But think about the name AR — what does the AR stand for? Over time, Colt tweaked the design and came out with the M16, a select fire auto design with a twenty-inch barrel. The AR is the civilian semi-auto version of the fully-automatic M4. To reiterate what was said earlier about semi-autos, one pull of the trigger equals one shot. For those of you who are purchasing your first ever AR, I would highly advise you buy a complete rifle from a trusted manufacturer. In the very least, you should buy a total upper and customize your own lower.
This will prevent a lot of inconveniences because you will have a full warranty on your rifle. Another factor here is resale value. As I learned the hard way when I posted an ad in the past, self-built rifles are practically worth nothing when compared to branded pre-built firearms.
On the flip side, many people enjoy the sense of pride they get from building their own. For those who have graduated from the factory-built AR and want to build your own AR lower receiver , there are several resources out there that will walk you through the process.
I recommend this helpful and informative YouTube video, which covers the process start to finish. This is another important area that needs to be covered, especially for first-time shooters.
This can be boring or fun depending on your level of familiarity with the platform. The chamber is that part of the barrel where the cartridge resides before it is fired. This, and the barrel itself, determine what kind of ammo your rifle can shoot.
As mentioned earlier, there are lots of rifle calibers available for the AR, from the lowly. The 5. It is readily available so ammo is cheap. Now this might seem like a no-brainer but when it comes to guns, safety should always be a top priority.
With that in mind, here are some guidelines first-time AR owners have to remember:. The minimum barrel length, according to Federal law, is sixteen inches. For instance, gun owners can have a However, it is important to note that some states and municipalities have their own laws governing firearms and their accessories, so be sure to familiarize yourself with the rules and regulations in your area.
Due to these restrictions, we strongly advise first-time shooters to purchase at least a sixteen-inch barrel so that they can swap out muzzle devices at will. On the other hand, longer barrels can provide higher velocities as there is more space for the powder to burn and more room for the bullet to accelerate. On average, sixteen-inch barrels are able to reach a target from four hundred yards away. That being said, the traditional fifty-five grain load grows more imprecise after three hundred yards, so fire carefully.
Shorter barrels generally weigh less and are easier to handle. When you first get into guns, it can be overwhelming. There are so many numbers and so much technical jargon that it might seem scary or confusing. There are slight differences between that last one and Chrome Molybdenum Vanadium steel alloy contains a range of elements from chromium and nickel to molybdenum and so forth.
It is renowned for its strength and hardness. Both are high tensile strength steels which make them great for guns as well as bicycles and the like. There are three basic options on the market when it comes to the inside of your AR barrel. They are as follows:. Many environmental factors such as heat, moisture and more can affect your exact round count, but you can count on approximately ten to twenty thousand rounds before you need to re-barrel.
As I said before, there is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo that comes with owning guns. Some acronyms that manufacturers like to throw at you include the following:. Of course, some ARs have not been tested at all, so buyer beware! This refers to the thickness and overall shape of your barrel. Fortunately, there are several options available.
They include:. There are two primary types of gas systems for the AR They are DI and Piston. DI stands for Direct Impingement. DI is the original design whereas the Piston only became popular in recent years. The AR operates by transmitting hot gas behind the bullet into the gas tube at which point it the gas tube uses the gas to either move a piston or deliver the gas directly back direct impingement.
No matter how the force is applied, it makes the bolt unlock, move back, eject the spent casing and push a new cartridge into the chamber.
Like most things, there are pros and cons to each. Gas system length is the distance to the gas hole. The gas hole refers to the triangular front site base FSB that sits on top of the barrel. You also get more rail space because the handguard extends from the upper receiver to that front sight base. Another good thing about this style is that it can be converted by grinding down the front sight base to allow for a free-floating barrel. Front sight blocks generally use non-free-floating handguards.
So the two-piece handguard touches the barrel at the front sight base which, unfortunately, can add a bit of inconsistency when it comes to force. Consequently, your shooting accuracy can be affected. Nevertheless, if you are a non-competitive shooter, the non-free-floater will be accurate enough.
