DPMS

[Technosavant]

For plinking, the DPMS will be great. It will probably even work just fine for duty use. It's when you start dumping a thousand or so rounds through it in short order that the potential issues might crop up (note... "potential" and "might"- some rifles like the DPMS are great and work without issues, some crap out from poorly staked gas screws or a bolt that ain't quite perfectly formed).

Like I said, the one piece of insurance I might recommend would be a good bolt carrier group when you start carrying it for duty use. Their barrels and other parts are likely to be just fine.


As for VeryOldDog, not all of us who bought nicer rifles light the fireplace with hundred dollar bills, and saying folks who will tell the truth about lower priced brands are just arrogant is flat out wrong. There's a fine line between "good enough for my purposes" and "just as good as." A person may never discover where the differences lie, that means the cheaper rifle was good enough. But doing different things, the differences might become apparent. A Ford is good enough for just about all the driving a person will ever do. That doesn't mean it's good enough to run with the Porsches on the race track. If your plans include the harder treatment, you spend the money. If they don't, you don't.

I've used DPMS parts in several builds. For the most part they've worked fine with only a couple minor exceptions. I doubt you'd be disappointed with the DPMS.

 

[frigate88]

Didn't think about the Leo discount. Going to have to look into that. I have a guy here that does Leo discounts. I'll ask him about the AR's.

 

[Hansam]

Crow Hunter - My a couple of my DPMS rifles ARE in my SD arsenal while others are dedicated plinkers and range toys and a couple others are dedicated hunting rifles.

That said the range toys undergo a lot of abuse. My wife did what you did once - figured out how much money I spent on the range every year. She nearly flipped but well the bills are getting paid, there's food on the table and our vehicles still run fine so what's to gripe about? She even gets to indulge in her shoe and clothing expenditures (which I believe amount to about how much I spend on guns and ammo each year). Top that off with the fact that this hobby is funded by my other hobby - dog training.

Oh and 230 rounds a weekend is a bit on the low side. Factor in all the handgun ammo, .308 for the LR-308, shotgun ammo for trap and skeet... I figure I'm expending about 1,000 rounds a week... man if I quit shooting I might actually be able to buy a new truck instead of just fixing up my 94 suburban.

All that aside I'm quite sure my rifles will not break down under hard use. I've put them through many many mag dumps and not had problems. To be honest though there are a few parts in my rifles that are NOT stock DPMS. By now all my ARs have aftermarket triggers, BCGs, and charging handles. They either wore out or I wasn't happy with the way they were so I replaced them. I've also added magpul furniture to all of them so they don't look like how they did coming from DPMS either and those that I've built are not "true" DPMS rifles... albeit they ALL have DPMS barrels.