PercyShelley
Member
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2007
- Messages
- 1,075
5.45x39 is cheap these days right? Problem is, only AKs and clones thereof eat it. Why not make a cheap, but decent rifle chambered in it?
I'm thinking something along the lines of an SKS, but shorter and lighter and utterly streamlined for ease of production to drop the cost as much as possible.
I was reading about how the SKS is a popular rifle with Navajos in the SW US. It's reasonably inexpensive, eats reasonably inexpensive ammunition, and has sufficient range and firepower to deal with coyotes and the occasional bandit that you get out there in Indian country. It's also railroad spike tough.
As one of the threads here pointed out, there really aren't any US equivalents to the SKS that can match it for firepower, toughness and price, so why not make one? I'm thinking of an ideal rifle for the poor, a market that I think gets ignored (and deliberately snubbed by lawmakers), and one that is vitally necessary for the future of shooting sports. The poor can vote too you know. I present to you, then, the Budget Subversive, for arming the poor and flouting the dreams of a gunless utopia:
1) 5.45x39 chambering, but with provisions to switch to 5.56x45 should the eastern ammo dry up or get expensive.
2) Overbuilt polymers. Use reasonably inexpensive polymers, but do not spare material. There should be no hollow parts on this rifle. The overriding concern here is to keep costs as low as possible, but a close second is to make a rifle for the ages, so everything should be monstrously overbuilt. If it has to be used as a club once or twice, it ought to be tough enough to do so once or twice. Anything that has to be made of metal that isn't the barrel (which should be made of somewhat harder than necessary steel to improve lifespan) should be cast. Cast parts will handle the low operating pressures and recoil of the 5.45x39 just fine, and they'll keep the price right.
3) Fly under the radar of any future bans. The current grand strategy of gun banners is to attack what they see as the fringes of the gun culture. Go after .50s or military style weapons; the public can be easily frightened about those and gun ownership can be eliminated incrementally. Don't make the gun obviously military-styled. Use a conventional stock; they shoot about the same as pistol grips for most people. Use stripper clips and a large capacity fixed internal magazine, it's almost as good as removables and gives the gun a far more benign appearance. An upper rail would be reasonable since they're so darned useful, but don't cover the whole thing in them!
4) The KISS rule. This rifle needs to be easier to manufacture and easier to learn than an AK. That's a tall order of business, but it's been done before and can be done again. I want something that could lurk in someone's basement for years; giving nightmares to all who would violate the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments in order to repeal the second.
5) Multiple manufacturers. This should be, ideally, just like an AR-15. I want the Budget Subversive to be available from at least two different companies with lots of dark horse no-name brands popping up all the time. This will make it much more difficult to ban by name, and hopefully keep user-end costs down.
6) A reasonable degree of accuracy. This gun should be capable of 2-3 MOA at 100 meters.
In short, I want a rifle that would make Mao Zedong swoon. I don't want the next AR-15, there are already plenty of those. I want a rifle that's as dirt cheap, simple, easy to use and ubiquitous as the AKM, except more so. I don't want a rifle so cheap that any family that wanted armament could have one, I want a rifle so cheap that any family that wanted armament could have five.
I want to see a rifle that makes simonovs and kalashnikovs look like overpriced, complicated, finicky safe queens with no belly for the real world. I want to see a rifle that could undercut Norinco prices sans import tariffs. I want to see a rifle that could air dropped by the million to arm resistance movement without a parachute. I want future gun bans to seem like prohibitions on McDonald's toys or cell phones this thing will be so darned common.
The technology exists; plastics and polymers are cheaper and stronger than ever before, and it's only going to get better until we run out of oil and the zombies attack. The retarded blowback operating system of the TKB-517 was simpler, lighter and more reliable than the gas piston system of the AKM. If Glock can make a pistol with 30 some odd parts, then by golly we can make a rifle with less than that!
The market exists; not only in the US, but around the world. I don't just want to see Sarah Brady frothing at the mouth about the availability of guns, I want to see the UN give up completely on the damfool disarmament resolution too, out of the sheer hopelessness of getting rid of something so common and so cheap.
Finally, the cause exists; show of hands, who thinks that the governments of China and Nigeria might be a bit more willing to negotiate with interests from Inner Mongolia and the Niger Delta respectively, when there could be a rifle behind every blade of grass (err... grain of sand? Glob of mud?)? Show of hands, who thinks that the thugs in the Janjaweed militias would feel a little less fearless when the Southern Sudanese they were going to go slaughter suddenly have guns? Show of hands, who thinks that the LRA in Uganda would have been able to last a year, let alone nineteen years and abduct and murder countless civilians, if those civilians had been shooting back at them?
Guns proliferate, and cheap, good, ones proliferate even faster.
There are weapons that oppress and weapons that empower. The elitist feudal system, with its expensive steel barding, swords and years of training could not withstand the cheap, powerful, easy to use crossbow. The shogun overlords weren't too happy about those Portugese arquebusses either, once they realized how fast they let peasants turn samurai into swiss cheese.