While there are some aluminum models, most are made from polymer and are cheaper and just as good at more affordable price points. Magpul MOE handguards are our go-to handguards because they enable the shooter to attach Picatinny rails on slots which allow you to add accessories. Picatinny rails are a tad on the heavy side, but if you like to attach accessories, this is the way to go. It retracts when you pull the charging handle back.
When you let go of the handle, the bolt carrier group moves forward, strips a round from the mag and releases a round into the chamber.
When you pull the trigger, the hammer is released and it strikes the firing pin, hitting the the primer. This sparks the gunpowder, sending the bullet down the barrel.
This is where the gas system comes into the picture. Below is a full list of all the top AR manufacturers around followed by my personal favorites. As of the publishing of this article, we vouch for the following eight companies as the absolute best manufacturers of AR15 rifles :.
I suggest you run at least 1, rounds through one of these rifles before you trust any of them with your life. They are inexpensive and may be the right choice for starter rifles. This is just based on our own tests. Since its introduction back in , the Ruger AR has firmly established itself in the AR market as one of the best budget ARs available. The AR is a more inexpensive variant of the SR series of rifles.
The primary difference is that the AR is a direct impingement weapon, and the SR is piston driven. The AR comes coated in a matte black oxide finish for excellent rust and corrosion resistance. It comes standard with a 16 inch barrel that is cold hammer forged with ultra precise rifling for both longevity and excellent accuracy. The handguards over the barrel and gas tube are built out of a glass filled nylon and are very heat resistant so they can withstand repeated firing.
The M4-style synthetic buttstock is easily adjustable with six different positions offered. Additional features include a forward assist, dust cover, brass deflector, an elevation adjustable fixed front sight, and a Ruger flip up rear sights.
This is a mil-spec M4-style AR that comes with a 16 inch M4-profile barrel with a twist rate. The lower and upper receivers are built out of forged aircraft grade aluminum. As a mil-spec AR, an A2 handguard and collapsible synthetic stock are also installed on the rifle. This is also an optics ready AR, meaning that it is ready for you to add a red dot or scope to the Picatinny rail on the top of the receiver. There are no sights on the rifle, so you will need to add those yourself if you so desire as well such as the Magpul flip up sights.
With a chrome lined barrel, the Mod 0 was not designed for the gamer, rather it is geared toward tactical applications. But when it comes to training and range shooting , this one packs a lot of punch. The Mod 2 is a quarter of an inch wider than the Mod 0 and shares its cable lock and 5. The first time I picked one up, I felt like I was in a Predator movie.
Seriously, just look at this design:. After a federal assault weapon ban lapsed in , only seven states and the District of Columbia still have a continuing ban on such firearms. Law enforcement officials said Nikolas Cruz, 19, who was charged with killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida, used an AR style rifle.
Cruz was able legally to purchase an AR about a year ago, according to a law enforcement official cited by Associated Press. Nichols said that laws that made it easier to buy long guns than handguns were designed at a time when military-style rifles were much less popular, and when teenagers were most likely to buy long guns for hunting. Between and , only 3.
Delusional survivalists? Military fetishists? Insecure men with tiny … hands? If you're prepared to answer "yes" to all of the above and consider the case closed, then please move on and don't read anymore. This article isn't my attempt to justify anything to you — it's not a defense of what's in my gun safe or of the AR itself. If, for you, my AR ownership is prima facie evidence of my mental instability, sexual inadequacy , lack of a conscience, or what-have-you, then I honestly don't care what you think about this issue.
You can go back to broadcasting your own moral superiority on social media, and I can go back to tuning you out until your rage therapy session is over. No, this article is for the genuinely curious — those who assume that 5 million of their fellow Americans are not inhuman or insane, and who want to understand what set of rationales, no matter how flawed and confused they may ultimately turn out to be, could make an otherwise normal person walk out of a gun store with an "assault weapon.
By the end of this piece, you probably still will not believe that I or any other civilian actually needs an AR That's fine — I wasn't really out to change your mind on that score anyway. I get that you still believe that no civilian should have such a gun. My only hope is that you'll go forth better equipped to talk about gun control based on an understanding of how real live people view and use these firearms.
