AR15's - Who makes the best ones and why?

[slap shot]

View: https://youtu.be/S235PuthzmU

Wouldn't use it on my guns but it does provide some lube. Maybe they lubed it after it dried out...

 

[M1911]

even if it was soaked? WD= Water Displacement, no?

I wouldn’t. I’d use something like CLP. Wd40 can dry into a gummy glaze.

 

[allen-1]

I wouldn’t. I’d use something like CLP. Wd40 can dry into a gummy glaze.

 

[drgrant]

I attended a class in NH, and someone lent me an Anderson. As I understand, Anderson is an economy rifle.

I ran 1000 rounds through the gun in the pouring rain over two days. At the end of day one, owner took it apart, sprayed it down with WD40, and let it dry. I shot it again in another downpour. Mud, wet, and dirt. It never jammed once, and put rounds into target at 50 yards.

My point is that it all depends. The Anderson is probably not the best choice if you want to shoot dimes at 300 yards. But for a SHTF rifle that needs to protect your family in insane times, it’s probably an ok choice.

In fact, I’ve seen a lot of high-end, ultra accurate guns made to tight, high accuracy tolerances shit the bed when slightly dirty or not perfectly lubed. And I certainly wouldn’t want a 1.5 pound trigger on an urban defense rifle.

The best rifle depends on what you want to use it for.

Anderson can be anything a person throws on top of it, most of those are not "100% anderson" its whatever someone decided to put on top of their poverty pony. Which means you can get something stellar or junk depending on what the builder decided to do. You could buy a poverty pony lower that was well in spec put a great upper on it and go to town no
problem. Sure the guy will have dog shit resale because of the percieved shit grade lower, but from a use standpoint you wont care if it works great.

You CAN get reliable guns for cheap money... but IMHO this only really happens IF you build the whole thing yourself and spec it out yourself. A COTS rifle from some shithouse vendor like Radical, ATI, or a ShitCreeKArmory slap together deal, *shudder*. f*** that garbage. I've seen enough trash grade shelf rifles where they were f***ed up under dry fire before even putting a live round in them. For example one week during covid the place I was working at got a bunch of radical pistols. We had one of them where we had to mortar the thing on the floor to even get the bolt to unlock.... out of spec a little? also the whole thing would sound like a f***ing wind chime every time the bolt closed because of the shit grade handguard they put on there that was obviously crafted from the finest chinesium money could buy. Some of the shelf-trash is very questionable. Like "one step above airsoft parts" questionable.

PSA's cheap stuff is often pretty decent, even if as a company I pretty much think they're the walmart of gun distributors and might be tempted to not piss on them if they were on fire, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the product. Their typical entry-mid level guns work OK. Just don't expect it to have any kind of stored value. (a dealer will quietly laugh at you after you leave the store after trying to trade one of those in, it has enough label stench that it lowers the curb appeal at retail. ) on the other hand one upshot is you can throw one of those things on the ground stomp on it a few times and never feel bad about it and keep shooting the tar out of it till it explodes.

Cheap ARs have their place but if I'm that level of poor I'm going to be assembling it myself.

 

[rogersmithiii]

This might hurt some feelings here but, but my sampled experience with zero intent to incite some but if anything, experience has shown that it's always going to be function>price>form. Then there's if home assembling your own, the woes of tolerance stackings; Not everyone making parts has the TDP unlike companies that do such as Colt, Schmid & Tool (OEM provider for both Colt and FNH), Daniel Defense, D.S. Arms (spare parts provider for the DoD M4 program), or FNH USA as examples.

Not everyone is going to be needing a CHF barrel, I do, but if you're the type that wants a basic rifle for HD and no more than a 100 yards at most, you'd be fine with a 4150 nitrided Palmetto M4 type, preferably in mid length. Take the extra money meant for Daniel Defense, Colt, Geissele, FNH, etc., and use it instead on a quality optic. Red dots are stupid simple to use as well as being lightweight.