There is nothing that tyrants hate more than masses with a mind of their own, nothing save opinionated masses who have the tools to set about governmental adjustment.
I'm thinking something along the lines of an SKS, but shorter and lighter and utterly streamlined for ease of production to drop the cost as much as possible.
I was reading about how the SKS is a popular rifle with Navajos in the SW US. It's reasonably inexpensive, eats reasonably inexpensive ammunition, and has sufficient range and firepower to deal with coyotes and the occasional bandit that you get out there in Indian country. It's also railroad spike tough.
As one of the threads here pointed out, there really aren't any US equivalents to the SKS that can match it for firepower, toughness and price, so why not make one? I'm thinking of an ideal rifle for the poor, a market that I think gets ignored (and deliberately snubbed by lawmakers), and one that is vitally necessary for the future of shooting sports. The poor can vote too you know. I present to you, then, the Budget Subversive, for arming the poor and flouting the dreams of a gunless utopia:
1) 5.45x39 chambering, but with provisions to switch to 5.56x45 should the eastern ammo dry up or get expensive.
2) Overbuilt polymers. Use reasonably inexpensive polymers, but do not spare material. There should be no hollow parts on this rifle. The overriding concern here is to keep costs as low as possible, but a close second is to make a rifle for the ages, so everything should be monstrously overbuilt. If it has to be used as a club once or twice, it ought to be tough enough to do so once or twice. Anything that has to be made of metal that isn't the barrel (which should be made of somewhat harder than necessary steel to improve lifespan) should be cast. Cast parts will handle the low operating pressures and recoil of the 5.45x39 just fine, and they'll keep the price right.
3) Fly under the radar of any future bans. The current grand strategy of gun banners is to attack what they see as the fringes of the gun culture. Go after .50s or military style weapons; the public can be easily frightened about those and gun ownership can be eliminated incrementally. Don't make the gun obviously military-styled. Use a conventional stock; they shoot about the same as pistol grips for most people. Use stripper clips and a large capacity fixed internal magazine, it's almost as good as removables and gives the gun a far more benign appearance. An upper rail would be reasonable since they're so darned useful, but don't cover the whole thing in them!
4) The KISS rule. This rifle needs to be easier to manufacture and easier to learn than an AK. That's a tall order of business, but it's been done before and can be done again. I want something that could lurk in someone's basement for years; giving nightmares to all who would violate the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments in order to repeal the second.
5) Multiple manufacturers. This should be, ideally, just like an AR-15. I want the Budget Subversive to be available from at least two different companies with lots of dark horse no-name brands popping up all the time. This will make it much more difficult to ban by name, and hopefully keep user-end costs down.
6) A reasonable degree of accuracy. This gun should be capable of 2-3 MOA at 100 meters.
In short, I want a rifle that would make Mao Zedong swoon. I don't want the next AR-15, there are already plenty of those. I want a rifle that's as dirt cheap, simple, easy to use and ubiquitous as the AKM, except more so. I don't want a rifle so cheap that any family that wanted armament could have one, I want a rifle so cheap that any family that wanted armament could have five.
I want to see a rifle that makes simonovs and kalashnikovs look like overpriced, complicated, finicky safe queens with no belly for the real world. I want to see a rifle that could undercut Norinco prices sans import tariffs. I want to see a rifle that could air dropped by the million to arm resistance movement without a parachute. I want future gun bans to seem like prohibitions on McDonald's toys or cell phones this thing will be so darned common.
The technology exists; plastics and polymers are cheaper and stronger than ever before, and it's only going to get better until we run out of oil and the zombies attack. The retarded blowback operating system of the TKB-517 was simpler, lighter and more reliable than the gas piston system of the AKM. If Glock can make a pistol with 30 some odd parts, then by golly we can make a rifle with less than that!
The market exists; not only in the US, but around the world. I don't just want to see Sarah Brady frothing at the mouth about the availability of guns, I want to see the UN give up completely on the damfool disarmament resolution too, out of the sheer hopelessness of getting rid of something so common and so cheap.
Finally, the cause exists; show of hands, who thinks that the governments of China and Nigeria might be a bit more willing to negotiate with interests from Inner Mongolia and the Niger Delta respectively, when there could be a rifle behind every blade of grass (err... grain of sand? Glob of mud?)? Show of hands, who thinks that the thugs in the Janjaweed militias would feel a little less fearless when the Southern Sudanese they were going to go slaughter suddenly have guns? Show of hands, who thinks that the LRA in Uganda would have been able to last a year, let alone nineteen years and abduct and murder countless civilians, if those civilians had been shooting back at them?
Guns proliferate, and cheap, good, ones proliferate even faster.
There are weapons that oppress and weapons that empower. The elitist feudal system, with its expensive steel barding, swords and years of training could not withstand the cheap, powerful, easy to use crossbow. The shogun overlords weren't too happy about those Portugese arquebusses either, once they realized how fast they let peasants turn samurai into swiss cheese.
There is nothing that tyrants hate more than masses with a mind of their own, nothing save opinionated masses who have the tools to set about governmental adjustment.
