Once upon a time I struck up a conversation with a couple of guys at a little podunk saloon on the outskirts of town one Friday afternoon. The conversation turned to guns, and one of the guys told me he had a pre-ban folding stock AK.
I was not much of a gun guy back then. I had owned a revolver for self-defense but had never really looked into getting anything else. I knew AK's had been banned, so in the back of my mind I wondered if this guy's AK was illegal or just barely legal. He claimed the pre-ban ones were grandfathered, but not knowing the guy I didn't necessarily believe him.
I followed the guy back to his house, and one of his other buddies followed us. He pulled out a pre-1989-ban B-West sidefolder AK. Of course I immediately offered to buy it from him. He just laughed.
Several weeks went by, and the guy showed up at the very same bar complaining his girlfriend had kicked him out. Suddenly he wanted to sell that AK. Without hesitation, I went to the bank and got the money and bought it from him a few days later. We started going to the range every weekend for me to shoot that rifle, and for them to shoot various firearms.
I was hooked. I bought two more AK's that summer, plus a couple of MAK90's by the end of that year. Too bad the B-West AK turned out to be one of those with the soft receiver: it started to come apart after a few hundred rounds. But there was no going back as far as me and firearms--especially modern evil-looking rifles.
What firearm hooked you into being an enthusiast?
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