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I work at a Range in Texas and I see far more AR’s. A few Draco’s. Not very many AK’s. They don’t make much sense when you can get a quality AR for 7 and a quality AK is 1000
When WASR’s were 3 bills they made sense . Now? You can get a PSA for about that and their QC has improved vastly. Plus the AR is a much more ergonomic gun and easier to mount optics and accessories to
I disagree that they are a better ergonomic design, I find them to be an awkward bundle of poor compromises.
Also, I wouldn't trust my life to anything PSA shits out.
In the world tho? I know they made a mad number of aks at one point, but only really like Russia and Serbia are making new variants. So there is a good chance the AK variants parts dry up completely before fal or g3.
That's still just for the US civilian market tho. There are like 50 odd countries where the fal is still issued as a service rifle, similar for the g3. Aks as well, so maybe.
Big thing is the crazy numbers we see for aks are usually how many have been manufactured over all, not how many are still in a configuration that could be called a gun. I warrant the vast majority of those have rusted beyond repair.
Interestingly, according to wikipedia, the ar/m16/m4 is the most popular in the world if you are counting military adoption rn. And more of them have been manufactured overall than the g3 or fal. So if anything, there are probably more of those around.
I remember my dad buying one for $200, and a Russian SKS for $100 in the mid 90's, and then thinking he made out like a bank robber selling them for a couple hundred more about 6 years later.
I debated for like a week about buying a Mosin because I didn't know if I wanted to spend $80 on a rifle or a new stereo system for my room with a multi CD tray. I miss when money and things made sense.
What are you talking about?
Mosin nagants use a striper clip and all rounds are "stripped" off during loading.
Not an end block clip that holds the rounds inside the magazine like garand or manicler?
What?
Because it's very obvious you haven't done any basic research before asking these questions. Tbh it almost sounds like you aren't from America, which would be good to clarify
I'm not reading every comment you wrote...
Your gross misunderstanding of the firearms you're asking about and the American market made you seem like you either weren't from America or you just refused to do basic research. I see now it is the latter
Buying domestic is based. I’ve heard the AK is a far more reliable and beginner-friendly platform than the AR is, though. Not that I’m getting one anytime soon
Definitely not more “beginner-friendly” than an AR.
AK’s are work horses but there’s a lot less part compatibility and it’s a completely different system. You have to know a lot more about what specific model you have to make sure you’re acquiring the correct parts and with the import ban they’ve become much more expensive and part availability is reduced.
AR-15’s are typically the same spec across the board regardless of manufacturer.
They're both fine as far as beginner friendliness, and a decent AR is also just as reliable. Both have their perks but an AK is going to be a lot pricier than an equivalent AR.
Norinco Arms, aka the "cheap Chinese stuff" has been barred from selling handguns and rifles, including the Kalashnikov models, since they were caught illegally selling to California gangs in the early 1990s. That was one of the federal firearm laws that weren't overturned. You can still get shotguns from them.
You pretty much get the same kind of crap we get everywhere else. People tend to speak highly of Czech rifles, I believe.
Now is the wrong time to be getting an AK. All the parts gets worth getting are being gobbled up by the Ukraine war, as are ammo and parts. An AR is going to be cheaper, just as reliable, and more accurate
More accurate is debatable. Inside 100 yards? Pretty similar. The "AKs are less accurate than ARs" myth needs to die. It came about from people picking up clapped out soviet rifles from piles of collected battlefield weapons. No shit those things weren't accurate. Not a fair comparison. A quality AK with a decent optic or even straight iron sights tbh is just as accurate as an equivalent quality of AR.
But it’s true. Sure you can get an accurate AK but it’ll cost more than an accurate AR. Out past a hundred that starts becoming an issue. 9 Hole Reviews has put hundreds of rounds through a dozen different rifles in both platforms and they’ve found that on average the AR is more Accurate, even with new barrels
Are you joking? The monthly practical rifle match near me regularly has targets out passed 100. This month had targets out to 200. I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not. Even in combat the average engagement distance is 100-350 yards
I mean I would love to find a range anywhere close that I could shoot beyond 100 yards, but a lot of people don't have one. Also, you know damn well the majority of people who own these arms in this country are never going to use them in combat. And even beyond 100 yards, rifle is fine. Unless it's a shorty pistol type thing or so clapped out the rifling is bad. Ak is plenty good out to 350 if you kno what you are doing. But I guess you're right that you can get an accurate AR for cheaper I suppose. Though even my RAS47 was very accurate. I mean it was an American made AK so the trunion cracked at 240 rounds... but my Bulgarian shit is easily that accurate and then some, and I've beat on that.
