Russia’s run by a bunch of corrupt oligarchs? Bummer. Putin’s nothing more than a thinly veiled Soviet dictator? Tell us something we didn’t know. They want to use the oil money they’re swimming in to build an underwater tunnel to Alaska? If you say so. The Russki Ministry of Defense is going to destroy 4 million unused but perfectly good guns? OK now you’re pissing us off! From shotgunnews.com: “Though the types were not officially announced, a little birdie whispered to me that most of the guns slotted for destruction are Mosin rifles and carbines, SKS carbines, Nagant revolvers, TT33 Tula Tokarev pistols, a huge number of AKM automatic rifles, RPK and RPK-74 light machine guns and a small number of older PK medium machine guns.” We sure hope the Pacific fleet’s gassed up and ready to go. This…cannot…stand!

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16 COMMENTS

  1. I suppose now would be a good time to invest a grand or so in Mosins and SKS’s while they’re still cheap…

  5. I doubt the Russians have a choice. Who the Russians could legally sell all those weapons to?
    Us? Very funny Tovarish.Obama won’t even let the Koreans sell US made surplus M-1s here.A request by the Russians to sell those arms in the US would be met with a flat denial followed by a speech at the White House on ‘safeguarding the children’.
    Europe?Their gun laws mandate background checks and permits for BB Guns.’Nough said.

    That leaves places which aren’t popular customers to sell to.Id picture those 4 million arms turning up in the Middle East rather shortly.

    • Exactly my thought. They can’t sell them in the largest market in the world, so this may actually be the best option. (Of course, I’m speaking of the best option barring actually selling them to the Russian people. After all, that would be just crazy!)

    • You know the reason those guns can’t be imported because of laws that existed before Obama was even a senator, right? On top of that, a recent modification to the trade agreements between the US and Russia (reported here on TTAG, I believe) means that import of non-NFA firearms may become significantly easier in the near future—as evidenced by Izhmash setting up a US division.

      He isn’t the king, son. He’s the chief executive. His job is to see that policies are enacted to ensure the laws made by the legislature are enforced.
      I don’t give a hoot in hell what side of the aisle your politics are on. The statement that “Obama is blocking the import of military weapons into the US” is just ignorant and a straw man argument to boot, and we can’t do anything to fix problems if we don’t understand them correctly.

  7. Pretty sure that’s a photo from the 1996 Australian gun buyback right there. I thought we were bad, we only destroyed 600,000.

  8. The Russians haven’t been particularly good at keeping old weapons locked up. When the USSR collapsed a good deal of weapons fell into wayward hands, especially in Africa. People were bribed, armories opened, and trucks loaded. Plus, if they report that 4 million are being, I bet 4 million weapons will be destroyed on paper, 2 million of which exist, half of them will be “lost” on the way to the smelter, and 200,000 will be pardoned. So really only 800,000 will be destroyed. And those ones are probably broken already.

    • I think you’re low-balling the number that wind up “missing”, but other than that I think your analysis is spot-on.

  10. I hear there is a good market for such weapons in Mexico. They should contact Eric Holder to make arrangements.

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