Mediocre. Very, very mediocre. The Mosin is a gun half stuck between two different jokes. On one hand you have the /k/ meme making it good and being cheap which harkons back to around 2008 when you could grab a M91/30 for the same price as a packet of Marlboro Reds, and now there’s the obvious garbage rod connections it now has as they’ve shot in value for no reason. A 100+ year old design that’s only used by the most desperate.
One of the first major smokeless repeating rifles to hit the scene, the Mosin was born after the Russians faced the power of repeating rifles during the Russo-Ottoman war which pitted single shot Berdan repeaters against a lot of Winchester lever actions. In 1889, three rifles were drawn in for testing to choose a replacement for the Berdan, from designers Leon Nagant, Colonel Zinoviev and Captain Sergei Mosin. While Mosin’s rifle won the trial, a few ideas were lifted from Nagant’s design, mostly in the magazine and interruptor, hence the name Mosin-Nagant. Most of the time the Russians just called them Mosins.
Used through WWI, WWII, the Spanish Civil War, the Winter War, Continuation War, Korean War, Vietnam War and pretty much any conflict where Russian “foreign aid” showed up, the Mosin has been in the background like a creepy sex offender uncle. It’s a 5 shot love letter to Tsarist rule that only got updated once before having a small smattering of subvariants like the M38, M44 and so on. A belligerent babushka who keeps hitting you with recoil and probably some samovar.
This is more in line with a musket than a long rifle, and calls to the Lebel style of bolt action except this has the one advantage of not requiring an eternity of reloading to get ready to rumble. The sights vary between average to terrible, the overall accuracy is mediocre, the actions are all various flavors of “bleh” and these now have a dumb price tag too them thus making them not as cheap as they once were. Sure, it’s good if it’s still possible to get one for like 100 bucks but we’re in an age where every jackass who cracks open a crate of M91/30′s thinks it’s worth $350 and you can buy a hell of a lot more modern milsurps than this fucking thing.
