For shtf I would AK over AR without question.

The AR has a lot going for it that other options can't touch.  Like being the most likely to be able to find parts and ammo for......

Not everything is design inherent.  Some things are intrinsic to the platform's ubiquity.

Break your SCAR and just try to find parts for that bitch.

You and al-Shaabab. Even ISIS carries M16s if they can get them.

You should ask some questions.

Agreed, love the AKM for what it is.
AR>AKM

I think these last few pages somehow went back in time about fifteen years.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, DON'T WORRY, HILLARY CLINTON DOES NOT BECOME PRESIDENT!

Oh, and your AK still sucks.

P.S.  Buy bitcoin.  Sell at $20k.  You're welcome.

For a square range?  Yeah, sure.  I wouldn't wager my life on the trashcan version of an AR.  YMMV

It eats up cheap scopes
100% correct it is WAY overpriced for its method of manufacture.
There's a fix for the proprietary mag issue...not cheap, but there is one.

The trigger is no harder to replace than in an AR.  You're correct with the other issues though the after-market has fixes for all of them.

Will u really need replacement parts in a SHTF scenario?
In the immediate shtf scenario a quality weapon should last a long time
I want a long lasting weapon that won’t break down including small parts
I want it to be durable reliable accurate

For the long term Ishtf scenario there will be plenty of weapons laying around to pick up

If a war or civil war is happening I still want the best functioning weapon over one that has  lot of spare parts. Bec when I need it I don’t want it to break down and there will be plenty of other weapons around

The point is that it’s better to have the best weapon when needed
Not because there are spare parts

I don't know man.  I've seen a documentary where even highly trained experienced operators couldn't hit shit with the 14.

Good marketing in Guns & Ammo, Tactical Weapons, Tactical Life and Gun Digest.  Only the most operationally operational field reports.   Oh, and shooting at paper at the gun club.  All the jealous comments reinforce the decision.

I don't shoot as much as other guys here, but I get out.

And when I get out on open land I go nuts. Absolutely nuts. I think the last time we went through 5k or 6k.

I have two abuse rifles. Both ARs. Abused them to hell. Never cleaned, never let them cool down, etc. No issues. AKs had issues with much less. My personal experience

Who wasnt paying attention and left the portal open?

Ace? Was it you?

I literally just jumped to this post from watching Dustin Ellerman put 1000 rounds of FA-fired goodness through a LaRue Tac rifle.  Dustin then shoots a couple five round groups after that test.  The groups are damn good considering what the entire system had just gone through.

I then read the article posted in this OP...I guess it's time to go AK shopping!

I'm kidding.  In the meantime, I gotta run and scrub my star chamber.  Keep it clean.

Those fuckers had a badass van.

Yeah, well with the spent case stuck above the bolt with the locking lugs biting into it at the rear at the time I was kinda worried about jacking up the gas tube by going all hammertime trying to clear it. Wanting to err on the side of caution instead of braking parts or making it worse by yanking on shit til it was jammed REAL tight.

I can say with certainty I've never had ANY problem like that from the AKs I own so there is that.

Is that gun from Heat?

AR15s are the best...very common, parts and mags are very common, cheap...those other bullshit guns are just that...bullshit.

The major issues I’ve had w my ARs was with ejection when they get dirty. Had happen 2x in the recent past. Once the extractor was cleaned it functioned well. One was my POF piston and one was an older BM DI  gun happened around 1000 to 1500 rds for each.  I lightened the buffer in my POF and will see how it does

I’m going to do a comparison of accuracy, and reliability for the following ...
Sig516
CMMG
POF
AUG
Tavor X95
Scar16
Robinson XCR
All in 556 w same ammo and optics

I suspect the ....
Tavor will shoot the smoothest
The Scar will be as accurate as the AR if not more
XCR will be most reliable

Well, I for one enjoyed your story... and I loved the way you told it with such enthusiasm.

Absolutely marvelous.

I have no idea why you "suspect" that...

The Tevor isn't really all that smooth and the Scar isn't terribly accurate.

A quality AR beats the shit out of both.

Which is still an AR, in spite of your precious feelz.

Really really bad article.

