Back in the beginning of this thread I belive Skeets was talking about getting a Saiga.
Truth be told, I have never thought much about Saigas, I always thought that they were an answer to a question that nobody asked. I mean a 12 gauge AK! Who would have thought?
However, my opinion is born of ignorance, as I have never had the opportunity to handle one. I'm a 'gun' guy, and at one time even owned 1/2 of a gun shop. Even though I have bought & sold a butt-load of shotguns, in my narrow opinion shotguns begin and end with two...all my shotgun needs are met with a tried & true Remington 870 pump, and I have a newly-aquired original Belgian-made Browning Sweet Sixteen autoloader just in case some Landed-Gentry type ever invites me on an upland hunt on his Manor, as if that's likely to ever happen!
A trip last year to Russia allowed me an opportunity to at least see how the Saiga may have come about at all...
My wife & I went on a WWII-themed trip to Russia last year, visiting battlefields & musuems of the Great Patriotic War, as the Russiams call it. We visited Moscow, Volgograd (ex-Stalingrad), and St Petersburfg (ex-Leningrad). Being a 'gun guy' I was itching to visit a Russian gun shop, if even such a thing exisited.
As it turned out, the last hotel we stayed in (in St Petersburg) was situated directly over a Russian gun shop. On the last evening of our trip, I spent about an hour looking through the shop and discussing with the guys there the avalaible hardware and the laws governing their purchase & use. There were LOTS of Saigas on display.
Russian gun ownership goes something like this...
Airguns of all types are available for direct purchase, as are adaptations of standard Soviet pistols & revolvers modified to shoot a funky 45-cal low-velocity cartridge loaded with a big rubber ball. These 'rubber ball' shooters are made up from Makarovs, Tokarev TT-33's, and even M1895 Nagant revolvers. Likewise, real models of these guns (with many of the Tokarevs bearing WWII dates on the frames) are converted to .177 cal pellet guns using standard 12 gram CO2 cartridges. I was DYING to buy one of the Tokarev air guns, and was assured that I would have no problem getting one out of Russia, but at it was built on a 'real' serialized TT-33 frame, I was worried that some US Customs agent may not have so benevolent of a view.
They also sold quite a few real firearms, mostly shotguns, plenty of rifles (including many semi-auto AK varients, just like are sold here), but no 'real' handguns were displayed.
If you want to own a 'real' firearm in Russia, the process starts by applying for a shotgun permit. If you are approved, the Saiga is pretty much what everybody starts with, as they are relatively inexpensive compared to others offered. If you own your shotgun for 5 years, and have not commited any transgressions with it, you can now move on to a rifle, once another permitting application is submitted and processed. Again, the semi-auto AK varients rule, as they are inexpensive in comparison to other rifles.
Which brings me full circle to my theory of how the Saiga was born. I belive that it was developed to serve the Russian civilian market, and not ours, as a pure export product, as I had previously believed. As the old Izvhesk (now Izhmash) arsenel is geared toward AK manufacture, the development of a shotgun varient seems a natural course. So end's Tom's take on the matter, your mileage may vary.
I'll be off to a gunshow later this morning, if I spot any Saiga's I'll post a price report.
Take Care,
Tom
like this: (Cabu 2nd from left)
