tahunua001 said:
out of curiousity whenm why, and how were the SVT40s banned? they have 10 round capacities and are exempted from importation bans under the C&R clause of section 925-D, same way the SKS are still making it through.
Armed_Chicagoan said:
I think it was in response to Russia grabbing the Crimea from Ukraine.
The ban's history is more complicated and a good deal older than this.
As I understand it, International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) laws passed in the 1970s allow the U.S. Department of State to restrict imports of defense articles from certain countries for vague foreign policy reasons (..."in furtherance of world peace and the security and foreign policy of the United States"). The list of import-ban countries—not surprisingly—prominently included the Soviet Union and its various client states, along with a laundry list of the "usual suspects" (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, the DPRK, etc). This wasn't a big deal to U.S. shooters at the time because arms imports from these countries were generally unavailable anyway.
A few years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Clinton administration started untangling the web of trade sanctions against the former Soviet countries in order to prop up the foundering Yeltsin regime, and in April 1996, they struck a deal allowing the import of various types of Russian guns and ammo. This was called the Voluntary Restraint Agreement or VRA. However, as Clinton and Friends were not great supporters of gun rights by any stretch, they threw in a caveat* found in 27 CFR § 447.52 and Annex "A" of the VRA:
... the appropriate ATF officer shall deny applications to import into the United States the following firearms and ammunition:
(1) Any firearm located or manufactured in Georgia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, or Uzbekistan, and any firearm previously manufactured in the Soviet Union, that is not one of the models listed below:
[My emphasis in
boldface]
IOW the list specifies what IS allowed to be imported; everything else is banned by default. Additionally, the provision applies broadly to "any firearm previously manufactured in the Soviet Union", so it doesn't matter where the firearm is located
today—it only matters that the firearm
was originally made in the USSR.*
The entire list may be viewed at 27 CFR § 447.52. The Mosin-Nagant M91/30, M38, and M44 are on the list, along with Saigas, VEPRs, and Nagant revolvers; however, the AVT/SVT series (and Dragunovs and SKS's) are conspicuously NOT on the list.
To put this another way, the same trade deal that lets us buy cheap steel-case Tulammo and Brown Bear ammo is to blame for cutting off Soviet SKS and SVT rifles.
The Obama administration import ban that was enacted in retaliation for the annexation of Crimea applies specifically to products of the Kalashnikov Concern and a handful of other companies, which happens to encompass several firearms on the above-mentioned list, most notably Saigas. However, this ban is a separate deal that has nothing to do with the 1996 Clinton VRA, other than affecting certain firearms that would otherwise be allowed.
[*Edit to add footnote: I'm not entirely surprised that the Russians would agree to this, as the underlying purpose of lifting the trade sanctions was to boost manufacturing and thus keep Russians employed; opening up Soviet arms depots in former Warsaw Pact states to the U.S. commercial market would actively undermine this cause.] 
Same goes for the (IMHO) crazy prices that commercial Dragunovs fetch.
