How will the Russian ammo ban affect x39 guns?
7.62x39 or 5.45x39? Because it's going to be a fairly disparate future for the two calibers.
This is bad for us all and no honest person, no matter how dumb, can successfully argue otherwise. BUT ... it's not the end of the world. I don't want to repeat myself too much after posting over in the "Russian ammo bans" thread (
https://carolinafirearmsforum.com/index.php?threads/russian-ammo-bans.95418/post-1619218), but there are plenty of other nations that either A) still produce 7.62x39, B) still have the tooling to produce it, C) have it stockpiled, or more likely, D) all of the above. With the vacuum created by this ban, others will step in because American money still talks. As long as there are several million guns that shoot the stuff floating around the states, there will be fresh ammo to shoot them. Some folks may get out of the AK family of guns because they only got into them for super cheap plinking, but I'd wager a big chunk of those folks are WASR, NPAP, VSKA, C39, RAS-47, Riley, and SKS owners. I can't imagine a lot of owners of higher end AKs are gonna dump them at a loss on the market. Before the Molot sanction, you could score VEPRs in all sorts of random calibers, so I think existing and even some new x39 guns will continue to appear.
Will we ever get back to sub-20 cents per round? Probably not, but I wouldn't be surprised to find it at $.0.25-$0.30 again some day. The Chinese ammo ban's been mentioned here. Guess who just scored a Romanian SAR-1 for $800? Guess who just picked up another sealed can of
PRE-BAN STEEL CORE ARMOR PIERCING BANNED (*GUNBROKER SCALPERS FOAMING AT MOUTH* DID I MENTHION SHTEEL CORE?!?!?1) Norinco X39 on stripper clips for less than 50 cents a round? So even if
ALL 7.62x39 stopped coming into the U.S., we could reasonably expect to be able to buy the stuff already here for a relatively decent price for decades to come.
About that 5.45x39 on the other hand. I've shed more than a few tears and drank more than a feel pilsners to help come to terms with that one...