You could do that but it's still just a piece of crap $500 gun.

How come? Lower quality barrel?

he's definitely exaggerating how poor $500 ARs are

Usually they are good enough guns for the guy that wants a reliable AR.

Methinks Huntwest is just a little miffed that he paid $2600 for a LaRue or Noveske to find out it's not quite worth every dollar.

Sure, they're high quality and all, but he's definitely exaggerating how poor $500 ARs are. They substitute things like melonited barrels for chrome-lined, use standard delta-ring handguards instead of FF rails, barrels are made from lower-quality steels, etc. But none of these will matter for the average shooter. 99% of people will never shoot out a chrome-lined barrel OR a melonited one. Probably 80% of shooters aren't going to be doing the kind of shooting where a FF handguard will actually adversely affect their accuracy. A good majority will never notice the difference between an MPI bolt and just a regular old carpenter steel bolt.

Fact is, a $500 AR is probably still going to be a fantastic gun. I ran my cheapo PSA 11.5" melonited barrel in a carbine match today and got 5th out of 39 shooters! For my purposes, having a gun that will reduce my groups by .5" at 100 yards is far less important than the fact that my gun sways far more than that while I'm moving or even just staying still after running.

Besides, where else are you going to find something that will dispense 30 rounds of "[censored] you" in a short period of time reliably with reasonable accuracy for $500? Nowhere. Spending $2100 more on an AR doesn't really make it any better at that.

Methinks Huntwest is just a little miffed that he paid $2600 for a LaRue or Noveske to find out it's not quite worth every dollar.

Sure, they're high quality and all, but he's definitely exaggerating how poor $500 ARs are. They substitute things like melonited barrels for chrome-lined, use standard delta-ring handguards instead of FF rails, barrels are made from lower-quality steels, etc. But none of these will matter for the average shooter. 99% of people will never shoot out a chrome-lined barrel OR a melonited one. Probably 80% of shooters aren't going to be doing the kind of shooting where a FF handguard will actually adversely affect their accuracy. A good majority will never notice the difference between an MPI bolt and just a regular old carpenter steel bolt.

Fact is, a $500 AR is probably still going to be a fantastic gun. I ran my cheapo PSA 11.5" melonited barrel in a carbine match today and got 5th out of 39 shooters! For my purposes, having a gun that will reduce my groups by .5" at 100 yards is far less important than the fact that my gun sways far more than that while I'm moving or even just staying still after running.

Besides, where else are you going to find something that will dispense 30 rounds of "[censored] you" in a short period of time reliably with reasonable accuracy for $500? Nowhere. Spending $2100 more on an AR doesn't really make it any better at that.

AR-snobs are like caliber snobs only different

Yes it does to me. You could offer me five of yours for my one Wilson Combat and I would laugh at your offer. Let me know where the next shoot is and I'll bet you a case of beer you don't out shoot me with that $500 AR. You will drop out of contention once we get out to 400 yards and you will be crying in your beer when I'm hitting steel at 800 and you are still trying for the 400 yard target. Spending 2100 more definitely makes mine better than yours to me.

AR-snobs are like caliber snobs only different

Spending the extra money probably does make it better, but not always to a level that is commensurate with its price. My point was that for the average person, a $500 AR will do just about everything they want it to. They aren't substandard, they're perfectly adequate for most shooters. And until you start trying to push the AR platform into what it probably isn't ideal for, the cheap AR will do just fine against its more expensive cohorts.

A $2000+ WC AR used for long range kind of strikes me as putting lipstick on a square peg in a round hole. Without even dropping optics on there, you've already spent so much to do what a bolt gun could do at half the price. I'm not going to argue that ARs are inherently inaccurate, because high-end manufacturers have proven that it can be taken to very competitive extremes, but the amount of money that you have to spend to get it there is unacceptable to me.

And just to keep the game going, I've gone out to 500 yards with my little SBR. Not 800 since we don't have that sort of range out here, but 500 was easy enough. And although I'm not .mil, anyone that had to qualify with the AR would laugh at you implying 400 is impossible. Don't they have to shoot out to 600 just to qualify?

Not sure if sim guns will go up in value.

One thing I didn't care for was milled billett upper and lower receivers. I had a couple of matched sets from S.W.A.T. and never found a benefit over quality forged receivers from Spikes, Anderson, or PSA.

$200 for the upper, $80 for the BCG, $180 for the lower, and $60 for the red dot. $520 altogether. I threw a new trigger in there because I'm a bit of a sucker for a good one, but I wasn't really limited by the old GI trigger. Counting the trigger, I'm at around $700 total. At that range with the red dot, I was hitting maybe 50% of my shots. 300 yards and in, I'm pretty dang close to 100% on 12" mini silhouettes.

I'm not going to pretend that it's an ideal setup for shooting out that far, but most people try it once, say that cheap ARs can't do it, and instead spend way more money than is actually necessary.

And sure, extreme long range bolt guns are usually pretty heavy, but with a barrel swap on a stock Remington 700 or Savage 10, you've got a gun that will ring steel at long distances all day at 1/2 the cost of an equally accurate AR. Military Arms Channel on Youtube did a great series called "1000 yards for $1000" that really drives home the capability differences between bolt guns and ARs.

Your not getting much for $500 bucks, I think you get what you pay for with ar-15s. Yes the market prices are down for a lot of low end rifles, the high end still hold there values.

Nope... not much at all...

AC-15 5.56 Mid length