Note: Before I get started, if you're like Rep. Alan Grayson or Sen. Bernie Sanders , both of whom I admire greatly and neither of whom seems to know the difference between a fully automatic weapon and a semiautomatic weapon, then we should get something straight before going any further: The AR is not an "automatic weapon. In contrast, the AR's military sibling, the M16, is capable of fully automatic fire, which means that the gun will keep spitting out bullets as long as the trigger is pressed and the magazine is loaded.
The AR was originally designed as a weapon of war, for man-killing and not for hunting or for target shooting — this is an obvious fact. But this is also true of most popular firearms throughout history, including your grandpa's lever action hunting rifle. The vintage Henry lever action rifle — the quintessential 20th century deer rifle — was originally deployed to devastating effect in the Civil War. With its high capacity, rapid rate of fire, and popularity with soldiers and civilians alike, the Henry was the AR of its day, and it was followed over the years by the invention of the even more effective semiautomatic firearm, and then by a succession of long guns that we now generally take to be suitable for civilian use.
The AR, the gun behind some of the worst mass shootings in America, explained. My point in bringing up the lever action rifle is that civilians have been buying "weapons of war" for a very long time, since the black powder musket days. This is partly because soldiers who come home from wars to enter civilian life often want to buy a version of the weapon they were trained on and trusted their life to.
And it's also because "military grade" is widely if sometimes mistakenly understood to mean "this technology has been tested in the real world, the kinks have been worked out, and its reliability and effectiveness have been proven in the field by an entity with the resources of an entire nation at its disposal.
Thus it is that since the dawn of the gunpowder age, gun buyers have snapped up military hardware, because that is often the very best hardware they can get their hands on. In this respect, today's AR buyers are no different than yesteryear's lever action rifle buyers. This is all part of the reason why I, a civilian, own a military-grade combat weapon. I don't want to shoot and miss; I don't want the gun to jam because it's dirty or cold; and when I'm hunting game I don't want to hit my target and then have it run off into the woods and die lost and wounded because I didn't "bring enough gun.
But, you'll argue, isn't the AR uniquely deadly? Unlike the lever action rifle, isn't the black rifle a weapon of godlike power, suitable only for putting as much lead on the battlefield in as short a time as possible? And in their desire to own one of these turbocharged weapons of mass slaughter, which is clearly overkill for anything but mowing down herds of humans, aren't today's AR buyers uniquely twisted and callous?
Isn't it time that gun buyers settled for second or third or fourth best, for the "good of the their fellow citizens"? The slightly longer answer is that your understanding of what the AR is "for" is all wrong, and says more about Hollywood's portrayal of black rifles than it does about how these guns are used in the real world.
If the AR were a weapon that's suitable only for indiscriminate, spray-n-pray mass slaughter, then it wouldn't be so popular with police. There is no conceivable circumstance in which a police officer — not even a SWAT team member — would need to mow down hordes of people. Yet the AR is the "patrol rifle" of choice for modern police departments from Mayberry to Manhattan. And when you understand why police have adopted the AR, then you'll understand yet another reason why I own one.
The AR is less a model of rifle than it is an open-source, modular weapons platform that can be customized for a whole range of applications, from varmint control to taking out pound feral hogs to urban combat. Everything about an individual AR can be changed with aftermarket parts — the caliber of ammunition, recoil, range, weight, length, hold and grip, and on and on. In the pre-AR era, if you wanted a gun for shooting little groundhogs, a gun for shooting giant feral hogs, and a gun for home defense, you'd buy three different guns in three different calibers and configurations.
With the AR platform, a person with absolutely no gunsmithing expertise can buy one gun and a bunch of accessories, and optimize that gun for the application at hand. You can even make an AR into a pistol. Similarly, the individual members of police and military units can tailor the AR to a specific mission without the help of a professional armorer.
Barrels can be swapped out, calibers changed, optics added or removed, and the gun can be totally transformed for every type of encounter, from a long-distance sniper shot at a hostage taker to a close-quarters drug raid in a crowded apartment complex.
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