AK vs AR vs Mini14 vs SKS: Which should you buy?

[Music] welcome back to gunshot TV this is Chris and today we talked about aks and ARS and mini-14 and as ks's now I'm not really going to say one is better than the other but I kind of want to give you a little bit of information about all of them so if you're kind of new to rifles or firearms or you're kind of looking at options you know just basic info bottom the reason I singled those four rifles out is they're pretty much the most popular rifles you see the shoots centerfire ammo they're also the cheapest to get centerfire ammo for this is a two to three round this is a 760 two by 39 rounds they're both what are called intermediate cartridges which means they're kind of like middle of the road between full-power rifle cartridges and pistol cartridges so they're really the cheapest to shoot these two calibers they're both some around 20 cents around which is figuring Steelcase there's a slight edge to 2 to 3 because you can get a lot more like deluxe rounds let's put it that way with 7 62 by 39 there's really not much more than the steel case you can get brass keys and stuff but there's not the range I like hunting animal and different stuff whereas 2 to 3 you can get a whole lot more stuff for it so if you want a little bit more flexibility you can do probably a little bit more with this round but 760 by 39 has a little bit larger caliber bullet so some states for its bullet size regulates what you could hunt with you might be able to squeak by and do a little bit more with this round even though like I said there's not quite as much range of ammo selection but anyways like I said these are the two cheapest Steelcase Jeeps 20 cents around centerfire rounds and that's the guns that we picked for the today there are some other great contenders in these calibers but like I said they're not as common so they're less likely to be on your buyer list anyways but definitely do do a little research and check outside but we'll go through each gun talk a little bit about it and give you price range stuff like that and then we'll take you down the range we'll shoot them so for our first rifle we have the a K now this is obviously the Russian a K is a Yugoslavian Serbian whatever it is now and pap there's a whole bunch of options here the cost for these used to be about 300 bucks but it's gone up there now about 550 600 it went up a little bit higher and then drop down a little bit there's recently been some changes the Russian import ban banning some more companies so they might go up again we'll see but it fires at 760 by 39 round you can get these guns in other calibers but usually the main caliber is the best one to get it in because the mags and stuff will be cheaper but it fires from 30 round magazines it uses a piston system which isn't super important but it is a little bit different on some of these guns so when the bullet goes down the barrel the gas gets tapped out of this port here comes back pushes on a piston that actuate sit these are a good value for what they are the mag is like I said are cheap this is a Zastava factory bolt open bolt hold-open mag which means the follower has a little nub that keeps the bolt open otherwise on an a k the bolt does not stay back after you fire I found this that I think was apex they had a head of like seven bucks the only problem you will run into some of these when they come into the country some of our imported as a single stack and they hog out the mag well once it gets here so it will feed from double stack magazines well sometimes those won't be hog down quite enough so you only have certain mags that will fit you can usually get a dremel or something and go in and hog that out some more but we'll take it down to the range and show you how the mag change is work and how it shoots so with the aka the controls are pretty simple you have your safety which is this lever and some there's a cutout to hold the bolt back some there isn't it doesn't really make a huge difference up there safes down it's fire the magazines rock in place so what you do is you take it and you put it in at the front and then you just push it up and it locks in place sometimes you'll have mags in a little bit sticky and won't go well so you can file them and mess up a little bit this is a new mag so it's kind of tight but that's all there is to it pull the bolt back let it go forward and you're ready to fire now like I said on this particular magazine it has a bolt hold-open follower which means it gets locked back like that so you can hold the bolt drop your mag pop your new one in and the bolt stays back but it's just this as soon as you take that mag out it closes so that's something like I said the a.k doesn't have that most of rifles that we're talking about would have but in this case not a huge deal but if you're trying to do really rapid reloads if you're a competition shooter or something like that the bolt hold-open is nice to have so your only option is get special mags on nak so up next we have an ar-15 this is one I built in a video you guys probably seen these are obviously the US service weapon whatnot they're probably the best deal right now I think I spent 500 bucks building this one prices have come down since the election so you can now get them for I think the Ruger and Smith's are only 450 bucks it seems like for the last several months you can probably build one of these from PSA for probably close to 400 bucks so they're really good value right now mags are dirt cheap because there's so many of them you can get 30-round and get all kinds of crazy different amounts of capacity for these things like I said there is some minor differences with some of these this one is actually direct impingement which means the bullet goes down the barrel gaskets tapped out of this gas block right here comes up a tube and pushes on a little part of the bolt carrier that then runs gas through the bolt and uses the bolt kind of as the gas piston so that means that the bolt can get [ __ ] in it all that carbon and fouling and gas gets shot in there so it's a little bit extra work to clean but it's not huge and like