this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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People: please do not carry an AK. Just get an AR. ARs have interchangeable parts, ammunition is cheap, and aside from Bear Creek Arsenal, they're going to just work. AKs require significant hand fitting and there's no single standard, ammunition prices have risen sharply since the cheap milsurp ammo flow got cut off, and at the cheaper end they tend to be dangerous to the user. Yes, I know that AKs have a reputation got working in adverse conditions, but that reputation dates to the Vietnam war, when the AR was a new platform; modern ARs are far, far more reliable and accurate than an AK.
You can still get an AK for fun, but don't don't treat it like your serious gun.
I have a buddy who did gun repairs, he fucking hates AR-15s. If you want a gun that ticks all the boxes, get a 12 gauge shotgun. It's a cheap, widely available platform that has cheap and widely available ammo, it just fucking works, it's easy to care for, easy to use, pretty standard maintenance, and will kill what you need it to. They're lethal much further out than video games imply, because otherwise they'd completely wreck the balance of the game.
Edit: I asked him for his specific beef with ARs, this was his response.
They're a bitch to clean. There's lots of places that need to be cleaned that can't be reached easily, tons of little pockets and grooves you can't get into; requires a dental pick, star shaped cleaning patches, and a shit load of cotton swabs to get through.
If it's locked up, you can't knock on the charging handle or emergency kick the charging handle to clear it. You will not be able to field strip this rifle if it's jammed out of battery.
Aluminum gas blocks are apparently very popular, and they will corrode to failure at the gas tube port.
The extractor pin will often shatter in place, which causes intermittent failure while not looking wrong unless you know what you're looking for.
Yeah, with a 12 gauge shell of 00 buckshot, every pull of the trigger is almost like mag dumping a 9mm handgun in that direction. Very destructive very quickly at indoor distances, a little bit of wiggle room with the aiming m, and less risk of overpenetration than something like a rifle or a big caliber handgun.
A 12 gauge pump shotgun is actually the only firearm in my house(in the US), and I got it over 30 years ago. I kind of want to get a 9mm handgun, but it doesn’t feel like an immediate need given the shotgun.
No they're not. They tear down easily without tools. I can't think of a part that can't be cleaned easily. Maybe the gas tube?
There's a button called a forward assist for that specific purpose.
Milspec blocks are not aluminum, he's complaining about after-market, non-standard mods.
I've seen this on cheap BCGs. It's annoying, but it's easily fixable and won't render the gun useless. You'll just have to manually clear it.
I would guess they're talking about a very complete cleaning? But that's kinda true of any gun. Basic cleaning of an AR15 is not that complicated.
Eeeehhhh, never press that button. It's a joke the Army played on itself.
Yeah, that's why my last rifle doesn't have a FA button.
While you did answer the question, it is better to clear a jam by pulling back on the charging handle, possibly while also mortoring the buttstock. Hitting the forward assist is just as likely to make the jam worse. (This also counts for AKs, this isn't an AR only thing)
Some newer ARs don't come with forward assists anymore, sometimes to prevent people from making jams worse, but usually cause they're for sport and if your rifle malfunctions in a way that needs a forward assist, you can just take the L and get off the range to solve the issue.
Regardless, if you hit the forward assist, just make sure you're in a position that this might be the last round you can fire without doing some maintenance.
But you are correct, ARs are as popular as they are for a reason. They're reliable, easy to get parts for, and ammo (while expensive) is just about everywhere.
True. With my most recent rifle, I intentionally bought an upper receiver without one because I'm not usually in combat situations. Usually.
Thanks for the context. I was never interested in owning an AR myself, not to mention that it seems to me like they're way overpriced due to a lot of them being glam guns. He did it for a living for years, so I took him at his word.
That's where AR15s shine. You can build one pretty cheap and it's workable. Cheaper than any AK you can buy in the US.
If you want all the tacticool glam bling, you can do that, but it's excellent the without all that crap.
No problem. As an owner of a fully-custom glam gun, I recommend building a shitty one first to learn what breaks and what doesn't.
Your buddy may have an unfounded bias against them, as AR-15's are in general extremely reliable, and don't require much maintainence or cleaning for the most part, especially since most people don't practice all that much.
A shotgun is a great choice for defense though, and often is a better choice than an AR.
I only clean mine because it's white. It would run forever shooting the filthy, cheap ammo I buy.
I understand some people might look away from the AR-15 because it's the gun everyone has which takes away from the cool factor, or maybe you just dislike its connotation due to high use among right-wing folk, but this person speaks the truth.
AR-15s are common because they work. Customizations and spare parts are cheap, effective, and widely available. So are good magazines, which are typically a shockingly difficult part to design well and the place where many otherwise decent guns fail. .223 Remington has one of most varied supplies of ammunition on the market, beaten only by things like 12 gauge.
Don't buy weird shit until you own one of these (or at least a pump-action 12 gauge ffs).
ARs are common because the US military and NATO use them.
Same reason sig Sauer pistols are popular.
Popular is not the same as "superior".
Once the US moves off the AR platform, so will all the gun nuts.
I say this as a former armorer who got to see why ARs might not be the best choice.
AR-15s are popular because there's a single standard, and all the parts made should fit that standard, and more-or-less work. I can buy a barrel from any one of ten or more manufacturers, and I know that it's going to fit on my receiver (although I might need a different gas tube). You can't do that with a Ruger Mini-14, you definitely can't do it with any of the fuck-knows-how-many AK variants. ARs do have their own shortcomings it's true, but all rifles have shortcomings; the AR-15 platform does a pretty good job of balancing the competing needs and desires.
Nobody cared about the ar-15 unyil it got banned snd then unbanned.
No lie! They've been available to civilians since the 60s. They weren't popular because they're not the best in any particular class. But they're easy and don't kick.
Sure, but also wheelguns were also considered more reliable and better than semi autos at the time.
AR ban expiration came around the same time as people were getting more used to gucci guns and mods.
There were a lot of other guns that got unbanned at the same time. The AR platform just happened to be ready for a resurgence right around the time that the expiration.
Plus ARs are cheaper.
That too.
I think that I originally paid about $550 for my S&W M&P 15 Sport 2 (although not many parts are original anymore); you can get a perfectly serviceable Palmetto State Armory AR-15 for $450. An AK is likely going to start at around $700.
As someone much more clever than I said, the real transgender AK is the AR that's chambered in7.62x39mm.
This is such a weird take. AKs also 'just work', most people will never have to hand-fit anything on an AK, and ammo prices for AK are at parity with ammo prices for AR. The cheapest end of anything can be dangerous to the user, so again that's another non-point. The majority of people aren't going to see a major functional difference between the two, it comes down to personal preference.
The gun you're actually describing is the AR-10