Cheapest AR you’d trust?

Michigander08 said:

It's funny how some people care about minute details of the gun. I personally know a retired full bird colonel who was airborne infantry all his career. He cares less about the gun itself. It's just a piece of equipment like the airplane he jumps out from.

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It can be if it's of a known quality. I would not trust a number of AR's as a "piece of equipment", whereas others I would.

To comment on what an above poster said about some people dumping tons of money into AR's...

Well there are two types of people in my mind... those that shoot their guns and those that don't. With the majority in the latter category.

Every AR I build, I build with the mindset that it can be run into the dirt and then some. I'd bet the majority of AR owners on here don't have 1000 rounds through their rifles, some may not even see half that in it's lifetime.

Do I have thousands of rounds through all of my AR's? I wish. I have one in particular that has seen about 10K with a preventative bolt rebuild at roughly 8K rounds and occasional buffer spring replacement.

Everyone has items in their lives that are "black boxes". For some it's cars or computers, for others it's guns. It doesn't make it any less important that these items are quality and work when you ask them to.

TheOriginalMexicanBob said:

There was a tanker who was a contemporary or Gen. Patton during WWII...he was very well versed in how a tank was built and operated...he said Patton didn't know a damn thing about tanks. The difference was that Patton knew how to use tanks and let his subordinates handle the technical aspects of the tanks.

I liken guns to an automobile engine. Say you have a small block Chebbie...any make will do. I've seen guys buy a bunch of high quality parts...Edelbrock...Holley...Lunati...you name it. They throw the parts together and get an engine that doesn't function well because they did match the parts together to meet a common, defined goal. Others will define the goal they're after and collect the parts that, once put together...will meet that goal...whether name parts or private label parts.

Guns can be the same...mix a bunch of parts that aren't well fitted or intended to meet a defined goal and you won't be happy with the results.

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Brilliant. //

Michigander08 said:

And the colonel is true; a former commander of 509th Parachute Infantry battalion.

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I don't doubt he exists. I doubt what you claim he said. It's a dumb comment and won't put it on that man unless I hear it from him.

I have never met a soldier that doesn't take his equipment seriously. Every professional does. You claiming he doesn't is really pathetic.

TheOriginalMexicanBob said:

There was a tanker who was a contemporary or Gen. Patton during WWII...he was very well versed in how a tank was built and operated...he said Patton didn't know a damn thing about tanks. The difference was that Patton knew how to use tanks and let his subordinates handle the technical aspects of the tanks.

I liken guns to an automobile engine. Say you have a small block Chebbie...any make will do. I've seen guys buy a bunch of high quality parts...Edelbrock...Holley...Lunati...you name it. They throw the parts together and get an engine that doesn't function well because they did match the parts together to meet a common, defined goal. Others will define the goal they're after and collect the parts that, once put together...will meet that goal...whether name parts or private label parts.

Guns can be the same...mix a bunch of parts that aren't well fitted or intended to meet a defined goal and you won't be happy with the results.

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Very good analogy TOMB.

Why did I mention two brands I would not buy? Simple. I found non milspec parts in them where it mattered. I've built a few ARs in my time. You won't necessarily find fancy $300 BCGs or $500 barrels in/on them. You will find milspec(or better) parts in them where it counts. Where does it count? Back to the car analogy. Engine and drive train. Buffer/spring, bolt carrier group, fire control group, and barrel/gas block. Everything else, as long as they are within spec, is superfluous.

omegared24 said:

I don't doubt he exists. I doubt what you claim he said. It's a dumb comment and won't put it on that man unless I hear it from him.

I have never met a soldier that doesn't take his equipment seriously. Every professional does. You claiming he doesn't is really pathetic.

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Maybe there are some gun nuts in the military care about it. For the rest, just line up and sign out the rifle. They record the serial number and want it back clean. Soldiers don't have time to contemplate.

omegared24 said:

I don't doubt he exists. I doubt what you claim he said. It's a dumb comment and won't put it on that man unless I hear it from him.

I have never met a soldier that doesn't take his equipment seriously. Every professional does. You claiming he doesn't is really pathetic.

Michigander08 said:

Maybe there are some gun nuts in the military care about it. For the rest, just line up and sign out the rifle. They record the serial number and want it back clean. Soldiers don't have time to contemplate.

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In my experience, echoing what Michigander08 said, the average soldier doesn't know enough about guns to know the difference - they may take their equipment seriously, but when it comes to their rifle, they sign it out of the rack, maintain it exactly like the Army tells them to, (which IMO is actually not conducive to functional longevity) and they sign it back in. If the weapon has an issue, they take it to the armorer to deal with - it's not something they deal with on their own.

To that end, in my experience, "most" soldiers (I'm not talking about Rangers or Special Forces - just your average solders) aren't great shots either. Consider - there's a reason that you only needed 23 out of 40 to qualify. If the standard was any higher than that, a whole lotta soldiers would really struggle with basic rifle marksmanship. I've seen soldiers who take half the day to simply zero, and then it takes them attempt after attempt to actually get enough shots on target to qualify. The last time I was out, I actually saw a situation with one struggling soldier who got "help" qualifying - there were two Range Safeties who geared up and got in the shooting positions on either side, and if he missed a shot on anything inside of 150 (might have been 200) they followed up and shot it before the pop-up target had a chance to fall. (The guy didn't realize it was happening - when he "qualified" he thought he just had a good/lucky run.)

trickg said:

In my experience, echoing what Michigander08 said, the average soldier doesn't know enough about guns to know the difference - they may take their equipment seriously, but when it comes to their rifle, they sign it out of the rack, maintain it exactly like the Army tells them to, (which IMO is actually not conducive to functional longevity) and they sign it back in. If the weapon has an issue, they take it to the armorer to deal with - it's not something they deal with on their own.