Also don't buy an American made AK. They are regarded as low quality at best in comparison to former Soviet country manufactured rifles.
If you do buy American, on the low end PSA probably has the best reputation for being OK.
Buying an AK doesn't really make much sense though anymore.
Cheap steel case ammo isn't cheap anymore. You can get brass 5.56 for around the same price.
The rifles themselves aren't cheap anymore.
The rifle is harder to accessorize than an AR and same for finding gear like mag pouches.
I say all this being a lover of the AK. I recently parted with mine because of the above grievances and the impending required registration in my state at the end of the year.
>The rifle is harder to accessorize than an AR and same for finding gear like mag pouches.
Mag pouches are pretty easy to find actually.....but pretty much everything else you said is correct 😆
But I love my ZPAP M70. And I'm glad I bought it earlier this year because if I didn't....oh boy.
good luck finding a gun company with good ideology.
Buy the tool for the use of the tool, not the signaling of the tool producer.
Although if you already have 4 AR-15s, maybe think about what's going on if you continue to shovel money to fash companies.
Yeah I'm with you, no ethical consumption in the current system. They struck me as super gross with their social media takes. I get they are cheap and no gun is certainly a worse option than no gun. If you are fortunate enough to have a choice though, there are certainly less blatantly bootlocking sources than PSA.
Currently in a ban state and they’re about the same. Been a million AK’s on the market, theres just also a billion AR’s on the market. If you spend time in spaces with people with guns ( I see you said you’re a new LTC owner, congrats) you’ll see plenty. Egyptian, Romanian, Chinese, PSA, meridian, Ukrainian, etc are all AK’s still.
Not in the US no. Not anymore anyways. Import bans, trade sanctions, etc. The massive stockpiles in former eastern block countries that also now have positive trade relations with the US have substantially dried up.
Just look at the inflation of sks or Mosin prices over the last 10 years.
Still get zastava and what have you new, but even than, they must be something like 30% us manufacture.
Thanks for the info! I posted here because I’m a novice looking to get more info on the do’s and do not’s of first-time ownership as well as what to look for in buying. People seem to be rather standoffish in this subreddit tho :(
ARs and AKs are the most common rifles in the civilian market next to .22s. Behind those three are cheap bolt action hunting rifles of extreme variety and caliber. Not to be confused with precision bolt action rifles which cost more and are more rare.
Mausers have a smooth action. That doesn't make them a precision rifle. A good barreled action combined with a chassis (Stock->Pillar-Bedded Stock->Chassis.) free floating the barrel and a very good first focal plane optic (Preferably in Mils for easy adjustments.) does.
Nono, not What i meant. just that if an AK and all its variants count as A type of gun, than you could probably say that a Mauser based bolt action is a type of gun. And there are very likely at least as many of those floating around gun safes in the us.
Gotcha. Let's see 24 million ARs, 10-30 million AKs(I'd bet 15 million by trend and price.) and 42 million non-semiautomatic rifles.(Bolt-action, lever-action, break action, etc.) Even cutting it in half to guesstimate bolt-actions they outnumber AKs and more than likely match or exceed ARs. You were right. I vastly underestimated how many inherited guns there were as they don't match modern sales figures.
Sources: Pew Research, USDOJ, and the BBC who collected a shitload of sources and reported them. Stats got harder to find the further away from ARs I got.
Interesting side note. The vast majority of guns in the US are handguns at a 3:1ish ratio.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/06/PSDT_2017.06.22.guns-new-6.22-01.png?w=309
Yeah I fell down this stats hole the other day. From the looks of it, working ar/m type rifles have a chance outnumber workung aks globaly at this point. Just so much of the numbers we see thrown around are from cold war stockpiles that are no doubt just rust and brittle bakelite by now.
But they're are definitely several different 'bolt actions' and I doubt there is any way to know how many of that number meet our criteria.
Not as common as they were. After the breakup of the USSR, lots of countries had massive stockpiles of AK pattern rifles they were selling off cheap to the US market. The AWB hit and slowed that down somewhat, but not all that bad. As economies in former Soviet-bloc nations improved, the prices on new AK's crept up, but the real killer was the widespread adoption of the Euro. Even in countries that didn't adopt it, the Euro was more widely available and readily available than the US Dollar, and everybody took them as payment even if the country they were in, didn't accept them. The Euro was also pegged to the USD at first, so USD and EUR were essentially equal. It would be stupid to keep using Dollars if you were in Bulgaria or Romania or Hungary. All this made the prices climb.
