They're accurate, they're customizable and they're fun to shoot. Why you're going to see more AR-style rifles in the woods this fall.
Jul 2, 2007
Yes, But Can You Build It Yourself?
There's also a tremendously powerful "gadget driver" in our culture. Back in the 1950s and early '60s, when I was growing up in Tennessee, my father and other male relatives, all veterans of WWII and Korea, were obsessed with converting military surplus rifles into hunting arms. The "red book," Frank De Haas's manual on converting military rifles, was second only to the Bible, and the house was always full of Mausers of different stripes-German, Swedish, Turkish-in various stages of conversion. Eventually, though, the industry caught up with my dad, and he painfully admitted that the new Sako or Remington was every bit the gun his converted Swede 6.5X55 was. Almost...
But the gadget driver never goes away. And AR-platform guns are the ultimate "gadget" guns; they're Legos for grown-ups, a way to mix and match lowers, uppers, barrels, rail systems, stocks, lights, optics and so on. You want a 1,000-yard competition rifle or a tiny pistol? You want .223 or .308; the new 6.8 or a WSSM? Pick up a Brownell's or Midway USA catalog. It'll take you a month just to sort out the "basic" options, such as stocks, forearms, barrel length and rails.
And unlike converted military Mausers or 1911s, which require at least a modicum of gunsmithing skills to tinker with, ARs are designed to be both modular and easy to refit in a combat situation. That means that even I can assemble an AR out of parts and have it work right out of the box. I know, I've tried it.
And you really can get them in colors-I have an AR with yellow furniture, Ã la the Shooting Gallery "Duck!" logo, with the metal Bear-Coated OD green. A visiting SEAL friend of mine, upon seeing the yellow AR in my safe, exclaimed, "Good heavens, Michael, what on earth is that for?" I said that in case of a total societal breakdown, I wanted to be ready for marauding hordes of Target shoppers and packs of metrosexuals, so I needed something tasteful. And, yes, I refused to let him take it back to Iraq with him!
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