SKS in Canada
The Soviet “Samozaryadny Karabin Sistemy Simonova,” (loosely translated: “Self-loading Carbine of the Simonov System”), is abbreviated in the West as “SKS.”
Designed by Sergei Simonov in the early 1940s, over ten million SKS Rifles (chambered in 7.62×39, or “30 Soviet”) would eventually be manufactured (in the USSR, China, and a number of other countries). Production in China continued through the late 1970s. Fully-functional copies are found today, many still in active service, all over the world.
Simonov was a protégé of both Fyororov and Degtyarev. Additionally, Simonov had doubtless seen American Garand Rifles, probably M1 Carbines too, and was likely influenced by the American auto-loading design.
The tilting-bolt SKS, featuring a 10-round attached magazine, was mostly superceded (in the USSR) by the rotating-bolt Kalashnikov, featuring a 30-round detachable magazine, in the 1950s, so the SKS’ tenure in Soviet military service was actually quite short.
However, Kalashnikov’s relatively novel design concerned many conservative Soviet war-planners, so the well-liked and trustworthy SKS continued to be produced even after Kalashnikov’s rifle was “officially” adopted. In addition, Simonov was well-connected politically. By contrast, Kalashnikov (at least at the beginning) was little more than an uneducated tank-mechanic!
Currently:
Friends who live there tell me that in the nation of Canada today, nearly every autoloading rifle, particularly those with military origins, are “prohibited weapons” and may not be possessed by Canadian citizens.
Curiously, the SKS has been “on” and “off” the “Prohibited List” several times! Currently, it is “off,” and with the abrupt departure of Canada’s extremely unpopular Prime Minister (Trudeau), it may stay legal for civilian ownership for the foreseeable future.
The underlying issue is Canada’s “Indigenous Population!”
Canada’s Indian Tribes (the term, “Aboriginal,” has been used until recently, but it is now “out-of-fashion”) are large and politically influential. They control vast areas, which are pretty-much independent, autonomous nations. Canadian politicians are frightened to death of “offending” them, so within reservation boundaries Canadian laws are mostly ignored, certainly unenforced.
The central issue is the ever-covered-up “Residential School” matter, dating from the 1870s until well into the Twentieth Century. This is at the core of the current unhappy relationship between Indian Tribes and Canada’s Central Government.
Indian children were, for generations, forced to attend government schools. More than a few, when they declined to conform, were murdered! Mass graves have since been discovered. Like the “Rape of Nanjing” in China in the 1930s, the Canadian government was in denial, even for decades after incontrovertible evidence came to the surface. They mostly still are, and not surprisingly the Indian population continues bitter and unforgiving.
It is well known and understood that there are probably hundred of thousands of SKSs in private possession within Canada’s tribal lands (Kalashnikovs and M4s too, for that matter), but that fact is embarrassingly ignored, actually covered-up, by Canadian politicians who sheepishly defend treating Indians as a “protected class” (owing to the foregoing) who are not required to obey the law, as are “ordinary” Canadians.
To no one’s surprise, some “ordinary” Canadians have angrily pointed-out this pernicious hypocrisy. Hence, endless political waffling with regard to the SKS’ official status.
So today, frightened “ordinary” Canadians, looking for effective means of self-defense in the midst of Canada’s current (and expanding) wave of violent crime, have gravitated in the direction of the still-legal SKS, and this phenomenon both frightens and angers Canada’s leftist politicians, who, like leftist hypocrites everywhere, want the possession of guns banned from everyone, except themselves!
“When you produce an ingenious answer to a question no one is asking, don’t expect people to beat a path to your door”
Marketing axiom
/John
