Perhaps he had something against them, A lot of Older US Veterans hate the SKS and AK... Anything Commie for that matter. Something about being shot at in South East Asia probably has something to do with it. 
I get that, but both have their virtues. The first semiauto rifle I ever bought was a Chinese Simonov with both a milled receiver and a chromed barrel. I bought a couple thousand rounds of Chinese AP Ammo in these big sardine tins at the same time. It was really cheap and cheerful and you can literally put hundreds of rounds through it, get it dirty, roll it in the mud and it will keep working. You can buy 30 rounders for it or even drums, or, if you like, use the ten round strip per clips. 7.62x39 is lighter than 7.62x51 nato and more stable than .223, if not more lethal.
Later, I added weapons, A LaFrance FN, a bushmaster h-bar, etc, but eventually I made myself buy a folding stock milled receiver Bulgarian AKS. If I had to have 1rifle, that would be the one. It's light, lethal, reliable, surprisingly accurate, and it doesn't have a creepy Chinese trigger or lots of difficult little parts to lose like the second piston in the Simonov or the little pins in the AR bolt and carrier assembly or the little adhpjustable gas block on the big FN. I wouldn't mind finding a nice Valmet in '51 or '39, just to get truly western build quality in an AK design. The only drawback, imj: no hold back on the carrier.
