Plus, the sights are easy to use and good to practice with. Yes an AK is more fun but the SKS is a classic.

The two main importers of the Chinese military surplus model SKS that China dumped on the market were, when China started dumping them: China Jin An, an importer that was in the Southfield suburb of Detroit and an importer called Import Arms Company (IACO) in Sacramento, California. From there they spread across the country to various FFL’s or private individuals and a bunch of them were stolen in shipment, one of which ended up in the hands of Ryan Routh who tried to assassinate President Trump when he was campaigning for his current term.

Routh’s former employee Tina Cooper arranged for the rifle. Cooper was also assisted by Ronnie Oxendine (who was Cooper’s current boss at the time), who had crossed paths with Routh professionally over the years, and Oxendine was the one who actually obtained the gun and gave it to Routh on Cooper’s behalf. Routh told Oxendine that he would remove the serial number from the gun so it could not be traced to Oxendine. Routh paid $350 to Oxendine for the rifle, and he paid $100 to Cooper for arranging the deal.

Routh originally wanted a .50 caliber rifle and Cooper told him that the .50-caliber was not available at the moment through Oxendine, but that she could possibly get it elsewhere. So Routh told her by text ‘Go shopping for me’ and Copper said she would.

But evidently Routh was not able to get a .50 cal and ended up with the SKS he used in his assassination attempt.

One of my big gun regrets is trading it off for another shotgun.

Yes, well, but officially in a way they did continue manufacturing after 1958 into 1961 by supplying the materials to China. China manufactured the Russian model SKS that Russia had been producing using only materials supplied by Russia. But the Sino-Soviet split had happened and China could not get Russian parts any longer so in 1961 China started using parts made in China and from 1961 on-wards the China SKS was completely made of all China made parts and fully Chinese built. The China SKS before 1961 were actually Soviet Sino Guns and exactly the same as those made in Russia. The way you tell the Soviet Sino SKS from the ones completely made in China is the ones completely made in China with all China parts staring in 1961 is behind the serial number (which was moved to a different spot) there are Chinese ideograph markings and they indicate the rifle was built completely with china manufacture parts from 1961 on-wards and they have various meanings.

The Russian ones I picked up years ago for $52.00 each. They are still in the original grease and wrapping and crate they had the day they were packed at the factory that supplied the Soviet military.

When the Soviet Union started to collapse all these SKS’s started appearing on the market and were being imported by import companies who buy up ‘surplus’ of all types of stuff for sale in various markets. One such importer here in the U.S. had imported a bunch of these and had orders for them from various retail firearm outlets. But the problem was not all of those who placed orders actually took possession of the rifles by paying the importer for them. This left some of these sitting in various importers warehouses, and eventually they would sell them off.

A friend of mine was into finding businesses that were going out of business then buying their remaining good stuff at really cheap prices because the business just wanted to get rid of it. He told me about this importer company that was going out of business and their list had some genuine factory packed Russian rifles listed and asked me if I wanted to go take a look with him and I did. To my surprise they were the SKS rifles still in the original factory crate with original factory grease and wrappings just as they were supplied to the soviet military, but there were only four in the crate. I bought all four for $52.00 each and they told me I could take the crate too, that was the last of them they had having sold off all the others already.

So, today that crate with those rifles in it still packed in the original factory grease and wrappings with the soviet era hammer and sickle stamp on the crate sit stored away as a piece of history. I’ve never had the heart to disturb their ‘pristine’ condition by trying to clean them off to make then serviceable and really never will ’cause I like them for the historic value.