If anyone is wondering why that is, it's because the tooling to create a stamped receiver requires a huge up-front investment that takes several years to amortize over the life of a product. Since the Soviets produced so many Kalashnikovs (and the machinery to manufacture them), the required initial investment was made several decades ago by a communist government that was using other people's money.
So in order for American produced parts to be cost competitive with rifles built from parts kits sourced from former Eastern Bloc countries, American manufactures have to make a lot of cost-cutting compromises, otherwise their rifles would be significantly more expensive (and if you're going to invest in the tooling to produce a proper Kalashnikov from scratch, you'd probably be better off choosing a more modern rifle... as cool as the AK is, it's a pretty dated design).
If anyone is wondering why that is, it's because the tooling to create a stamped receiver requires a huge up-front investment that takes several years to amortize over the life of a product. Since the Soviets produced so many Kalashnikovs (and the machinery to manufacture them), the required initial investment was made several decades ago by a communist government that was using other people's money.
So in order for American produced parts to be cost competitive with rifles built from parts kits sourced from former Eastern Bloc countries, American manufactures have to make a lot of cost-cutting compromises, otherwise their rifles would be significantly more expensive (and if you're going to invest in the tooling to produce a proper Kalashnikov from scratch, you'd probably be better off choosing a more modern rifle... as cool as the AK is, it's a pretty dated design).