People: please do not carry an AK. Just get an AR. ARs have interchangeable parts, ammunition is cheap, and aside from Bear Creek Arsenal, they’re going to just work. AKs require significant hand fitting and there’s no single standard, ammunition prices have risen sharply since the cheap milsurp ammo flow got cut off, and at the cheaper end they tend to be dangerous to the user. Yes, I know that AKs have a reputation got working in adverse conditions, but that reputation dates to the Vietnam war, when the AR was a new platform; modern ARs are far, far more reliable and accurate than an AK.
You can still get an AK for fun, but don’t don’t treat it like your serious gun.
I have a buddy who did gun repairs, he fucking hates AR-15s. If you want a gun that ticks all the boxes, get a 12 gauge shotgun. It’s a cheap, widely available platform that has cheap and widely available ammo, it just fucking works, it’s easy to care for, easy to use, pretty standard maintenance, and will kill what you need it to. They’re lethal much further out than video games imply, because otherwise they’d completely wreck the balance of the game.
Edit: I asked him for his specific beef with ARs, this was his response.
They’re a bitch to clean. There’s lots of places that need to be cleaned that can’t be reached easily, tons of little pockets and grooves you can’t get into; requires a dental pick, star shaped cleaning patches, and a shit load of cotton swabs to get through.
If it’s locked up, you can’t knock on the charging handle or emergency kick the charging handle to clear it. You will not be able to field strip this rifle if it’s jammed out of battery.
Aluminum gas blocks are apparently very popular, and they will corrode to failure at the gas tube port.
The extractor pin will often shatter in place, which causes intermittent failure while not looking wrong unless you know what you’re looking for.
Thanks for the context. I was never interested in owning an AR myself, not to mention that it seems to me like they’re way overpriced due to a lot of them being glam guns. He did it for a living for years, so I took him at his word.
Your buddy may have an unfounded bias against them, as AR-15’s are in general extremely reliable, and don’t require much maintainence or cleaning for the most part, especially since most people don’t practice all that much.
A shotgun is a great choice for defense though, and often is a better choice than an AR.
I understand some people might look away from the AR-15 because it’s the gun everyone has which takes away from the cool factor, or maybe you just dislike its connotation due to high use among right-wing folk, but this person speaks the truth.
AR-15s are common because they work. Customizations and spare parts are cheap, effective, and widely available. So are good magazines, which are typically a shockingly difficult part to design well and the place where many otherwise decent guns fail. .223 Remington has one of most varied supplies of ammunition on the market, beaten only by things like 12 gauge.
Don’t buy weird shit until you own one of these (or at least a pump-action 12 gauge ffs).
I think that I originally paid about $550 for my S&W M&P 15 Sport 2 (although not many parts are original anymore); you can get a perfectly serviceable Palmetto State Armory AR-15 for $450. An AK is likely going to start at around $700.
As someone much more clever than I said, the real transgender AK is the AR that’s chambered in7.62x39mm.
This is such a weird take. AKs also ‘just work’, most people will never have to hand-fit anything on an AK, and ammo prices for AK are at parity with ammo prices for AR. The cheapest end of anything can be dangerous to the user, so again that’s another non-point. The majority of people aren’t going to see a major functional difference between the two, it comes down to personal preference.
People: please do not carry an AK. Just get an AR. ARs have interchangeable parts, ammunition is cheap, and aside from Bear Creek Arsenal, they’re going to just work. AKs require significant hand fitting and there’s no single standard, ammunition prices have risen sharply since the cheap milsurp ammo flow got cut off, and at the cheaper end they tend to be dangerous to the user. Yes, I know that AKs have a reputation got working in adverse conditions, but that reputation dates to the Vietnam war, when the AR was a new platform; modern ARs are far, far more reliable and accurate than an AK.
You can still get an AK for fun, but don’t don’t treat it like your serious gun.
I have a buddy who did gun repairs, he fucking hates AR-15s. If you want a gun that ticks all the boxes, get a 12 gauge shotgun. It’s a cheap, widely available platform that has cheap and widely available ammo, it just fucking works, it’s easy to care for, easy to use, pretty standard maintenance, and will kill what you need it to. They’re lethal much further out than video games imply, because otherwise they’d completely wreck the balance of the game.
Edit: I asked him for his specific beef with ARs, this was his response.
They’re a bitch to clean. There’s lots of places that need to be cleaned that can’t be reached easily, tons of little pockets and grooves you can’t get into; requires a dental pick, star shaped cleaning patches, and a shit load of cotton swabs to get through.
If it’s locked up, you can’t knock on the charging handle or emergency kick the charging handle to clear it. You will not be able to field strip this rifle if it’s jammed out of battery.
Aluminum gas blocks are apparently very popular, and they will corrode to failure at the gas tube port.
The extractor pin will often shatter in place, which causes intermittent failure while not looking wrong unless you know what you’re looking for.
No they’re not. They tear down easily without tools. I can’t think of a part that can’t be cleaned easily. Maybe the gas tube?
There’s a button called a forward assist for that specific purpose.
Milspec blocks are not aluminum, he’s complaining about after-market, non-standard mods.
I’ve seen this on cheap BCGs. It’s annoying, but it’s easily fixable and won’t render the gun useless. You’ll just have to manually clear it.
Thanks for the context. I was never interested in owning an AR myself, not to mention that it seems to me like they’re way overpriced due to a lot of them being glam guns. He did it for a living for years, so I took him at his word.
No problem. As an owner of a fully-custom glam gun, I recommend building a shitty one first to learn what breaks and what doesn’t.
Your buddy may have an unfounded bias against them, as AR-15’s are in general extremely reliable, and don’t require much maintainence or cleaning for the most part, especially since most people don’t practice all that much.
A shotgun is a great choice for defense though, and often is a better choice than an AR.
I understand some people might look away from the AR-15 because it’s the gun everyone has which takes away from the cool factor, or maybe you just dislike its connotation due to high use among right-wing folk, but this person speaks the truth.
AR-15s are common because they work. Customizations and spare parts are cheap, effective, and widely available. So are good magazines, which are typically a shockingly difficult part to design well and the place where many otherwise decent guns fail. .223 Remington has one of most varied supplies of ammunition on the market, beaten only by things like 12 gauge.
Don’t buy weird shit until you own one of these (or at least a pump-action 12 gauge ffs).
Nobody cared about the ar-15 unyil it got banned snd then unbanned.
Plus ARs are cheaper.
That too.
I think that I originally paid about $550 for my S&W M&P 15 Sport 2 (although not many parts are original anymore); you can get a perfectly serviceable Palmetto State Armory AR-15 for $450. An AK is likely going to start at around $700.
As someone much more clever than I said, the real transgender AK is the AR that’s chambered in7.62x39mm.
This is such a weird take. AKs also ‘just work’, most people will never have to hand-fit anything on an AK, and ammo prices for AK are at parity with ammo prices for AR. The cheapest end of anything can be dangerous to the user, so again that’s another non-point. The majority of people aren’t going to see a major functional difference between the two, it comes down to personal preference.
The gun you’re actually describing is the AR-10