its super light and takes my glock mags, of which i have basically an infinite number

Don't-even-own-a-gun 2 cents here:
I would get an AK- variant. Preferably Finnish or Israeli (yeah I know) because that's the gun I have been trained with in the army (7.62x39). If I were to go for a bigger gun I'd chose a british .303 though. The rapid shooting of the Enfield is pretty amazing in my opinion, unfortunately there's almost no surpluss ammo left.

you can literally buy an american made, billet milled receiver akm made by century for under a grand

there arent any 'cheap ak vars' anymore, you'll pay 5-600 for a wasr 10 or some bulg variant

the comedy option is to buy blanks, a press, and the dies to make your own stamped receivers, telling yourself that in the long run you'll save money cause you want to make like 10 aks

then you realize how shit hard it is to make a gun that works in your garage and you end up with a $2000 ak that shoots like crap

theres zero reason for any person located in the USA and over tha age of 18 to not go to your local dicks/cabelas and buy a M&P Sport II today, right now

literally baby's first battle rifle

I heard Century AKs are trash, at least that seems to be the consenus on /k/

its an old meme

when they first started importing/rebuilding polish/bulg aks for the us market, they had serious build quality issues

that said i super dont recommend buying an old used one lol

granted, of the ancient old ones out there, the chi-com mak90s are the cream of the crop

https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/whats-clicker-teaching-new-technology

What are your thoughts on the M14, mini 14 and mini 30?

the mini 14 is a classic

the m14 is overwrought and a little scary to build yourself

like, the m1a's that springfield has been putting out recently are awesome

but i dont want that to be the gun i have to service alone if the shtf

never handled a mini 30

if i want to throw 308 far, id just as soon set up a ar pattern in 308 with a heavy barrel

granted thats a super edge case scenario where you're engaging armor at range

thats one of the firearms rabbit holes, stopping power/range

you start with a simple and perfectly fine ar pattern in 556, and someone youve never met on a hindu basketweaving forum tells you that 556 is the 9mm of rifle rounds and muslim terrorists have basically built up an immunity to it, and its off to the races

you wake up from a fevered haze and you've bought 10k rounds of 300 blackout

(300blk is super fun to shoot out of an ar pattern tho)

recoil profile is radically different from 556 and 762

Ever shot 5.56 or 7.62x39 through bushes or branches?

sure, anything solid is going to modify a fast projectile's path

its the same with even larger rounds, i hunt with a 30.06

please dont misunderstand my lack of preference on the m14, its not the round, the the fiddly nature of the receiver action

i do believe that folks get super caught up in caliber dick-waiving, but to each his own there

From my experience in the Finnish army, we got to play around with the 556 and it seemed like we had to put two or three rounds more to get our metal targets to fall down, compared to the 762 which usually made the metal targets fall on the first shot (if you hit of course). This was even more noticable when the targets were behind bushes or any sort of object.

oh, 7.62 is a demonstrably heavier round for sure

I don't have formal military training, so take my shit with a grain of salt in regards to anything human conflict related

im just a good old boy from alabama who owns a bunch of them there guns

I believe this is one of the main reason why Finland is sticking to the ''outdated'' 7.62x39. We hardly shot at ranges further than 150m and even then there were usually brushes and shit in the way of our targets.

haha, we didn't shoot much live ammo though, so I don't have much experience in that way.

7.62 is a fine round

i have an akm, its fun to shoot, and cheaper to shoot than my ARs