how did you come up with the year being 1975?Pre-89 import?
PICTURES!
WE WANT PICTURES!
;-)
I’d say you lucked into one that got left in a corner, unfound for a while, maybe. I got a used one in 1986 from the era as yours with Chinese marks. Went bang every time. Ammo for it was cheaper back then, though...
During Vietnam, semiautos of foreign manufacture could be tagged and carried home and the SKS was a popular find. We used to find caches of crates ofweapons along river banks and sometimes under houses and they would usually be in factory-new condition and full of cosmoline. We made great money by cleaning them puppies up in half barrels of gasoline and then carrying one at a time conspicuously in Danang until a sailor or an airman offered a kingly sum to take it off your hands.
Then we'd go back to our truck and get another to carry around.
Weapons picked up in combat were usually in rugged shape. The VC almost always removed the bayonet (they rattled) and the stocks were dinged and scarred and rust usually covered all exposed parts. Interestingly, some of the Chinese SKSs were unmarked with any Chinese lettering but used English and Russian lettering to disguise their origin and the had "No. 21" marked on the side of the receiver as their designation.
To show what a prized souvenir they were, I had one I had captured on me when a helicopter crash-landed in our artillery position. The crew exited the plane as it burned and as they did, the enemy force that shot them down attacked our position - in broad daylight! We were firing back at them vigorously and while I was fully involved, one of the helicopter crewmen came up to me and asked if he could buy my SKS!
I told him to "wait until the fight's over..!"
how did you come up with the year being 1975?What’s a tax refund?
Could also have been a “walk across” from Canada. Before the 1990s the border was once almost wide-open, and lots of firearms (both legal here, and not so much) came through in American vehicles.
Also, back in the day, State Department, Foreign Service, and other government personnel returning from overseas were not subjected to a detailed search of their belongings, and some who had bought weapons for personal protection in their foreign posts (not necessarily legal here) brought them back into the US.
As an example, both of the above situations have been cited as means by which “G series” FN-FALs not on the “ATF amnesty approved” list (a story in its own right) have appeared over here.
You found the personal weapon of one of those female PLO officers that work at the front of Chinese restaurants screaming at her underlings and waiting for the go signal from higher ups. She’s gonna get busted down to working in a massage parlor.