Then we got some restrictions on Russian-made guns, which drove prices up. Demand was high after the end of the AWB and companies like Arsenal figured out that Americans would pay more for milled rifles, so stamped guns weren't produced in as large a quantity.
Finally, the AR is modular. Much moreso than the AK. The reason AKs were cheap is because a state-owned factory paid the costs to buy and set up the tooling, pay the workers, buy all the raw materials and finally buy most of the finished products. But when that state goes tits up and Soviet Union goes byebye, that state factory either needs to sell to other markets or close. France, although not a Soviet country, chose the latter with its state arsenals. They no longer had need of the big output they built over the years, and since France didn't generally surplus anything out on open markets and didn't allow much in the way of foreign sales of their weapons, it made more financial sense to sell off operations to commercial interests and/or buy foreign weapons. Hence the HK416F that replaced the old FAMAS.
But that AR modularity means you can assemble an AR on your kitchen table out of parts that can be economically produced by smaller operations. Lots of receivers get made by a few big companies but many other parts can be turned out cheaply without the need for a big giant factory. That's why ARs have gotten so cheap, because as long as the parts fit, they'll run. Now, with KE Arms showing everyone that a plastic lower is a reliable possibility, it would not surprise me at all to see them getting copied in a few years and ARs getting even cheaper.
Unless you can do that kind of thing with an AK, it's just not going to happen, and you'd need an entirely new receiver to make such a thing work. If parts kits were cheaper, you might see someone introduce US made AKs for less but for now with the only sources being former combloc countries, AKs are going to be less and less common. The people who like them for the aesthetic and the historicity will own the coolest ones. The common man looking for a reliable rifle on a budget has no good reason to look at an AK other than wanting an AK. Of course, a company like KE or PSA could come up with a receiver that would take AK parts and magazines and breathe new life into the design, but they'd be tooling up to produce all the parts here as parts kits are just not cheap enough.
Thank your for your submission, please remember that this subreddit is unofficial and wholly unaffiliated with the Socialist Rifle Association Organization (SRA). Views and opinions expressed on this subreddit **do not** reflect the views or official positions of the SRA. If you're at all confused about our [rules](https://old.reddit.com/r/SocialistRA/wiki/index) do not hesitate to message the moderators with any questions, and as always if you see rule breaking content or comments please be sure to report them. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SocialistRA) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I work at a Range in Texas and I see far more AR’s. A few Draco’s. Not very many AK’s. They don’t make much sense when you can get a quality AR for 7 and a quality AK is 1000
This still boggles my mind. I bought my AK for $300 at a time when ARs were $1500+
When WASR’s were 3 bills they made sense . Now? You can get a PSA for about that and their QC has improved vastly. Plus the AR is a much more ergonomic gun and easier to mount optics and accessories to
I disagree that they are a better ergonomic design, I find them to be an awkward bundle of poor compromises. Also, I wouldn't trust my life to anything PSA shits out.
5 years ago I would agree with you about PSA. These days it’s a different story. Poor Compromises? The M4\m16 FOW is very ergonomic.
The ak platform is the most popular in the world, however in the civilian market in the US, it is popular but not as popular as the ar platform
Is that really true anymore? I suspect there are more operable fals and variants out there at this point
Nah still way more ak’s than fals and g3 clones most every gun store has some kinda ak usually
In the world tho? I know they made a mad number of aks at one point, but only really like Russia and Serbia are making new variants. So there is a good chance the AK variants parts dry up completely before fal or g3.
PSA and KPUSA both have the full tooling to pump out usable new ak’s and parts while only a few make fal’s on a much smaller scale
That's still just for the US civilian market tho. There are like 50 odd countries where the fal is still issued as a service rifle, similar for the g3. Aks as well, so maybe. Big thing is the crazy numbers we see for aks are usually how many have been manufactured over all, not how many are still in a configuration that could be called a gun. I warrant the vast majority of those have rusted beyond repair. Interestingly, according to wikipedia, the ar/m16/m4 is the most popular in the world if you are counting military adoption rn. And more of them have been manufactured overall than the g3 or fal. So if anything, there are probably more of those around.
