that.”

Of course, I won’t be doing 110 down the highway, nor will I have any controlled substances in my vehicle either, and I don’t have a nice gun case built into the back of my vehicle. But seriously, considering what I’m taking to Texas, my police table spread will look far more impressive than this if I got pulled over, searched, and hauled in for questioning.

I bought this for myself as a birthday present. Since I was born in 1974, the year the rifle was adopted by the Red Army, I thought it was only appropriate. Of course, this isn’t a real AK-74, in the sense that it has no select-fire capability, but it’s a copy with a semi-automatic trigger group to keep me from being a menace to society. It’s one of the Arsenal SLR models. I decided to share some pictures of it. Click on the image to see a larger version:

The AK-74 Minus Bayonet. Can anyone make out the book it’s propped up on? I thought it was a nice touch.

Bayonet out of the scabbard posed on the side. The AK-74 has black polymer furniture and a polymer magazine, compared to the wood furniture you get on an AK-47, and its sturdy metal magazine. The 74 is a bit lighter than the AK-47, but not by a whole lot.

Bayonet fixed to the rifle. My AK-47 lacks a bayonet lug, because it is post-ban, and the assault weapons ban forbade this “evil” feature. Also, the flash hider is integral to stabilizing the bayonet, which was another “evil” feature you didn’t see on Kalashnikovs during the ban. I’m not eager to replace my AK-47 with a “no ban” model, because the original AK-47 didn’t have a bayonet lug or flash hider. Those features didn’t come until later revisions.

It shoots pretty nicely, as it doesn’t have quite the kick of the AK-47, taking a much smaller cartridge, 5.45×39mm as opposed to 7.62×39mm. The felt recoil is actually less than the AR-15. I would imagine the AK-74 would be quite controllable on full-auto fire compared to the AK-47. I’ve never shot a Kalashnikov on full-auto, though, so it’s hard to say. My plan is to take this to Texas to get rid of all the 5.45×39mm corrosive ammo I have. I don’t shoot this rifle nearly as much as I like, because with the corrosive ammo, I have to clean everything out every time.

… it might be able to fire 4 .22LR cartridges on you.

That’s pretty neat. This demo is apparently from Europe. If any managed to get into the US, they’d be regulated as NFA items (AOW).

I was happy to hear that Brad will be helping to restore my credentials as a Pennsylvania blog by saying bad things about Ed Rendell.  Ed’s been getting way too much of a break lately from me, so I’m quite pleased to have Brad helping the blog get back on track in this regard.  While it was my intention for this blog to be the voice of a Pennsylvania gun owner, I also wanted to make sure I took the time to verbally flog state and local politicians who deserved it, which is a lot of them.

Brad’s already stated he’s not going to post a damned thing about Jim Zumbo :)

I see the commenters have been busy beavers while I was sleeping. It’s good that we have these kinds of flame wars discussions, though. I have some reactions to some things that were said. I don’t mean to ruffle any feathers here, just to present how I think about these things. We need the dedicated and passionate, badly, but I do worry sometimes that the dedication and passion can overflow a bit too much, and drive away some folks we need in order to help us keep winning politically.

First I want to start by saying it does frustrate me to no end that a lot of hunters could really care less about RKBA issues, but a large percentage of them are sympathetic, but uninvolved. Jym’s father falls into the latter category. These are people who can be helpful to us if we reach them, because they vote.

A lot of hunters, even those who disagreed with what Zumbo said, were nontheless upset that his career was ruined. I don’t apologize for our reaction as a community to his blog post. We needed to react strongly to that kind of statement, because of the kind of damage it can do. I wanted the industry and hunters to pay attention, and they have. It’s how we behave now that will determine whether or not we reconcile the hunting and shooting communities, or drive the wedge further in. Can you guess which outcome the Bradys are hoping for?

I do not, under any circumstances, make apologies for, or regret the reaction to Zumbo’s “terrorist rifles” blog post, but it saddens me that people aren’t willing to give him the benefit of doubt as he tries to reconcile himself with the shooting community. What does driving people away from the movement really accomplish for us? It might make us feel good, but it’s a sure path to take the movement out into the political wilderness.

Many of you folks I think need to understand the difference between someone hostile to the right to arms and someone sympathetic, but not really active within the community. People who are outright hostile and unapologetic, we do have no use for. If I encounter a hunter who rails against my “assault weapon”, and I’m unable to persuade, I’m quite happy to write that person off as as quickly as I would a die hard Brady supporter. But there are a lot of people out there like Jym’s dad, or even my dad, for that matter, who are generally sympathetic to RKBA, but just aren’t active in the issue anymore. We can’t drive those folks away because they might share some sympathy for Zumbo, or because they’ll never be gun nut enough for our liking. A distinction has to be made between people who are hostile, and people who just haven’t been reached. The former we can write off, but the latter we need. The die hard among us do not have the votes or money to win on this issue, and votes and money are everything in politics.