AR pistols

I am sure seeing a lot of these for sale lately. Whats the deal with that? I hope I am not missing something, lots of folks seem to be unloading them.

Thoughts?

From personal experience, I can tell you that shooting a rifle cartridge through a handgun-length barrel is not necessarily a pleasant experience! The muzzle blast and the recoil on the handgun frame made me shell-shocked and powder-burned! The barrels are too short for all the powder to burn, so you have a hand-held flame thrower working for you. I have shot them in .223 and 7.62X39, and I never want to do it again. Of course, I'm a card-carrying wimp, but I assure you that the reason all these AR pistols are hitting the market is because the owners went out and shot a few magazine's worth of ammo through them, and decided a full length, or at least a bull-pup length barrel was what these cartridges were designed for! If you're tempted to buy one, do yourself a favor and at least insist on a test firing of a full, 10-15 round magazine, so you can determine whether or not it's the way to go.

I shoot my 5.56 SBR (10") all the time and love it. One of my favorite guns. Only reason I can see them getting rid of the pistols is because they're too cheap to actually make it a legit rifle by paying $200 to ATF. Maybe they went out and shot it without a stock and found not practical. Who knows.

I feel like the only reason people ever bought them was because They didn't want to fill out the paperwork to get a tax stamp or pay the extra money

They seem pretty useless/comical to me, as mikei pointed out they're not real pleasant to shoot.

Somebody saw one in a movie and thought it looked tactical.

You could spray-paint rabbit droppings flat black and call them "Tactical Smart Pills" and sell them for ten dollars each.

Yep... (Sigh) They would sell.

People enjoy feeling like that have a "tactical" weapon and don't want to wait for a NFA stamp. You shoot the pistol a few hundred times and suddenly it's not so awesome anymore. No real accuracy and can't use a traditional scope on it. I have a AR SBR with a 10" barrel that is suppressed that I can shoulder and mount a tradition scope on that makes a great pack rifle and is very accurate at 100 yards without carrying a longer rifle. The pistols are a fad.

I have one now myself, and shoot it regularly. I carried an SBR in almost the exact configuration when working over seas. Minus the stock, and I have the Sig arm brace now.

They are definitely different to shoot, and the "flame thrower" portion is usually a surprise to most. I have not had any serious accuracy issues out to 100 yards or so. But for me, it isn't surgical precision that I was after with this weapon, but the speed of deployment, and maneuverability in tighter quarters.

I was just wondering if there was a new development with the use of the sig arm brace, or if like some of you said, it is a fad that is fading. Thanks for the input.