This is a follow-up to the post What is “milspec?”
AR15s (and their accessories) generally fall into one of four categories:
- consumer grade
- duty grade
- sporting
- boutique
Consumer grade ARs are those intended for the hobbyist. They might be geared towards hunting, casual competitive shooting and home defense; but mostly they’re intended, and only appropriate for, target shooting at the range. Not all of them are cheap, but affordability is usually the biggest selling point in this market. You might, however, pay for brand or cosmetics or even features like lightweight components. Drivers in this market are low price, features over substantive quality and brand recognition.
Duty grade ARs are made for military, law enforcement and serious shooters. They’re driven by consistent quality and reliability because they’re used in applications where failure is going to come at a high cost.
Sporting ARs are those made for hunting, bench rest, competitive shooting, etc. While the quality may be high, at least where it’s applicable to their intended use, function is often sacrificed for weight savings and recoil mitigation, and low end parts of unknown origin are often used. For example, let’s say I were making 24″ bench guns; my concern for the bolts would be mostly for dimensional accuracy because such rifles never break bolts, and it would therefore be entirely appropriate to source nitride 9310 bolts for such an application. Or if I were making race rifles, I would use aluminum carriers. Such decisions would be entirely reasonable, and the resulting product could very well be said to be high quality within its market, for its intended application. Putting such parts in a Mk18 going downrange, though, would be tantamount to premeditated murder.
Last but not least, boutique ARs are made for collectors. They’re like the custom motorcycles of the gun world. They’re more works of art and status symbols than a practical gun, and often sacrifice performance for aesthetics and features like being very small or very lightweight. Their aim is to be cool at any cost. A word of caution, though. Many a boutique AR masquerades as a duty grade AR, and due to the marketing on some of these guns the consumer might be forgiven for thinking these are serious guns for serious use. What further muddies these waters is that a lot of times this market serves as an R&D testing pool for products that might have real world applications, but are hitherto unfielded. The manufacturer may have developed the product to address an actual real world need, and they may in fact be seeking contracts, but the durability, reliability and compatibility of the product is largely unknown. The various PDW and folding stocks are a good case in point. There’s no question that we would all love a more compact stock/buffer system, and whoever manages to crack that nut will certainly profit from it, but until one gets put through large scale testing they will be firmly in the category of cool guns for the gram.
The real question you need to ask yourself is who the lowest common denominator is; i.e. what kind of user does this or that brand have to satisfy? When you do an image search for that system, what pops up: salty-looking professionals or models dressed up as special operations soldiers?
To flesh out that idea, imagine yourself as the manufacturer. Let’s say you serve the commercial market. Your typical customer is someone who’s going to buy the gun on a whim, mostly based on price and superficial features like furniture, and put a few hundred rounds through it a year. In other words, you know that 99% of people who buy your gun won’t shoot it enough to even begin to put it through its paces, much less wear it out. You also know that the worst consequence for failure is someone having a bad day at the range. If you invest 10% more in billets with a better grain structure, your customers won’t know, won’t care to know and won’t ever shoot enough to find out. And if your rifle is 10% more expensive than one that looks identical, or lacks flashy furniture, you’re going to lose that sale.
Now imagine yourself as the manufacturer of a rifle that is commonly used by military and law enforcement. When that rifle leaves your factory and goes to the distributor, you don’t know who the end user is going to be. It could be sold to a collector who will put it in his safe and never shoot it, or it could end up on the front lines in the Ukraine, in an officer’s patrol vehicle, etc. And if you skimp on the materials or QC to cut costs, your core customer will definitely notice when their organization’s guns start going down on the range.
If you’re the first category of manufacturer, it behooves you to cut costs on substance and then dress it up with nice furniture. Sure, that 1% of customers who actually shoot the gun might have the misfortune of happening to get a bad rifle, but that’s statistically unlikely. You don’t have to be a mathematician to calculate that the consequence of saving 10% on EVERY SINGLE RIFLE SOLD is that a mere 0.01% of them will come back for warranty. So you can save millions of dollars across the entire run, at the expense of having to replace one out of many thousands, resulting in a massive net savings to your company. Savings you can then pass along to the consumer to undercut the manufacturers of professional grade ARs that look identical on the surface and don’t have flashy furniture upgrades or mid length this or enhanced that…you get the idea.
And here’s the kicker. That tiny percentage of rifles that come back for warranty will actually result in free marketing for your company. Don’t believe me? Do this: google your favorite consumer grade AR and see what users are saying online. You’re going to see thousands of posts to the effect of, My (insert brand name) has been 100% reliable for (insert made up round count). Those are people who shoot 200 rounds a year, tops. And when you finally stumble on a post from the rare bird who put 2k rounds through one and had it fail, he’s likely going to say something to the effect of, While the rifle failed due to a bad part, the manufacturer went above and beyond to make it right! So even in the rare instance where one of these consumer grade ARs gets exposed for the lipsticked pig that it is, it usually results in an opportunity for that company to buy themselves some free positive press, and for simply doing the bare minimum that’s ethically required of them (i.e. repairing or replacing the rifle).
And when it comes to professional reviews, scant few are actually unbiased. First of all, truly unbiased reviewers who resist the temptation to sell out (who are rare birds indeed) still typically don’t badmouth anyone for the simple reason that it’s very risky. It’s socially, reputationally and even legally risky to call someone out. Not only could it result in a lawsuit, and often has, those who make their living doing reviews don’t want to alienate their audience. And the fastest way to alienate your audience is by badmouthing something that a lot of them probably have in their safe.
To illustrate, think about it this way. You’re a professional reviewer and you take about 20k dollars of your own money and buy several of the rifles and many thousands of rounds of ammunition, and you spend several weeks of your own time shooting, filming and scientifically collecting data. And you demonstrably prove that that AR is NOT in fact “just as good.” Well congratulations, you’ve just invested your entire production budget and a month of your time to lose a bunch of subscribers, receive lots of hate mail and probably get sued because you forgot to dot an i…and, well, we live in America, where anyone can sue anyone for anything…and you just attacked a publicly traded company with a full legal department at their disposal…and you’re a youtuber who’s best legal counsel is your uncle’s frat brother who barely passed the bar… You get it.
The world of reviewers, at least the successful ones (who don’t get sued), follow their mother’s advice: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. True independent reviewers pick out things they know they’re going to have something nice to say about, and avoid the ones they know they won’t. And if they do come across something they have nothing nice to say about…that’s right, they don’t say anything at all. Saying nice things gets views, people leave you nice comments, and, best of all, you don’t get sued! In the world of professional reviews, selling out or taking the high road are the only paths to long-term success.
In other words, don’t listen to the company’s claims or the claims of reviewers, independent or otherwise, and certainly don’t listen to the unsuspecting shills on the internet. Ask yourself, What motivates this company? Where is their incentive? Do they have an incentive to make quality products, or is their incentive to save money? And, to recap, you’ll find the answers to those questions by looking at who’s actually using the products. Ask yourself, Who is their poster child? Is it an Army Ranger or a chairborne ranger posing as a gun guru on 4chan?
Finally, choose substance over flash. That Colt M4 with its cringy FSB and 1980s furniture might not turn heads at the range, but the money was spent where it counts. Sure, the hobbyist AR next to it might give you fancy furniture for the same price or less, but who cares when it breaks a lug at 2k rounds. Furniture and doodads can always be added later, but a lemon will always be a lemon and no upgrade will change that.