For guys (like me) who are not up to speed on "building" an AR......which could also be described as assembling a bunch of components.........I had to look it up as to what we would getting ourselves into. The part that would have me scratching my head would be installing the barrel, as in normal bolt gun terms, that is normally done by a gunsmith to handle the very specific issue of getting the chamber headspace right.

But then guys throw around terms like upper and lower and bolt carrier group and trigger group, etc. To those on outside looking in, hard to figure out what all that means. I have learned the "lower" is the actual "rifle"........the lower is the part that wears the serial number and is subject to the FFL rules. Seems odd as on a bolt gun, the action........what resembles the upper on an AR is the "rifle". All else are parts that get bolted on. Hard to imagine you can buy all these parts and only thing really matters or controlled is the "lower" or action on a bolt action rifle.

And if AR's work like most everything else, if you care about accuracy, what matters more than all else combined is the barrel. Good barrels shoot.......and junk barrels......not so much?

But as for the assembly of an entire purchased kit........what is the order of difficulty? Easy peasy or better have some skills? I've always heard that even brain surgery isn't hard.....if you know how.

Lastly, I can see no upside to going to .223 and no downside to going 5.56........does that sound right?

Daniel Defense is a really good upper middle range option.

IMO, just for fun type gun, buy one of the cheapest, put a $100-125 drop in trigger in it and a decent scope on the top and you'll be happy with the results. I have less than $500 in mine an it shoots really well....



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how are pickets mill ar's?

Does the PSA (or others) have an abbreviation glossary page?

How is pistol lower differ from other lower?

We need more options LOL.

An other can become a pistol or a rifle but starts incomplete.

a pistol lower was completed as a pistol , it can be made a rifle and go back to being a pistol

an other becomes whatever it is first finished as , I always toss a pistol buffer on every lower before doing anything else to it making it a pistol and retaining the ability to do either

an other is a non functional piece of metal or plastic with a metal serial number embedded in it. it needs parts to become either a rifle or a pistol so it starts as an "other"

basically they over complicated things in trying to infringe on your rights in 1934 and then had to make a bunch of things like "other" "AOW" and such to un-paint themselves from the corner from their lack of understanding of what they were doing in 1934

did you know rifles and shotguns were required to have an 18 inch barrel , until in 1968 the US government realized it had sold Millions of SBR short barrel rifles to citizens in violation of it's own law. so they just made it 16 inches so that those millions of guns wouldn't be violations.

much like they had done with the millions of 22 rimfire guns in 1936 when they were made aware of their mistake.

and also in 1936 since a lot of prominent business men and senators and such had pre-1934 Ithaca defenders a 14 inch barrel shotgun so the AOW was born with a 5 dollar tax stamp so the well off could still own them. 5 dollars in 1936 was a weeks groceries.