Scramble To Buy Kalashnikov Rifles In US Following Sanctions

America’s most popular automatic weapon will soon be off the shelves.

The AK-47, manufactured by Russia’s Kalashnikov is being scooped by American gun enthusiasts as Washington’s sanctions against Moscow cover the famous automatic weapons manufacturer.

The sanctions were announced a day before a Malaysian passenger jet was brought down by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine, killing all 298 aboard, are aimed at a number of Russian companies, including Kalashnikov Concern.

In a statement on its website, the US Department of The Treasury says that US citizens are allowed to buy, own, and use the guns as long as they were imported into the US prior to the sanctions came into force.

"We sell some of the Kalashnikov Concern stuff and that has been selling fast," Robert Keller, a manager at Las Vegas-based online gun distributor K-Var Corp, reported CNN.

"The products of Kalashnikov enjoy great demand in the United States. Preorders on civilian products are three times the annual volume of deliveries. Thus, the sanctions taken against Kalashnikov go against the interests of American consumers," the company said in a statement, published on Russian newsite Pravda.

Concern Kalashnikov (formerly NPO Izhmash) is Russia's largest producer of automatic and sniper combat weapons, guided artillery shells, as well as a wide range of civil products - shotguns, sporting rifles, machines and tools.