Thread: First Gun

Originally Posted by Docmo

I found a pristine 1946 Tula SKS with all matching serial numbers in a local pawn shop in 2007. It was $250 and I looked at it and almost bought it but didn't really need it so I passed but I remarked to my wife how hard it was to find them from that manufacturer and especially that condition.

Long story short it showed up as a birthday present the next week with 1 cent left to pay off on layaway.

Took it out and zeroed it and was shocked at both how accurate it was and how far it threw the spent cases! It's truly a work of mil spec art. Your lucky to get a battle rifle/carbine for your first gun and back in the day they were even cheaper to shoot than they are now.

Interestingly I found that the ballistics of the 7.62x39 round are virtually identical to the 30-30 Winchester. So not only is it a fun firearm to have but with soft point ammo would make a great first white tail gun...

Yeah, but the issue(at least in this state) is a rifle with 10 round capacity is a no-no for deer hunting.

I was lucky enough to be able to take mine on a hog hunt once. It was a blast to be able to go through a 30.

In Missouri, where I grew up, I think the limit might have been 10 rounds but I'm not sure. They do make a replacement magazine that can be put on and then taken back off that limits capacity to 5 rounds to help those who live in states with a lower round count limit.

You can put in the 5 round magazine for deer hunting then return it to its original configuration whenever you like. I always hunted deer with either a Win 30-30 (first deer rifle which I still own), Win 70 Sporter in 7x57mm Mauser or a Win 70 in 30-06. But if finances are a consideration as they usually are for most of us during our younger years then that could be a viable option. Very versatile truck gun as it's ridiculously tough and dependable. I wish I had bought 5-10 of them when they were still $60-80/each. Ha, hind sight is 20/20 though.

sharptonn if yours takes ak mags not high capacity sks mags then you have the Norinco type M or Type D they take ak mags an they are more sought after because you don't have to deal with the stupid duck bill mag. An no mine has the actual knife bayonet not the pig sticker

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Yeah, but the issue(at least in this state) is a rifle with 10 round capacity is a no-no for deer hunting.

I was lucky enough to be able to take mine on a hog hunt once. It was a blast to be able to go through a 30.

Haven't thought of this for decades but your hog hunt brought it back. I used to work with a guy that hunted hogs with a knife...true story, he only hunted with a bow or knife. I think they (several guys and don't know how many dogs) used dogs for night hunting of the hogs and jumped their backs and s-l-i-t. Hard to picture really, they hopped a fence at a huge private game club...uh where I hunted quail, accidentally.

Originally Posted by KsStraightShaver

sharptonn if yours takes ak mags not high capacity sks mags then you have the Norinco type M or Type D they take ak mags an they are more sought after because you don't have to deal with the stupid duck bill mag. An no mine has the actual knife bayonet not the pig sticker

Mine is a 'D'. I thought most of the SKS rifles took the 10 round stripper clips?

First gun I ever bought was my Marlin Model 60. I was attending Wyoming Technical Institute for Diesel Technology. I rationed my lunch money for a month and a half to buy it at Kmart. I carried it thru downtown Laramie Wyoming to go plink rocks at a quarry and no one batted an eye at the Mexican kid with a .22 rifle. It's sitting in my safe waiting for my shrimps to be old enough to shoot

All of the standard sks's take the stripper clips unless you take off the factory attached mag except for the type M an D an a few other rarities. There is an Sks that has a weird attached 20rnd mag that I don't believe takes them

My first was a single-shot break barrel Winchester 12 gauge, given to me by the old boy in about 1991 (age 10) back before our strict firearms licensing came in. I believe it had been one of his father's guns. When I left home I had to leave it with the oldies and he handed it in when they sold the farm. I didn't have a license and the law comes down pretty hard on us here in oz for that sort of thing.

He hasn't told me but I think giving me the 12 gauge was to teach me that one shot should be all you need. The shells cost a fortune over here, you had to be quick on the reload if you missed and it kicked my little ten-year-old shoulder like an angry draft horse so a second shot was out of the question! It worked though; by the time I was 13 I could drop a kangaroo on the run three times out of four without making a mess of the edible bits (basically the bottom half for those of you unfamiliar with our bouncy national emblem).

Americans are truly lucky in regards to our second amendment rights...for now. Hopefully the plight of the British and Aussie's will remind us of where we can end up if we are not vigilant.

I fear as we lose shooters yearly that those rights will continue to be chipped away at. The WW II generation were pretty much all trained in firearms thanks to the war. As time has gone on and fewer and fewer people learn to shoot due to lack of a draft and urbanization of our society there is less interest in shooting since fewer people are involved.

Hopefully events like what happened in Tenn remind us as Americans that the second amendment isn't a right because of sporting reasons but the inherent right of self defense.

Originally Posted by Docmo

Americans are truly lucky in regards to our second amendment rights...for now. Hopefully the plight of the British and Aussie's will remind us of where we can end up if we are not vigilant.

I fear as we lose shooters yearly that those rights will continue to be chipped away at. The WW II generation were pretty much all trained in firearms thanks to the war. As time has gone on and fewer and fewer people learn to shoot due to lack of a draft and urbanization of our society there is less interest in shooting since fewer people are involved.

Hopefully events like what happened in Tenn remind us as Americans that the second amendment isn't a right because of sporting reasons but the inherent right of self defense.

I hear you, but better keep it to the iron, my friend.
Gun control brings up arguments, naturally. As many have broken out here, the subject has been banned from this forum. FYI