Nice to see Zumbo have a successful hunt with an AK.
Gotta chuckle that he just had to use something with brown furniture.
the stuff he said was so hateful and ill informed I still have my doubts.
If his screwup and repentance is enough to get the NYT to print a neutral piece on the subject, my doubts are pretty much satisfied. The New Testament has some comment about approving of those who get the right message out, even if their heart isn't entirely in it.
it is problematical, and that’s aside from the question of having exhaust gas blowing straight back into bolt carrier parts.
The AR design is quite suitable (albeit not ideal) for a broad range of applications involving 2-legged vermin. Maybe optimal for sub-50m combat, it will do very nicely to 300m in normal combat, 600m if needed, and 1000m with prep & tweaking. Most combat is at close range; at longer ranges, other tools are available.
As for the persistent "craps where it eats" criticism, the design does function nicely with reasonable care. This reflects a philosophy of Western military equipment: precision & performance, at the accepted cost of non-trivial maintenance & price . This in contrast to Eastern-bloc mentality: low/no-maintenance & reliable & cheap, at the accepted cost of reduced accuracy & lower performance.
Loosely speaking... The AR is for skilled/trained professionals who take meticulous care of their equipment. The AK is for, er, the less capable. Each is more suited to their intended audience, and the results show.
So he wrote his idiot article before researching the subject
Zumbo's outrage wasn't an article, it was a blog. Articles are (supposed to be) well-researched and crafted for wide distribution to paid readership. Blogs are someone just pontificating casually to an unpaying audience. There's a difference: it was his opinion, not necessarily researched.
The 6.8 will probably be the future of the black rifle.
Doubt it. While certainly a respectable round, and would make for a fine starting point, it doesn't provide a big enough improvement over .223 or .308 to overhaul the entire mainstream logistics. It's more of a compromise between the two where having an optimized version of each may ultimately be better.
If low-order gangsters were drawn to scoped hunting rifles,
The goals & related logistics are much different. Low-order gangsters want to identify the target fast, hit 'em fast, take stuff fast, and get away fast - that's best done up-close and in-person. Scoped rifles provide great accuracy and distance, but it's much harder to locate the right target, takes practice to make the long-range hit, distance to valuables makes robbing/looting implausible, and escape is complicated when the weapon is a meter or more long. If they had the personal discipline and intelligence (in both senses), they would be personally successful and a serious threat, but ... they don't.