Steve_Zissou
Ultimate Member
You nailed it. The bullpup market seems to be exclusively the domain of people interested in the NATO calibers and their descendants.
It's not that AK enthusiasts aren't into bullpups, too, it's just that the AK/slavic caliber fanbase seems to be a little more historically-oriented (similar to the Euro battle rifle enthusiasts) and when a lot of us, myself included think of bullpups in slavic calibers, we think of Korobovs and OTS-14 Grozas and other unobtanium backwards guns from behind the iron curtain.
The bullpup market is niche enough as it is, and it seems that the exclusively western manufacturers of US-available bullpups focus on the western/NATO calibers to snag all those folks who lust after FAMASs, L85A1s, and VHSs of the world and don't want to pay mondo money for an AUG or an FS2000. Building x39 or 5.45-chambered bullpups is essentially chasing a niche of an already small niche.
It'd be like building an all-new steel-framed single-stack pocket CC pistol in .357 Sig. The 5 people who actually bought one would think it was god's gift to the shooting community, while the rest of us wouldn't even know it existed.
Hey, why do you have to come at my poor fantasy gun with with all of your "laws" and "healthy doses of reality" like that...
(I admit that I wish I had bought a Type 86s back when they were just a thousand bucks or so (ie, before the MD AWB), even with the meh rock-and-lock mags.)