1) AR is too complex? More complex than what exactly? I can't think of a single way the rifle is complex. Mags go straight in and push a button they fall right out, the gas system is effectively a hollow tube, field stripping doesn't require any tools, the FCG is comparable to other rifles and the bolt group is made up of a carrier, a bolt, firing pin, and two pins. Maybe the author shoots a lot of arrows?

2) "The front sight assembly sits ridiculously high because the straight (non-ergonomic) stock has to contain a massive spring and buffer assembly". Uh what? What exactly does the front sight height have to do with a buffer system in the stock? Also the author mentioned the stock is non-ergonomic. If it is so non-ergonomic why are AR stocks available for so many different guns like MACs, AKs, FALs, XCRs, Remington 700s, SCARs, 10/22s, etc, etc?

3) "That’s why in 2019 you can’t find a new AR-15 with an old school front sight assembly". Wait, the first paragraph is to knock the front sight only then mention that no one uses the front sight you are knocking?

4) "The gas tube is thin, fragile and subject to bending or breaking—usually taking the rifle out of commission". Maybe if you take the handguards off and switch it at a tree. Don't use your gas tube to chop down a tree and you should be fine.

5) "If a build up of mud, water or carbon decreases gas pressure to the bolt, the AR-15 fails to cycle.  This is particularly common with AR’s that have shorter barrels. That’s why gas rods have become all the rage". Not sure the author actually understands how the rifle works. All gas operated rifles need a certain amount of gas to work, this is not unique to the AR15. If your gas system is compromised, all gas operated guns stop. And I'd hardly say "gas rods" are all the rage.

6) "The star chamber and bolt face are perhaps the single biggest design flaw of the AR-15.  That’s the eight-petaled flower at the front of the bolt. Flowers don’t belong in assault rifles. Some say the star chamber provides accuracy. It does not. Bolt-action sniper rifles don’t have star chambers. They have two or three lug bolts and they are the gold standard for accuracy". This is comedy gold. You hear that guys, your AR sucks because of star chambers and flowers, get a bolt action sniper rifle instead.

7) No, the forward assist was not developed because of failures to return to battery.

I ran out of patience. The fact is it is the number one rifle in the world because it is. It is our soldiers rifle because it is damn good, it is the best selling rifle in the US because it is damn good, it is directly inspiring new rifles models like the 416 because it is damn good. We all own several because it is damn good. 3rd world foreign militaries wouldn't be foaming at the mouth to get their hands on them if they weren't damn good. There was a news story a few years back of a UN investigation into US because during the Iraq war there was an insane number of dead Iraqis by headshot, speculation was that we were executing Iraqis. Our troops were cleared because none of these shots were close. A rifle that sucks wouldn't deliver headshot kills with such regularity during a war to trigger a genocide investigation.

Interesting.  My home built CWAR ran for a shit ton more than that, and a lot of that suppressed, before I finally decided to clean it.  It hadn't malfunctioned at all yet, but I had to clean mud off of the exterior anyway, so I cleaned the BCG, even though it wasn't necessary.

I just donn't get that part of the article.  AR sights are at kind of a sweet spot in height over bore, where a 25/300 zero is extremely capable and doesn't even require much hold over out to 450 or beyond.

Variations in rifle type seems like a really low importance factor for SHTF survival.

I would be glad to have either an AK or AR, but lean towards the AR for light weight use and easier to fix with normal tools

I have not read the article but to my knowledge:

- The AR-15 is extremely accessible (what gun store doesn't sell some variety of AR-15?).
- The AR-15 is at least reasonably reliable.
- The AR-15 is at least reasonably accurate.
- The AR-15 has spare parts availability unlike any other firearm (what gun store doesn't sell AR-15 parts?).
- The AR-15 has magazines available unlike any other firearm (what gun store doesn't sell AR-15 magazines?).
- The AR-15 has ammo available unlike most other firearms (what gun store doesn't sell .223/5.56?).

Compare this to literally ANY other firearm...

Which weapon is more durable, reliable, and accurate than an AR 15?

I too have seen this documentary.

Why? An AK beats itself to shit. The receiver life expectancy is like 80,000 rounds. The AR-15 can do 250,000 rounds before major receiver wear. And the AR-15 has more spare parts available than any other gun has EVER had in the history of the USA.

