You really need to ask yourself why do you want the gun.... if you plan to compete with it and shoot long range and have your buddies look at it and say WOW thats purdy then you should buy and AR.
I have 2 AKs because they will shoot crap ammo all the time, every time and I have never had a time that it didn't go bang when I pulled the trigger.
I don't plan on having a bad guy tell me what a nice looking gun I have, if it's pointing at them it's because I plan to defend me and mine and if I have to pull the trigger it will go bang.
Nice looking gun there my friend. I'm not going to get into the AKvsAR debate b/c it gets to nasty. I own ARs and AKs, my mostest favoite rifles remain my M1As btw, and love them both. The OP asked which he should get first, I think. While your points on the AK are valid I just think the AR is a better starting platform and has more versatility. Although you seem to have modded your AK quite well. I tried to burn up an AK once when they were about $298 for a Norinco folder and ammo was around $100 for 1200 rounds, yeah I'm old! I had 3 75rd drums and a pile of 30rd mags loaded up. So we start shooting this thing non stop, started with the drums and worked our way through the 30 rounders. We took turns firing and loading mags. The inside of the wooden hand guards caught fire so I threw the gun in the creek to put the fire out and started shooting again. It caught fire after another drum or so and back in the creek it went. The nylon M16 sling on it started melting but we kept on shooting. After 1200 rounds as fast as we could shoot and several trips in the creek the thing looked new when disassembled, except for the charred hand guards and melted sling of course. The bbl wasn't even discolored and the bore was shiny and bright. I WOULD NEVER try that with an AR. I like them both, the AK is a tough old mule and the AR is more of a show pony. This is all just my