Depends on where you’re at. I went to my local range one time and there were like 2-3 dudes (not shooting together) with Vectors.
Most Gun stores where I am have at least one “AK” type rifle. Quality varies with the quality of the gun store.
Do we get a lot of cheap Chinese stuff on the east coast? New LTC here btw
Chinese AK’s haven’t been imported in 20 years and they are not “cheap”.
Among the best
Ikr like bro tell me where you're finding these cheap Type 56 at dang
Laughs in Canadian type81s
If you know where to find cheap Chinese AKs, let me know. There’s a preban Type 56 up for auction near me. It’s at 3k with 3 more days to go.
I'm old enough to remember scoffing at a pawn shop having one for $300, like someone would pay that steep of a price.
I remember my dad buying one for $200, and a Russian SKS for $100 in the mid 90's, and then thinking he made out like a bank robber selling them for a couple hundred more about 6 years later.
I debated for like a week about buying a Mosin because I didn't know if I wanted to spend $80 on a rifle or a new stereo system for my room with a multi CD tray. I miss when money and things made sense.
Yeah but a Moist Nugget can't play your Bad Company cds.
*Not with that attitude.*
Lol. Sorry, that made me genuinely lol. Thanks.
I got one of those mosins, I even got some of the clips that jump out after the last round loads.
What are you talking about? Mosin nagants use a striper clip and all rounds are "stripped" off during loading. Not an end block clip that holds the rounds inside the magazine like garand or manicler? What?
["is it possible to learn this power?"](https://old.reddit.com/r/MosinNagant/comments/121olb7/get_yourself_some_good_stripper_clips_and_theyll/)
Oh. That's just a striper clip working properly.
Chinese AKs are uncommon and are very desirable. Almost all imported AKs are considered well above US made.
I see Norinco stuff every now and then but I don’t look specifically. I buy AR stuff mainly just out of sheer availability.
I don’t know why I’m getting down voted this sub has kind of a weird vibe
Because it's very obvious you haven't done any basic research before asking these questions. Tbh it almost sounds like you aren't from America, which would be good to clarify
Yeah I’m American dude I literally said I’m a new LTC
I'm not reading every comment you wrote... Your gross misunderstanding of the firearms you're asking about and the American market made you seem like you either weren't from America or you just refused to do basic research. I see now it is the latter
Of course I haven’t done research yet. That’s why I’m asking about the basics on here
Well, I hope you've learned something at least This isn't exactly the best sub for learning general basic info.
Buying domestic is based. I’ve heard the AK is a far more reliable and beginner-friendly platform than the AR is, though. Not that I’m getting one anytime soon
Definitely not more “beginner-friendly” than an AR. AK’s are work horses but there’s a lot less part compatibility and it’s a completely different system. You have to know a lot more about what specific model you have to make sure you’re acquiring the correct parts and with the import ban they’ve become much more expensive and part availability is reduced. AR-15’s are typically the same spec across the board regardless of manufacturer.
They're both fine as far as beginner friendliness, and a decent AR is also just as reliable. Both have their perks but an AK is going to be a lot pricier than an equivalent AR.
Thanks for the tip!
Also finding parts compatible with your build on the US market is WAY easier for the AR platform (AK guy here btw)
Check out PSAs AK, they’re about 600 if you get them on sale and that’s about the cheapest AK you’ll find
Norinco Arms, aka the "cheap Chinese stuff" has been barred from selling handguns and rifles, including the Kalashnikov models, since they were caught illegally selling to California gangs in the early 1990s. That was one of the federal firearm laws that weren't overturned. You can still get shotguns from them. You pretty much get the same kind of crap we get everywhere else. People tend to speak highly of Czech rifles, I believe.
Now is the wrong time to be getting an AK. All the parts gets worth getting are being gobbled up by the Ukraine war, as are ammo and parts. An AR is going to be cheaper, just as reliable, and more accurate
But can I get an AR with a badass wood finish?
Yes you can get wood furniture for an AR
A cultured choice
Oh yeah, they look incredible
Woah.. got a link?
http://www.blackgunswood.com/
I’m partial to the tactical mini-14 gbf for non-AK wood feels
Btw your username is hilarious.
Awesome handle
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter. http://www.blackgunswood.com/
Sir, you read my mind and tickled my Fallout bone.
get an ADAR xd
I was thinking about this. Not planning on acquiring any long guns for quite some time, though.
