Apparently the Philadelphia Police were in a standoff with an armed suspect earlier today:
So, how did you folks spend your day? We spent it trying to coax a gun-toting piece of garbage out of his car. You know, because we couldn’t have him off himself with his Chinese assault rifle, right? That would have made our lives much easier.
At least he didn’t start firing at anyone else, and surrendered peacefully. Funny thing is, the Chinese variants of the AK have been banned for a number of years from further importation. Since 1989, if I recall, yet you often hear about them showing up on the streets. Which is odd, because they aren’t that common on the range. I have to wonder if a large shipment of them got diverted to the black market some time ago, and they’ve been circulating on the streets since.
Maybe it was an SKS?
The link doesn’t specify a type.
Of course, the SKS isn’t properly an assault rifle, but it is under law in at least one place (CA), and has so often been called one that I wouldn’t assume it was an AK.
(Heck, it could even be a Norinco M-14…)
Chinese AK’s of the distinctive pistol grip/folding bayo type got axed by the Bush Ban of ’89, but they continued as the thumbhole-stocked MAK-90/MAK-91 for another several years until Clinton shut off the supply of all semiauto Chicom imports in the early ’90s.
It’s interesting that you brought up the black market factor regarding Chinese-made AK rifles, Sebastian.
I seem to recall reading about a US Customs seizure of thousands of Chinese AK’s in the port Los Angeles from a COSCO shipping container that took place in 1996. (COSCO is a government-owned company of the People’s Republic of China.) The shipping manifest had the container’s contents falsely listed as being tractor parts or something like that.
This was back around when Bill Clinton was helping the Loral Corporation sell our nation’s missile technology to China in exchange for huge donations to his reelection campaign. The Chinese were apparently smuggling all sorts of things into this country as a result of paying off the Clinton administration back then, such as counterfeit American-brand cigarettes like Marlboro and Camel.
I think it would only stand to reason that if the US Customs managed to intercept one bulk shipment of illicit AK rifles from China 13 years ago, who’s to say that other shipments of the same thing have not gone undetected since then?
I have also heard rumors that China is the true source of the Mexican drug cartel’s AK-type rifles, rather than US gun shops and gun shows in border states as the gun-haters in the American mainstream media would try to have us all believe.
Honestly i am not supprised that you dont see them at the range , However ya need to see that there is a ” buttload ” of them here , and the preposed accuracy is such that you might not see them at a range . Personally i dont own an ak variant ( my sks rifles fill that ctg loophole ) but if i did it would have as much chance of showing up on a ” range ” as my fal does, and you can read that as about the chance of obama’s stimulas working .
What do you mean “diverted?” The chinese were caught importing full auto AKs into the US in the mid-late 90s and selling them to gangs. The police figured this out because ordinary gang bangers were suddenly walking around with brand new select fire chinese military weapons. They connected the dots but the guy responsible fled back to China and batman was unavailable to retrieve him.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had started again. Or if they had been importing them in via canada or mexico.
On what “Navy Vet from Jersey” said.
I remember that clearly. The cargo vessel was in Oakland, Ca. and the Chicom AK’s were allegedly discovered by accident.
Since we still only inspect a fraction of the cargo containers it is probably safe to assume there have been others.