I said right now these are probably the best deal they also are a lot more flexible as far as you can get all kinds of crazy parts form you can find lots of stuff for aks as well but the mini and the SKS it will be covering really are pretty limited in that regard but like I said for the cost this is probably your best deal if you don't have an opinion between any of these you probably just want to go with an AR you know doesn't really make a difference like I said they all shoot relatively cheap ammo and everything but in this case this is your cheapest bet in today's markets well we'll take it down to the range and show you how it shoots and make changes all that stuff so we're down the range with the ar-15 ARS are kind of kind of a weird control system if you're not used to them or have never fired one your bolt is operated with this handle at the back there's a dust cover that flips down wherever the bolt is actuated in practice you probably will never actually have to really deal with it the bolt hold-open release is this lever back here when the magazine is empty the follower pushes on it and the bolt is locked open you need to tap it right here to drop the bolts when you put a new mag in this is your safe and fire straight up with fire that way is safe as its marked we're pretty much to load it you're going to take your magazine slam it in sometimes with the bolt closed they can be a little bit tricky but just pull the bolt handle back here let it slam forward and you're good to go so the mini-14 is our next gun this is not a service weapon all these other ones have been service weapons this is a commercial production rifle I know some police forces and some foreign militaries may have used them at various points I know the French she is a crazy variant called the musket on AMD or something like that that's actually like a kind of like a souped-up mini 14 it's got some custom parts and some really nice wooden stuff but this fire is the two two three five five six either war they're actually marked two to three but if you read the manual it says specifically that you can shoot either some guns you do have to be careful if they're mark specifically only two two three then you do not want to fire five five six like there is a target version of this that you don't want to mix up you only want to shoot two to three is but these are somewhere around I don't know they used to be you know three four hundred dollar guns they've gone up quite a bit I think the MSRP is over like a thousand dollars or something but street price should be about seven hundred bucks you're paying more than that you might want to shop online or shop for a cheaper shop I know this one I found I'm gonna offer for five hundred bucks brand-new in the box it was missing a few things that called Ruger and they gave them to me for free so which is missing the mag and the scope rings which scope things I've never even used but this is a really decent decent rifle it gets around a lot of the assault weapons and stuff because it really doesn't have that may evil features so it's a good thing for banned States for my money like I really enjoy this it uses that piston system the gas gets tapped on this block here and get shot down into this giant piston which is part of this operating runs so it uses the same systems kind of as m1 garand or an m14 or MLA whatever you want to call it but I really like the mini-14 I know lots of people bagged on them because there were some accuracy issues but that has been solved in the 580 and up series and you can also get this thing called an ante strut to put on the barrel to kind of kind of stabilize the barrel if you have one of the older pencil barreled ones the big drawback with this with this particular gun is that the mags are a little bit expensive they're like 3040 bucks for the factory managed for a long time Ruger was weird they wouldn't sell the more than 20 round magazines to the general public since bill Ruger's passed away the company has changed a lot that's not an issue anymore but the big issue is like I said there are aftermarket companies that make magazines but by and large those magazines are a little flaky this gun seems to run okay with a lot of the after markets but you got to be careful with some of the mini for teams that are picky and they only want the factory mags but the factory marys are good quality mags they're just a little bit more expensive like I said you know right now the cheapest mags are going to be your AR or your a K and the ARS you know are pretty common is pretty easy to find around here but you know if you're not a mag collector like I think I've got you know four factory mini 14 mags and that's really all I've ever needed for this I have done the aftermarket ones that I've just picked up because they were cheap but you know so that is one thing you have to figure in these they're a little bit more expensive but you know that's all because they change the barrels and the assembly line to make the machining tighter so you know if you're interested in mini-14 you think it's cool gunner you live in a band see there's nothing wrong with them they're probably you know not going to be super super accurate much like an ak-47 show you how to make changes and everything work so we have the mini 14 this one's pretty simple to operate as well you've got folks here this is the bolt hold-open if you want to lock the bolt back you can push it down it'll lock it back your safety is more like an m1 garand where it inside the trigger guard when it's pushed into the trigger guard it's safe when you push it forward it's fire it also rocks in place for magazine changes like an a K we just there's a little hole on the front it goes on a little love inside the receiver and you just pop it in like that and you're ready to fire so the last gun is the SKS now I'm just lumping this in here because it is pretty common and pretty popular with shooters but it has some pretty pretty strong reasons I'm not recommending you go out and grab this unless you really want an SKS first off it's an older design this came out over to era and it shows that I mean it's more