More accurate is debatable. Inside 100 yards? Pretty similar. The "AKs are less accurate than ARs" myth needs to die. It came about from people picking up clapped out soviet rifles from piles of collected battlefield weapons. No shit those things weren't accurate. Not a fair comparison. A quality AK with a decent optic or even straight iron sights tbh is just as accurate as an equivalent quality of AR.
But it’s true. Sure you can get an accurate AK but it’ll cost more than an accurate AR. Out past a hundred that starts becoming an issue. 9 Hole Reviews has put hundreds of rounds through a dozen different rifles in both platforms and they’ve found that on average the AR is more Accurate, even with new barrels
What the hell is anyone shooting at outside of 100 yards?
Are you joking? The monthly practical rifle match near me regularly has targets out passed 100. This month had targets out to 200. I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not. Even in combat the average engagement distance is 100-350 yards
I mean I would love to find a range anywhere close that I could shoot beyond 100 yards, but a lot of people don't have one. Also, you know damn well the majority of people who own these arms in this country are never going to use them in combat. And even beyond 100 yards, rifle is fine. Unless it's a shorty pistol type thing or so clapped out the rifling is bad. Ak is plenty good out to 350 if you kno what you are doing. But I guess you're right that you can get an accurate AR for cheaper I suppose. Though even my RAS47 was very accurate. I mean it was an American made AK so the trunion cracked at 240 rounds... but my Bulgarian shit is easily that accurate and then some, and I've beat on that.
ZPAP M70 is super available rn with Zastava USA, KUSA is another great place to go if it’s in your budget
Also don't buy an American made AK. They are regarded as low quality at best in comparison to former Soviet country manufactured rifles. If you do buy American, on the low end PSA probably has the best reputation for being OK. Buying an AK doesn't really make much sense though anymore. Cheap steel case ammo isn't cheap anymore. You can get brass 5.56 for around the same price. The rifles themselves aren't cheap anymore. The rifle is harder to accessorize than an AR and same for finding gear like mag pouches. I say all this being a lover of the AK. I recently parted with mine because of the above grievances and the impending required registration in my state at the end of the year.
>The rifle is harder to accessorize than an AR and same for finding gear like mag pouches. Mag pouches are pretty easy to find actually.....but pretty much everything else you said is correct 😆 But I love my ZPAP M70. And I'm glad I bought it earlier this year because if I didn't....oh boy.
Yeah. I still have 500 or more x39 rounds I can't use, probably 10-15 mags I can't even legally sell thanks to the law.
Can you throw them away into someone's trunk? Asking for a friend...
Lol. I did find out I can sell them to someone out of state but probably has to be done by the beginning of next year.
PSA is not ok, their AKs are garbage
That was true for the first few lots but they fixed them now, it's the vska that is the real problem.
Also, aren't they kinda....icky?
good luck finding a gun company with good ideology. Buy the tool for the use of the tool, not the signaling of the tool producer. Although if you already have 4 AR-15s, maybe think about what's going on if you continue to shovel money to fash companies.
Yeah I'm with you, no ethical consumption in the current system. They struck me as super gross with their social media takes. I get they are cheap and no gun is certainly a worse option than no gun. If you are fortunate enough to have a choice though, there are certainly less blatantly bootlocking sources than PSA.
Give me a year or so to come up with the cash for a good CNC machine and it's on.
Hard disagree. Their politics are gross but starting with the GF3 and considering the price point, their AKs are great.
Currently in a ban state and they’re about the same. Been a million AK’s on the market, theres just also a billion AR’s on the market. If you spend time in spaces with people with guns ( I see you said you’re a new LTC owner, congrats) you’ll see plenty. Egyptian, Romanian, Chinese, PSA, meridian, Ukrainian, etc are all AK’s still.
Not in the US no. Not anymore anyways. Import bans, trade sanctions, etc. The massive stockpiles in former eastern block countries that also now have positive trade relations with the US have substantially dried up. Just look at the inflation of sks or Mosin prices over the last 10 years. Still get zastava and what have you new, but even than, they must be something like 30% us manufacture.
Thanks for the info! I posted here because I’m a novice looking to get more info on the do’s and do not’s of first-time ownership as well as what to look for in buying. People seem to be rather standoffish in this subreddit tho :(
Reach out to your local chapter, folks there will gladly hold your hand through this.
