you only THINK you have an AK
What you are shooting is an "AK-47
style semi-automatic rifle", not a true AK-47 Assault Rifle. The real AK was designed to allow waves of illiterate peasants to overwhelm better trained, better equipped enemy soldiers. They can be cleaned with gasoline or with a garden hose. They can be stamped out and assembled in any factory, or made one at a time with hand tools in Hassan's backyard forge. They are cheap, rugged, and there are over half a
billion (estimated) of them on the planet. They do exactly what they were designed to do. Accuracy is third or fourth on the list of requirements, if that high. Accuracy is for sharpshooters with Mosins or, later, Dragunovs.
In contrast, your super-accurate "AK" was most likely (for compliance reasons) made in the US, with the latest alloys and computer measurements, with a redesign to allow only semiauto function. Aimed single shots are going to be more accurate than spray and pray, and since you know that your ammo is designed to strict tolerances, consistent, clean, and reliable, you design it to have tighter tolerances and better fit. It'll go to someone who has read every article and book on all things Kalashnikov, at a price that would buy ten of Hassan's, plus ammo. And that's not even considering all the handloads that have been put together for it. And even if yours is 100% Com-Bloc, someone still had to put in a semiauto sear and assembly-and that still means it isn't what you see on the news being used by terrorists and Third World paramilitaries. It's a whole new animal.
To misquote a popular ad, "It's not your Babushka's Kalashnikov".
I won't tell you that the SKS is a precision tackdriver, but one thing I can say is that, apart from import marks, you are holding the very same rifle that the soldier used. My Yugo even came with a logbook of the inspection, firing, and maintenance it underwent.
As a main battle rifle it cannot compete with the AK-they represent two different eras of infantry weapon, two different ways of thinking; the AK the start of the new, the SKS as the end of the old.
I happen to prefer the SKS; I think they're the very last main battle rifle to have even a sense of the "human touch" in them. I certainly wouldn't compare it to a Mauser for aesthetics! But almost everything that follows leans toward cold, insectile efficiency-or as High Roaders and advertisers would put it, "
Tacticality".
I mean, on an SKS we polish up the wood to bring out the grain; on an AK or AR we add more fixture points and carbon fiber. I've seen SKSs in synthetic stocks, and they just don't look right.
On the battlefield, though, I'd pick the AK-it's hard to argue against detachable mags and indestructibility.