Carbines from Kalashnikov and PPSh assault rifles, a Mosin rifle, and for those who wish - a Maxim machine gun, firing single. The market for so-called fenced military weapons has doubled in recent years, but the State Duma intends to ban fencing in the near future.
MARIA SHER
The small town of Vyatskiye Polyany in the Kirov region, for 30 thousand people, may lose two of its city-forming enterprises. The fact is that both the Molot-Arms plant, the successor to the Vyatsko-Polyanskiy machine-building plant, which became famous in the war years for the production of the PPSh (Shpagin submachine gun), and the Molot Arms (an enterprise founded just five years ago) are the largest in Russia. sellers of weapons converted from military to civilian. And at the autumn session, as part of a package of "anti-terrorist" amendments, the State Duma is going to pass a law prohibiting enterprises from "fencing" military weapons - in May the bill was adopted in the first reading.
"We will lose jobs," the Hammer-Arms management scares. The enterprise employs more than 2 thousand people, about half of all products are fenced weapons.
"For us, this law will actually mean a collapse," says Hammer Arms director Ravil Nurgaleev, complaining that his plant produces more fenced weapons than combat weapons. A former veterinarian and head of the design bureau of sporting and hunting weapons, Ravil Nurgaleev founded the enterprise in 2011 near the old "Molot"; Last year, the latter tried to ban Nurgaleev's plant from using his name in the name, terminated the dealer agreement with the junior namesake and complained about it to the FAS. However, according to Ravil Nurgaleev, "this was the handiwork of some employees who did not coordinate their actions with the management," and today Hammer Arms sells both its own products and the products of Hammer-Weapon.
Now two players occupy half of the market for fenced weapons: according to expert estimates, this market is about 150-180 thousand units per year, Vyatka-Polyanskie plants, according to their management, sell 3-3, 5 thousand units per month.
The controlling stake in Hammer-Weapon belongs to the Rostec state corporation, and it also owns the third player in a specific market - the Degtyarev plant (ZiD), one of the oldest (opened in 1916) arms and the largest industrial enterprise in the city of Kovrov in the Vladimir region. “In 2012, our plant received a batch of outdated military small arms from the Ministry of Defense free of charge. We incurred considerable costs for organizing specially equipped warehouses and delivering tens of thousands of weapons, developed design documentation for converting weapons into civilian ones, and issued certificates. additional jobs have been created, where workers are now undergoing training. The adoption of the amendment will lead to job cuts and deprive the plant of both income items and the opportunity to cover the losses incurred, says the marketing service of ZiD.
Swords to plowshares
The famous Degtyarev machine gun of the 1927 model is now also in the civilian version - as a DP-O carbine worth 70 thousand rubles.
Photo: RIA Novosti
For arms factories, converting military weapons into civilian weapons is a lucrative line of business. There are millions of decommissioned, obsolete and defective weapons that can be used as "raw materials" in military warehouses, it is much easier and more profitable to protect them than to produce civilian weapons from scratch - 90% of the products are ready, you just need to cut a few parts and weld a row of holes: they remove the ability to conduct automatic fire, leaving only a single one, and the magazine capacity is limited to ten cartridges.
For arms factories, converting military weapons into civilian weapons is a profitable business line
Since the beginning of the 2010s, the production and sales of such weapons have significantly increased due to the fact that, in addition to the traditional alterations from the Kalashnikov assault rifle (the Vepr series hunting carbines produced by Molot-Arms, the MA-136 Molot Arms self-loading carbines) rarities of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet eras appeared on the market. Since 2012, ZiD has been making an SVT-O carbine based on the 1940 Tokarev rifle, a year later Hammer-Weapon and ZiD fired the carbine from the Shpagin submachine gun. "Molot-Arms" began to make a three-line Mosin rifle (used in the Russian and then in the Red Army from 1891 until the end of World War II) as multiple-charge carbines KO 91/30, KO 91 / 30M and OP-SKS from a self-loading carbine Simonov (adopted at the end of World War II, used by the Soviet army in most wars of the 20th century). ZiD also produces it. And since 2014 you can buy - and they do! - a civilian version of the 1927 Degtyarev machine gun (produced by ZiD) and even the legendary Maxim machine gun (produced by ZiD and Molot-Arms). At Molot-Oruzhyi we were informed that sales of weapons of historical value are steadily growing, and from 15% to 20% of protected products are exported, mainly to the USA and Germany.
Cheap and shoots
The most common type of alteration from military weapons is civilian versions of the Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Photo: RIA Novosti
The reason for the popularity of alterations is that such weapons are much cheaper than models of a new assembly. Passionate citizens can talk about it for hours. "Look: the Saiga 9 carbine (Kalashnikov concern. -" Money ") costs 28-40 thousand rubles in the basic configuration. rubles. "- explains the chairman of the board of the All-Russian public organization" Right to Arms "Igor Shmelev. “I have 80% of weapons - converted from combat,” says an amateur collector, municipal deputy of the Mitino district Vladimir Demidko. rub.".
Amateurs argue that the requirements for weapons, which were originally produced as combat weapons, are higher in production: as a rule, there is an employee at the plant who is subordinate not to the enterprise, but to one or another military unit of the Ministry of Defense and is responsible for quality control of the weapons produced. "Trunks with an army past hit more accurately, but they shoot further - this is what I say to you, as a hunter," says Evgeny Petrenko, a hunter from the Pavlovo-Posad district of the Moscow region.