But honestly you really won't know what your rifle can or can't do or what you'd actually like to have in it parts-wise until you actually go outside and run it. I'm not talking about slow firing all day or just to make sure it's still sighted in. I'm talking run and gun matches. Carbine courses, actual courses that's more than a day with at least 500 being consumed at the minimum. It's where we find out that while the nitrided deal of the day runs, it's not going to run as well in the accuracy department when heated up from being on the line all day. But a CHF CL will.

Anyway, the last course I took was a 223 carbine course taught by Freddie Blish over here at Gunsite. The only AR-15's that had real problems in my class were in fact all three Ruger factory built rifles that were there. I don't know y'all from me, to someone like myself, that's a sign to be be wary of.

I guess the moral here from my sampled experiences here, is to at least try to do your due diligence before finally committing to something AR-15 related. YMMV, folks.

I’ve not been impressed with Ruger quality of late. I’ve seen three instances where Ruger sent crap out the door that had issues.

 

[NHCraigT]

Anderson can be anything a person throws on top of it, most of those are not "100% anderson" its whatever someone decided to put on top of their poverty pony. Which means you can get something stellar or junk depending on what the builder decided to do. You could buy a poverty pony lower that was well in spec put a great upper on it and go to town no
problem. Sure the guy will have dog shit resale because of the percieved shit grade lower, but from a use standpoint you wont care if it works great.

You CAN get reliable guns for cheap money... but IMHO this only really happens IF you build the whole thing yourself and spec it out yourself. A COTS rifle from some shithouse vendor like Radical, ATI, or a ShitCreeKArmory slap together deal, *shudder*. f*** that garbage. I've seen enough trash grade shelf rifles where they were f***ed up under dry fire before even putting a live round in them. For example one week during covid the place I was working at got a bunch of radical pistols. We had one of them where we had to mortar the thing on the floor to even get the bolt to unlock.... out of spec a little? also the whole thing would sound like a f***ing wind chime every time the bolt closed because of the shit grade handguard they put on there that was obviously crafted from the finest chinesium money could buy. Some of the shelf-trash is very questionable. Like "one step above airsoft parts" questionable.

PSA's cheap stuff is often pretty decent, even if as a company I pretty much think they're the walmart of gun distributors and might be tempted to not piss on them if they were on fire, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the product. Their typical entry-mid level guns work OK. Just don't expect it to have any kind of stored value. (a dealer will quietly laugh at you after you leave the store after trying to trade one of those in, it has enough label stench that it lowers the curb appeal at retail. ) on the other hand one upshot is you can throw one of those things on the ground stomp on it a few times and never feel bad about it and keep shooting the tar out of it till it explodes.

Cheap ARs have their place but if I'm that level of poor I'm going to be assembling it myself.

True.

I've got several poverty pony personal builds (on $39.99 stripped lowers) with mostly psa internals, and psa upper parts. One of the builds is a suppressor host.

I had no problems with each of the lower's specs when doing the builds, and I've had zero issues after, when running the builds (including the suppressed one that I have a "gas busters" charging handle on).

 

[rogersmithiii]

Wouldn't use it on my guns but it does provide some lube. Maybe they lubed it after it dried out...

Yeah. The Wd was just a water displacement step.

 

[anchorsaweigh]

I just picked up a Rock River Arms RRAGE this morning. It's a 16" barrel, 5.56, no FA. Got it home, inspected it, lubed it, and off to the range. The only thing I added to it was a Vortex Crossfire red dot.

I put 300 rounds through it today without a sweat. Felt like it was made for me. The build quality is exceptional and it was lighter and more comfortable to shoot than any AR-15 I have ever fired. I had to have the stock pinned and flash hider changed over to a muzzle brake to appease the anti 2A MAholes. I installed a Vortex Crossfire red dot which works fantastic. I'm totally happy with this purchase.

Cheers

Bob

First target at 50 yards after I dialed in the red dot...