By this time some purist-type collectors are hemorrhaging at the eyeballs just looking at the picture above: "You went and ruined a great historic weapon!" No I didn't. What you're looking at represents a salvage job. Read on before you go charging in with all four feet.

Now the history of the SKS is already covered elsewhere on this site, along with various other related information such as why it isn't an assault rifle. This page is just about mine, and how it came to be as it is - but if you're interested in the politics and legalities of gun control, you might find this worth reading, because it demonstrates the grotesque internal contradictions of some of our existing laws.

Right, then. Back in the summer of '04 I ordered an SKS, specifically the Yugoslav M59/66 version, from a company called AIM. I was assured it would be in "shooting condition."

It wasn't. When the Big Brown Truck brought the rifle, it proved to have a broken stock. Not just cracked, smashed.

I said shit repeatedly and got on the phone to AIM, where a Nice Man told me no problem, they would send me a new stock, no extra charge. I reminded him that this was a Yugoslav model and he said yes, the replacement stock would definitely be for a Yugo.

He was full of shit. Some days (too many) later, the new stock arrived and right away I saw that it wasn't the right one for my carbine; it was too long and otherwise didn't match up with the original. It was also far from "new"; the finish was distinctly on the scabby side.

I said shit some more times and considered my options. I could try again to get AIM to send me the right stock, and maybe go through this again and again. Or else just send the whole thing back and demand a refund; but by now I was disgusted with AIM and didn't want to fool with them any more. Besides, this was a perfectly good SKS except for the stock, and I knew they'd wind up scrapping it for parts and I hated like hell to see that happen to a perfectly good gun if I could save it.

The hell with it. I got out my tools and went to work; and in a couple of days had the "new" stock - which by now I had determined to be Albanian, of all things - cut down and modified to fit the Yugo. It didn't really look all that good, and the gun no longer had any value as a collector's piece, but then I'd gotten it mainly as a shooter anyway.

But now a new problem developed: the folding bayonet wouldn't. The Albanians fitted the SKS with a spike bayonet, like the Soviets; but the Yugoslavs had hung it with a dirty great knife-type bayonet, and this would not fit into the groove in the Albanian stock, nor could it be made to do so without weakening the stock.

OK, take the bayonet off, I didn't really want the damn fool thing on there to begin with. No problem, right?

Huh uh. At this point I ran into a truly bizarre and little-known aspect of the US firearms laws.

Follow me closely, now. This gets very weird.

First off, understand that this has nothing to do with the late and wildly misnamed Assault Weapons Ban, but with a much older statute. USC Title 18, aka the Gun Control Act of 1968, aka Public Law 90-618, is a long and labyrinthine document in whose depths strong men have broken down and wept like motherless babes. Primarily it deals with interstate commerce in firearms; but, as usual with such laws, it has tentacles as long and probing and insolent as anything in really extreme hentai.

Among other things - many, many other things - it sets forth the bogus "assault rifle" definition later enshrined in the AWB: semi-auto, detachable magazine, and the Five Evil Features. (Indeed as far as I know this is the origin of this particular template.) But, and this is less well known, it also prohibits the importation of any firearm that is not "recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes." That's it; no detailed list of Evil Features, just that highly ambiguous line - interpretation of which was, and is, left up to the jolly old ATF.

In 1989, under a certain amount of political pressure, the ATF decided that the "semiautomatic assault rifle" was not particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes, because of certain features of a military rather than sporting nature. The ATF then produced its own list of Evil Features, including not only the original Five, but some new additions as well, including bipods and night sights. Further, the detachable magazine was no longer a sine qua non, merely one of the possible EFs; and finally, any ONE of these features would be enough to qualify a weapon as a "semiautomatic assault rifle" and therefore prohibited from importation.

But what about all those SKSs coming into the country right now? Not to sweat it. Title 18 provided an escape clause: "curio and relic" firearms, including military surplus weapons, could be exempted, as primarily collectors' items. Those of us holding federal collectors' licenses could even order them through the mail. Say hallelujah.

So even though the Yugo SKS had not only the grenade launcher and the bayonet commonly quoted, but also the equally wicked night sights, yet it was quite legal, because the ATF determined that this particular weapon qualified as a collectible firearm.

So far so good. But wait, here comes the kicker:

In order for a firearm to qualify for C&R status, it must be in the "original military configuration." Cut down the stock, saw off the barrel, gold plate the receiver, whatever, as soon as you make any irreversible alteration from its GI specs it quits being a C&R weapon and is no longer legal.

And therefore as soon as I took the bayonet off my SKS, it was no longer in "original military configuration", yet it still incorporated officially designated Evil Features, to wit the grenade launcher and the night sights.

You see the wondrous symmetry of it all? Our Federal authorities in their wisdom and concern for the public safety decide that a bayonet is a bad thing to have on a gun, and then they make it illegal to take it off!

And you don't want to assume that this is only a technicality, either. ATF agents have been known to turn up at gun shows checking for such things, and to warn SKS owners against such modifications as adding scope sights. They've made it clear, too, in response to various queries from citizens, that they're not screwing around with this. There's a definite list of features that the SKS either can or can't have, and it's a package deal: if you take one of them off, you have to remove the lot.

So, in order to make my SKS legal after removing the bayonet, I had to also cut off the bayonet mounting lug from beneath the barrel. I had to remove the night sights; they no longer worked, but that might not have made any difference to the ATF. I had to remove the grenade launcher attachment - a real job, that thing was really torqued on - and then do something about the threads at the muzzle, where the launcher was screwed on. The recommendation was to fit a compensator and have it permanently brazed on, but I determined that simply grinding the threads off would be acceptable too. The results didn't look very good, though, so later on I cut a couple of inches off the barrel and re-crowned the muzzle.

I have to admit that personally I didn't mind all that much; most of this was stuff I wanted to get rid of anyway. After all, the gun had lost all historic value as soon as I fitted it with that Albanian stock; and if I was just going to keep it as a shooter, then I might as well get rid of all that useless ironmongery and lighten it up a bit. Some of the more tiresome milsurp buffs may cringe, but as far as I'm concerned this is a good gun that would have been broken down for parts if I hadn't salvaged it. Anybody who still has a problem with it is cordially invited to have an inappropriate relationship with himself.

The ATF didn't have a problem with the original sights, but I did; the notch was way too small for my aging eyesight. So I ordered a special aperture sight, called a "Mojo" which was supposed to improve the sight picture.

I'm sorry to report it didn't work out for me. The problem is that annular hood over the front sight. My geriatric eyes kept confusing the two ring images; they blurred together and I couldn't tell what I was doing. With regret I put the original rear sight back on and then used a points file to open the notch up considerably. This turned out to do me more good than the Mojo; at least I can get a sight picture considerably faster and more easily.

(I want to add, though, that I think the Mojo sight is an excellent product and for most people it will definitely improve the Simonov's sighting qualities. I've just got some peculiar problems with my eyes.)

The final result is a brutal, butt-ugly junkyard dog of a gun, utterly lacking in historic significance or esthetic appeal. It was never an "assault rifle" and it is even less one now; I'm not sure what you'd call it - "Supplemental Orifice Distribution System" perhaps, or "Hand Held Gene Pool Chlorinator."

Naturally I love it. It's old, mean, beat-up, and ugly.

Like me.