gunsamerica.com reports that their SHOT show preview of the Akdal MKA-1919 lit-up their website like the Christmas tree at 30 Rock. So the firearms blog pursued a review of the AR-15-style-that-doesn’t-use-genuine-AR-15-parts shotgun like a lingerie marketing maven chasing Candice Swanepoel. The result (of the gun review)? As my father used to say, “another myth exploded.” You don’t need to be able to read between the lines to see that the Akdal MKA-1919 makes a great club (rather than an excellent self-defense shotgun). But it helps. To wit: “Out of the box performance hasn’t had a great reputation, and our test gun didn’t work that well either . . .
The MKA-1919 needed a couple boxes of shells to run fairly reliably. Out of the box every magazine had at least one stovepipe or failure to extract until about 40 rounds in, which comes out to 8 magazines. This was with Federal target loads. Now she runs pretty well, but still experiences an occasional stovepipe jam. Once the gun looses up a bit more and comes apart and back together for cleaning, it will probably run reliably, but in today’s American firearms market, you really aren’t going to make it unless you can produce out of the box reliable guns.
But at least the Turisk scattergun’s better than the I Double M (It Must Be Modified) Saiga. Seemingly.
The 3 Gun customizers who have been working on Saiga guns for more than a decade seem to prefer the Akdal MKA-1919, so take that for what is worth. Saigas nearly always need serious work for hard shooting . . . The gun doesn’t work so good right out of the box . . . After my initial excitement about this gun at SHOT Show, it is something of a disappointment.”
Ya think?