like an m1 garand type battle rifle design than anything else they're kind of heavy they have this attached bandit this one is actually Yugoslavian one once again from Zastava so it's got the grenade launcher flip up sight and the gas cutoff and some other options that you wouldn't find on every SKS but the big drawback with these is they feed from stripper clips so you shove ten rounds in shove it down pops through stripper clips are easy to find they're cheap they're a buck or two the other thing you can find usually can get aftermarket extended magazines that look like an ache a banana magazine for these they work fine in some cases in some cases they don't work fine at all it really depends on the gun you kind of have to do some filing and fitting in some cases to get them to work not the best option I just use mine with the stripper clips the big problem with these is back when Soviet Union fell back in the 90s these things for 75 bucks 100 bucks 120 something like that I think this one was out of a batch I think it was like nine bucks or something we picked it up so they were cheap well now with prices and the fact that the surplus market dried up there now 350 to 500 dollars which for that amount of money I can't say run out and grab one they're fine guns for what they are but for that much money I just I think there's better options like an AR is going to be cheaper than an SKS in today's market this is also that piston system where the gas comes up gets tapped out here shoots back shoves on a piston that jams the bolt back they work very well the only issue you will find with a lot of these is a lot of these surplus ones were dipped in cosmoline which you'd like to stick sludgy oil so when you get them you have to take the bolt apart and make sure you clean that bolt channel because SKS's are notorious for having the firing pin gets stuck forward from that cosmoline and you end up with a full auto rifle so you'll you know you'll load it you'll pull the bolt back and drop it and then ten rounds just shoot downrange as fast as you can which is very unsafe and though it might be fun for some people it's very likely to cause injury or death so do if you get one of these take the bolt out and clean it up it's kind of an interesting like tilting bolt lock up system thing that's kind of neat but like I said for the money I don't recommend these anymore if it's just your primary rifle if you got a bunch of rifles you want an SKS there's nothing wrong with them don't you know don't I'm not a GaN the SKS they're fun they shoot well the heavy weight of these things because they are a pig lady you know there's not much recoil easy control all that stuff but like I said probably not in today's market if it's your only rifle I wouldn't recommend an SKS I'm just throwing in here because they're so common and I figured I just mentioned them in passing but we'll take it down the range show you how it feeds and shoots and here's our SKS now this one the safety is this little flipper in the back of the trigger guard this is safe this is fire so when you push your finger down they'll kind of pop it off safe for you like I said it's clip fed so uses stripper clips and they're ten round and you just take them with the bolt open like this you just shove down and you pull your stripper out drop the bolt and you're ready to fire so thanks for sticking around I hope you guys enjoyed the video like I said I was kind of just mainly going over options if I had to pick one for a new shooter that didn't have any any particular thing for one rifle verse another think the air right now is probably your best deal especially if you're on a budget you can get mags for you know 5 10 bucks apiece you can get the actual rifles for 450 for a Smith or a Ruger you can build one from PSA for about 4 bucks so it's really the most cost-effective full-size 2 to 3 or 762 type rifle right now and if you're a newer shooter I know that you're going to go out to the range and burn through a lot of ammo so you know if it's your first rifle I'd recommend probably running out and buying a 1022 because you're going to blow through a ton of ammo and the $0.20 around it does add up but you know what with a 1022 you can go take an apple seed maybe learn a little bit more about rifle shooting before you know going whole hog because I know once you get one of these you're going to blow through a ton of ammo but also don't don't let me come off as saying I'll only get an AR I really like the mini 14 I really like the a K the SKS like I said is one I kind of steer you away from if if you were taking just my opinion but of the 3a K they are mini-14 they're all good rifles all you know they'll all do pretty much what anybody is going to do with them depending on what you want to do an AR is great because it has flexibility and na has some aftermarket mini-14 not so much but like I said you know this is more more just a buyer's guide more just information and you know obviously everybody has different criteria when they take a gun whether it's price you know looks physical features size stuff like that weight so that's all going to vary and I can't really you know pick what you would want based on your criteria so you have to evaluate everything as you go through but like I said I hope you guys got some good information thank you guys for tuning in once again to gun and shot TV if you've got comments make sure you leave me a comment I'll try and respond to everybody if you liked the video click thumbs up if you didn't click thumbs down if you want to contribute to our patreon and help us make more videos like this and cover the cost to ammo or we chip away at it that would be great thanks for watching and have a great day

Channel: Gun&ShotTV

Views: 1,719,969

Keywords: ar, ar15, sks, pap, mini 14, mini 30, ak, akm, ak47, kalishnakov, rifle, range, shooting, assualt rifle, intermediate, cartridge, assault weapon, black rifle, arfcom, 7.62x39, .223, 5.56, 5.56x45, Nato, russian, yugo, serbian, serbia, anderson, PSA, Ruger, S&W, Saint, springfiel, springfield, Colt

Id: kAiyyZVdwEI

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2017