I’ve had it happen once but I forget how it happened, it was sometime ago. But yeah super weird and I don’t really blame it on the AR15 as a platform

This. Also, between military and civilian life I'd conservatively say I've put 100x as many rounds through assorted AR variants as through every other centerfire rifle design combined, carried it into combat (never got to fire it in anger, only the M2, but nonetheless was ready to do so), real-world simulation training scenarios both in the Army and privately whereas I've only really ever fired other rifles on static ranges, etc. While I'm probably a bit rusty with it as I haven't trained much the last few years it's still a platform I'm very familiar with, not nearly as much as a lot of guys out there who have way more real-world experience and training and expertise than I'll ever come close to, but more than 99% of the population. For that reason I wouldn't trust my life or the lives of those close to me to any other platform unless it was specifically designed to replicate the AR manual of arms.

The AR is far from perfect but if you were to clone me, give the clone an absolutely perfect weapon design but on a completely new platform, and give me my AR I'm confident I'd beat the clone 100% of the time, and I'm certainly not an expert shooter or any sort of high speed combat badass--but my familiarity and comfort with the AR is just so far ahead of what it's ever going to be with any other rifle platform in my lifetime.

The problem with these sort of articles is that it is based on nothing more than what they read in another article. Nothing about personal experiences or anything.

I'm pretty sure the author personally experiences his ignorance on a constant basis.

And all those other parts can be swapped with hand tools.

Since OP is posting old worn out arguments, here’s an old worn out meme.

Attached File

No one actually writes well researched or peer reviewed stuff. It doesn't generate the clicks like this BS.

The author claims "I’m a 28-year Green Beret veteran (8 years boots-on-the-ground just in Afghanistan). My family comes from a manufacturing background". I have no reason to doubt what he claims, therefore I won't. That being said, being a Green Beret neither makes you an expert on all things rifles, nor does it make you an authority on DOD weapons procurement. This is really just an op-ed with recycled Vietnam era complaints that won't die with cherry picked complaints from a General from artillery who sucks H&K's nuts (and also tore into the SAW and thinks the .mil should switch to 6.8SPC). A lot of the article simply doesn't make sense, is outdated and includes very little actual data.

At the end, the author more or less poisons his own argument. "If a Tesla car failed 25% of the time, we would lynch Elon Musk and duct tape him to one of his rockets. If our iPhones only worked “when well maintained,” we would’ve chucked them all off a bridge. If our pants failed 19% of the time they went into battle, we’d burn that manufacturer at the stake for being an unpatriotic cost-cutter." So it sounds as though the market selects the best product. What has been the market's response to the AR15? Okay, forget the .gov and their corruption, how about the private market? Do we keep buying AR15s or not?

Yeah, pick the harder to shoot, less reliable rifle, that's harder to fix, harder to mount accessories to, and doesn't have parts ubiquity.

You literally picked a whole list of sub-par guns.

An LMT MRP type gun, or a KAC SR15, or a Colt SOCOM AR would perform better than any of the above.

Why do you think the XCR would be more reliable than any of the other piston guns?

Imagine being so retarded you don't know about the Colt 6920, LMT Defender 2000, BCM BCM4, or any of the numerous FSB equipped ARs.

I always liked my Mini. Hell, it was 245 new! Yes, that was long ago.
 I jumped on the AR platform for one reason...optics. My eyes are shit now.
No problem with a modern AR. You have an EPIC variety of bullet proof optics
to choose from. It turns out the fuckers are accurate too and buying spare parts
is easy(unlike my mini 14). I love AR's now. The Giessele SSA-E drop in triggers
are epic too. Heck, that alone makes my AR's superior!!!

These types of threads always end up with people splitting hairs on equipment

Yup, I have an Arsenal and would never take it over an AR.

Commie propaganda is effective.

Sig 551/553 hands down I think..but you have to be able to afford them plus stockpile parts (which I have done). The best thing about the AR platform right now is you can stockpile a lifetime of parts fairly cheaply. From a prepper point of view that would be important. It is going to be hard to beat the AR platform dollar for dollar.