Shooting the Saiga-12
Last week we spent a few days in Vegas. While there, we had an opportunity to visit our friends at Machine Guns Vegas. If you’ve already been there, then you know MGV has a very impressive arsenal of fully automatic firearms, some of them fairly exotic like the Minigun or in this instance, the Saiga-12. Here’s a short clip of me shooting the fully automatic Saiga-12, my very first time pulling the trigger on this bad boy. And, oh what fun it was!
About the Saiga-12
The Saiga-12 is a 12-gauge shotgun available in a wide range of configurations, visually patterned after the Kalashnikov series of assault rifles. Like the Kalashnikov rifle variants, it is a rotating bolt, gas-operated gun that feeds from a box magazine. All Saiga-12 configurations are recognizable as Kalashnikov-pattern guns by the large lever-safety on the right side of the receiver, the optic mounting rail on the left side of the receiver and the large top-mounted dust cover held in place by the rear of the recoil spring assembly.
The Saiga-12 is manufactured by the arms division of Izhmash, in Russia. It was previously imported into the US by European American Armories, although their agreement expired in 2005 and Izhmash then began exporting through the Russian-American Armory Company. The current export import partner is Wolf Performance Arms. Izhmash also manufactures Saiga 20s and Saiga 410s in 20-gauge and .410 bore, as well as the Saiga semi-automatic hunting rifles in a number of centerfire calibers.
If you’re in the market for one a Saiga-12, you might start your search by checking out GunBroker.