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One thing I should have done a couple times, I wish I can disassemble the M16 in front of the armorer and tell him that it wasn't clean and give me a different one. Service rifle is like a rental car, the jerk before you somehow sneaked in a very dirty rifle and cause you to spend extra time cleaning!

I'm starting to see complete Colt AR15 for sales around $1,150-$1,300.

Looks like I am missing something. Aren't Colt AR15 still evil guns?

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yup

outrider58 said:

Why did I mention two brands I would not buy? Simple. I found non milspec parts in them where it mattered. I've built a few ARs in my time. You won't necessarily find fancy $300 BCGs or $500 barrels in/on them. You will find milspec(or better) parts in them where it counts. Where does it count? Back to the car analogy. Engine and drive train. Buffer/spring, bolt carrier group, fire control group, and barrel/gas block. Everything else, as long as they are within spec, is superfluous.

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^^^^^^
This right here. Like others have said about engines and the best parts- You can do all star games where each think they are the one, instead of a team. Computers are the same way. As such, I have built many price levels of ARs. One was from a few years ago. Frontier full lower, Complete 1:7 16" upper. Way less than $500 a few years ago. I took it to one of Chad's classes. Some work needed to be done, as well as work needing done to others with way more expensive parts. Shoots well. I wanted to see if I could build for way cheap. I guess jack of all trade parts, master of none. Sum of all parts does it. I have not really tested it out to 100 yards or greater. If it hits a smaller plate then I am ok with it.

TheOriginalMexicanBob said:

I liken guns to an automobile engine. Say you have a small block Chebbie...any make will do. I've seen guys buy a bunch of high quality parts...Edelbrock...Holley...Lunati...you name it. They throw the parts together and get an engine that doesn't function well because they didn't match the parts together to meet a common, defined goal. Others will define the goal they're after and collect the parts that, once put together...will meet that goal...whether name parts or private label parts.

Guns can be the same...mix a bunch of parts that aren't well fitted or intended to meet a defined goal and you won't be happy with the results.

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****This is actually a *great* analogy. I used to love building or helping to build "sleeper" cars - that is cars that look kinda plain but are actually very fast. The direct opposite were the guys who had a ton of stupid expensive, but mismatched parts that looked *awesome* but were just mismatched and slapped together by basically a shade tree mechanic.

I helped a friend shoe horn a big block Chevy (396 cu/in) into one of the smaller and more modern Malibu bodies that often came with a little 2 bbl V6 at the time. We didn't have money for a Supercharger or any of that jazz so we just put a big ass motor, massaged it (you can make very serious power with good ported heads and with a decent multi angle valve job). I had a decent eye for grinding good flowing heads with just a carbide burr set and basic finishing tools, and it was only my time which I had plenty of (I had no girlfriend at the time..or money), and we sent the heads out for the valve job - not that expensive...

We put regular steel wheels on the car with cheap ass hubcaps from the hub cap man, with some cheater slicks (M&H Racemasters), and I old school boxed in the control arms and did the math to set proper pre load for instant center, etc...

Anyway, the car was an absolute *Beast* and super quiet as we used old big block Cadillac mufflers - seriously sounded stock. A guy with clearly a lot of money but not much sense we knew at the track had a small block Chevy 350 with a stupid big tunnel ram and Holley Dominator carb, lopey high duration cam, lots of chrome, and stickers all over their car, and it was in a really nice painted Corvette.

On grudge match night our sleeper car just walked away from the nice looking car and people were all like "WTF!!!". The owner of the other car was SO upset as he had paid a LOT of money for super nice parts that were totally mismatched for his car - basically all show and no go.

Details matter in cars, guns, etc.. The whole is often more than the sum of it's parts - it doesn't take much for a few out of spec parts or mismatched parts to make for a crappy or not quite ready for action gun.

Gentlemen I want to pass on a thank you for all the suggestions and information.

A board member stepped up to the call, and I’m very grateful. In addition Tyler’s Firearms was a nice shop to do the transfer. I can’t say enough about how friendly and easy it was, I’d highly recommend them.

* side notes I wasn’t thrilled with being urged to put in my SS # on the background forum, but I suppose they have it anyway. This isn’t a complaint on the store I’m just talking about background check process.

On my way home rifle was lost in boating accident damn shame.

Never tried one without it but the SS number is supposed to help prevent false flags from occurring. To date I have never had a delay or denial so I leave well enough alone.

JRisBundyboyz said:

Gentlemen I want to pass on a thank you for all the suggestions and information.

A board member stepped up to the call, and I’m very grateful. In addition Tyler’s Firearms was a nice shop to do the transfer. I can’t say enough about how friendly and easy it was, I’d highly recommend them.

* side notes I wasn’t thrilled with being urged to put in my SS # on the background forum, but I suppose they have it anyway. This isn’t a complaint on the store I’m just talking about background check process.

On my way home rifle was lost in boating accident damn shame.

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So many boating accidents this year. I lost my my rifle and my ammo when my canoe flipped over in West Virginia..

I never put down my SSN (well, except for one time I forgot to refrain... so many military forms in my past it's sometimes automatic).

If you have a common name, I understand that not providing it can delay you. If you do not, and the reviewers don't have to spend extra time making sure you're not some bad actor with a similar name, it won't pose a problem. Mine always take just a couple of minutes even without an SSN.

Love it here. Give em your CC permit and away you go...after the form is filled out of course.

No muss. No fuss.

Less infringement for sure.

To the OP, damned glad you found your way “home.” Damned shame for your subsequent loss.

Save them guns. Teach em to swim. If they can kill, certainly they can swim!!!

I’m thinking about a new product...AR and AK PFD/swimmies. What color (other than camo) do y’all think they should be?