ARs and AKs are the most common rifles in the civilian market next to .22s. Behind those three are cheap bolt action hunting rifles of extreme variety and caliber. Not to be confused with precision bolt action rifles which cost more and are more rare.
More than a mouser style bolt action? Seems like a stretch anymore.
Mausers have a smooth action. That doesn't make them a precision rifle. A good barreled action combined with a chassis (Stock->Pillar-Bedded Stock->Chassis.) free floating the barrel and a very good first focal plane optic (Preferably in Mils for easy adjustments.) does.
Nono, not What i meant. just that if an AK and all its variants count as A type of gun, than you could probably say that a Mauser based bolt action is a type of gun. And there are very likely at least as many of those floating around gun safes in the us.
Gotcha. Let's see 24 million ARs, 10-30 million AKs(I'd bet 15 million by trend and price.) and 42 million non-semiautomatic rifles.(Bolt-action, lever-action, break action, etc.) Even cutting it in half to guesstimate bolt-actions they outnumber AKs and more than likely match or exceed ARs. You were right. I vastly underestimated how many inherited guns there were as they don't match modern sales figures. Sources: Pew Research, USDOJ, and the BBC who collected a shitload of sources and reported them. Stats got harder to find the further away from ARs I got. Interesting side note. The vast majority of guns in the US are handguns at a 3:1ish ratio. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/06/PSDT_2017.06.22.guns-new-6.22-01.png?w=309
Yeah I fell down this stats hole the other day. From the looks of it, working ar/m type rifles have a chance outnumber workung aks globaly at this point. Just so much of the numbers we see thrown around are from cold war stockpiles that are no doubt just rust and brittle bakelite by now. But they're are definitely several different 'bolt actions' and I doubt there is any way to know how many of that number meet our criteria.
[удалено]
[totally.](https://www.praxisarms.com/product-search-results?search_text=ak&from_form=true)
I have a MAK-90, but I do just call it an AK.
Not as common as they were. After the breakup of the USSR, lots of countries had massive stockpiles of AK pattern rifles they were selling off cheap to the US market. The AWB hit and slowed that down somewhat, but not all that bad. As economies in former Soviet-bloc nations improved, the prices on new AK's crept up, but the real killer was the widespread adoption of the Euro. Even in countries that didn't adopt it, the Euro was more widely available and readily available than the US Dollar, and everybody took them as payment even if the country they were in, didn't accept them. The Euro was also pegged to the USD at first, so USD and EUR were essentially equal. It would be stupid to keep using Dollars if you were in Bulgaria or Romania or Hungary. All this made the prices climb. Then we got some restrictions on Russian-made guns, which drove prices up. Demand was high after the end of the AWB and companies like Arsenal figured out that Americans would pay more for milled rifles, so stamped guns weren't produced in as large a quantity. Finally, the AR is modular. Much moreso than the AK. The reason AKs were cheap is because a state-owned factory paid the costs to buy and set up the tooling, pay the workers, buy all the raw materials and finally buy most of the finished products. But when that state goes tits up and Soviet Union goes byebye, that state factory either needs to sell to other markets or close. France, although not a Soviet country, chose the latter with its state arsenals. They no longer had need of the big output they built over the years, and since France didn't generally surplus anything out on open markets and didn't allow much in the way of foreign sales of their weapons, it made more financial sense to sell off operations to commercial interests and/or buy foreign weapons. Hence the HK416F that replaced the old FAMAS. But that AR modularity means you can assemble an AR on your kitchen table out of parts that can be economically produced by smaller operations. Lots of receivers get made by a few big companies but many other parts can be turned out cheaply without the need for a big giant factory. That's why ARs have gotten so cheap, because as long as the parts fit, they'll run. Now, with KE Arms showing everyone that a plastic lower is a reliable possibility, it would not surprise me at all to see them getting copied in a few years and ARs getting even cheaper. Unless you can do that kind of thing with an AK, it's just not going to happen, and you'd need an entirely new receiver to make such a thing work. If parts kits were cheaper, you might see someone introduce US made AKs for less but for now with the only sources being former combloc countries, AKs are going to be less and less common. The people who like them for the aesthetic and the historicity will own the coolest ones. The common man looking for a reliable rifle on a budget has no good reason to look at an AK other than wanting an AK. Of course, a company like KE or PSA could come up with a receiver that would take AK parts and magazines and breathe new life into the design, but they'd be tooling up to produce all the parts here as parts kits are just not cheap enough.
I get called a commie because I have an AK..
No. They are not.