Sales of weapons of historical value are steadily growing, and from 15% to 20% of protected products are exported, mainly to the USA and Germany.
Since most of the alterations from military weapons fall on rifled samples, and only people with five years of experience with smooth-bore weapons are allowed to purchase them, their main consumer is hunters. "At first I wanted to buy a Czech rifle for 30 thousand rubles. However, due to the fall of the ruble, the weapon has risen in price, and now it costs at least 70 thousand, not to mention the prices for imported cartridges for rifled weapons, the price of which has skyrocketed to heavens ", - says Dmitry Alekseev from Veliky Novgorod. Now a suitable option for Alekseev is the domestic Tiger carbine, a civilian version of the legendary Soviet SVD rifle.
Sellers of fenced arms claim that they are in special demand in remote regions of Siberia and the North, since hunting there is often not so much a hobby as work: people hunt for food or are engaged in commercial hunting - for example, they get furs to sell them to furriers.
Expensive shooting
Shooting sports in Russia is gaining popularity - for example, several tens of thousands of people are engaged in practical shooting.
Photo: Yuri Martyanov, Kommersant
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as of January 1, 2016, 4.5 million Russian weapon owners had 6.6 million pieces of equipment in their hands. Until 2011, there were more owners of weapons - 5.2 million people, but with the tightening of requirements for the acquisition of traumatics, the number of people decreased, but there were more weapons on hand: hunters and collectors continue to acquire them. The ban on fencing will affect very many buyers: according to the chairman of the PNO Igor Shmelev, most of the Russian civilian and service weapons are developed and produced using a base or components of military weapons. "We do not have imported weapons of this category, there is nothing to replace them with. Because of this, prices will rise not only for civilian weapons made from military weapons, but also for other types of weapons of similar calibers, and even for used weapons," Shmelev predicts …
Among the "victims", along with hunters and collectors, there will be sportsmen, for example, amateurs of practical shooting. This discipline, which includes pistol, shotgun and carbine shooting, appeared, by the standards of sports, quite recently - the first world championship was held in 1975. In Russia, sport is very popular - today there are 72 regional federations and 150 practical shooting clubs registered in the country. According to the Ministry of Sports, there are about 24 thousand active athletes, and there are several times more citizens who are fond of practical shooting at an amateur level. The anti-weapon initiative may hinder the development of this sport, says Igor Nemov, deputy chairman of the Practical Shooting Federation of the Moscow Region: “Although at the competitions shooters use only new weapons, mostly imported ones, cheap civilian models are used for initial training and instilling skills in safe handling of weapons. Russia's first program for rearmament of shooting sports, providing it with high-quality weapons, cartridges and equipment of Russian production.
Barrels with an army past hit more accurately, but they shoot further - this is me, as a hunter, I say
Private security companies will also get from the ban - most of their weapons are also made on the basis of combat or from its components. "There will be a shortage of weapons on the market, and many private security companies will simply not be able to lease weapons from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Ministry of Internal Affairs itself may have problems with issuing service weapons to us. Naturally, we will incur losses," explains the commercial director of the private security company AKM-Group "Alexey Shchedrin.
Explaining the ban on fencing weapons by the fight against terrorism is rather stupid, said Vladimir Gutenev, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Industry. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, over the past year, 589 out of 6.6 million registered weapons were involved in the commission of crimes, that is, 0, 009%, in the overwhelming majority of cases it was poaching. "In addition, the law does not specify what will happen with the converted weapons already on hand," says Gutenev. "The law does not regulate its withdrawal from the population, so I do not see any direct consequences in the fight against terrorism." However, according to Gutenev, complete freedom in acquiring and carrying weapons, as, for example, in most US states, cannot be introduced in Russia."We all remember the numerous shooting tragedies in American schools," the deputy explains.
Oddly enough, even among citizens close to the weapons environment there are supporters of certain restrictions on the sale of weapons, for example, Mikhail Degtyarev, editor-in-chief of the profile magazine Kalashnikov. “I think it's safe on the streets not where everyone has pistols, but where there are no pistols. Take, for example, American statistics - this year, in Chicago alone on Veterans Day, six people died from firearms, last year - fourteen, he says. Opponents of the weapon also cite the case of Russian school shooting - February 2014, Moscow school N263 as an argument. A 15-year-old tenth grader, after waiting for his parents to leave for work, took a Browning sports carbine and a Tikka rifle from his father's safe, came with them to school, killed a geography teacher and took 21 classmates hostage. During the arrest, the teenager also shot one policeman and wounded another. The student was declared mentally deranged - he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
And yet, despite the thickening atmosphere, the enterprises engaged in fencing weapons are hoping for the lobbying capabilities of the powerful Rostec: the conversion of military weapons into civilian ones is beneficial for both the Ministry of Defense and Rostec enterprises.
“Millions, and in the case of some names and tens of millions of units of decommissioned weapons have been stored in military warehouses for decades without losing their properties,” says Mikhail Degtyarev. For technical verification, weapons are re-sorted and fall into the category subject to destruction - it is she who goes for conversion into civilian ones, and the Ministry of Defense receives money at the same time, since interested enterprises are ready to pay for weapons. weapons need to be guarded, transported to the disposal site. And any movement of weapons is very expensive and difficult, not to carry potatoes. Excluding logistics and security, the disposal of one unit of weapon under pressure costs 250-300 rubles, the destruction of one cartridge costs 15 rubles - the numbers seem to be small, but in terms of batches of tens and hundreds of thousands, the costs are tangible.
