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Mr Chizumatic asks in comments:

OT: This guy wants to buy an AK. Got any advice for him?

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/195181.php

Yeah, if you can find an AK for sale, buy it. Jeeze Louise, the practical rifle market is absolutely bugnut screaming bonkers. Del-Ton is running 8-16 weeks behind on parts orders, let alone whole rifles!

If you can only find a low-rent WASR or SAR-1, buy it anyway. Even if it doesn’t work out of the box, it can be fixed more easily than you can find a more well built model.

Neutered import rifles like the Chinese MAKs and others are a good deal, again, if you can find them.

Before the current frenzy, I think the best deals running were the Lancaster Romanian builds and having one built from a kit by a known AK builder.

In the future, I think the days of the $300 and even the $500 AK are over. If totally built from new domestic parts, not surplus, an AK pattern rifle would probably retail for $700 or more, which is about what low-end ARs trade for.

If you aren’t hung up on getting a Kalashnikov and desire a defensive rifle, I think building an AR has a lot to recommend it. Keep it simple, spend the extra $50 for a chrome lined chamber and bore, get your carrier key staked properly, and lube it, and it’ll be just as reliable as a cheap AK without the bad-guy stigma. Plus if you spend carefully and are patient, you can get going for under $600.

If you don’t mind carrying a ten pound rifle and cannot abide by shooting people with a varmint cartridge, you can still score a M1 Garand from the CMP for under $600. The 30-06 turns cover into concealment like nobody’s business, plus you’ll have match grade sights, a fine trigger and the M1 is also a fearsome melee weapon. Try very hard to buy only GI spring-steel enbloc clips. Reproduction cast clips are teh sux.

The CMP is also offering $500 M1 Carbines, which is a tremendous deal. Note that they ship without magazines, and good M1 Carbine magazines are somewhat hard to come by. I suggest sticking to GI 15 rounders and avoiding anything containing 30 rounds, unless you feel like tinkering. The 30 Carbine cartridge doesn’t reach very far, but it’s easy to shoot and has killed plenty of people.

If you can’t afford a $7-900 rifle, a Marlin 336 or Winchester 94 will deliver .30 cal hits out to 150 yards as fast as you can work the lever. They are available for $2-300 and weigh in under 7lbs. If you become adept at slamming rounds into the loading gate, you can keep up a decent stream of fire without the worry of losing those pesky magazines. You can also snap a 1 point sling onto the saddle ring for the ultimate in cowboy SWAT.

If you don’t anticipate having to engage targets beyond 100 yards, an autoloading shotgun might be a better choice than a military pattern rifle. They are easy to hit with, produce devastating wounds and like lever guns, don’t require a big investment in magazines.

These are indeed trying times, but paranoid armed citizens will always find a way to make do.