What's wrong with Bushmaster?

I own 2 bushmasters and have been pretty happy with them. Would I buy another? No.

My bushmasters will not function with wolf steel cased ammo. Seen it on another bushmaster too. But some folks say you shouldn't run "commie" ammo through these types of rifles.

I didn't like the stock trigger, replaced it with a RRA, like it much better (yes it gets mixed reviews but it's what I knew about at the time). With the money in the trigger and the smith $ to install it I should have bought a RRA to begin with.

I will say this - I hated the HBAR 20" uppers that were the only 20" available at the time in local gun shows. Bushmaster had a 20" GI profile upper that I put on and I have been happy as a clam with it ever since.

Issued Bushmaster doesn't have a staked castle nut. 1/9 bbl twist rate, although I had no issues with ringing steel at 200 yards with it. At around 1k rounds I experienced extraction issues but a new extractor spring and replacing the blue with black insert fixed that. Admittedly I've never taken a mic to measure the bolt and carrier, but tolerances felt loose compared to my Colt and BCM, or co-worker's Daniels and Noveskes.

I decided I was more comfortable with using my own Colt for a duty rifle so I gave the Bushmaster back.

I think Bushmaster's reputation really took a hit when they settled the DC Sniper lawsuits instead of fighting to blame the criminal instead of the gun.

Same way S&W took a major hit in the 90's when they cut a deal with Clinton expecting large .gov contracts. When that didn't happen, it took several changes in management/ownership to turn things around. As late as 2005 people on rec.guns were still posting with sigs that basically said "S&W must die!"

I had good service from my pre-ban Bushmaster before I sold it to my brother-in-law and it still serves him well as far as I know.

I bought a Bushmaster seven months ago. Standard M-4 Patrolman's carbine. I knew two things about ARs. Is the castle nut properly staked and, far more important, is the gas key properly staked? Of course I learned this after I bought the gun...... but I had no cause for worry. They were both very well done. I have put two thousand rounds through the rifle since. One stretch of 700 rounds without cleaning. I did keep it lubed. (CLP)

The gun ran absolutely flawlessly, with zero malfunctions of any kind. When I did clean it it looked like it really didn't much need it. It wasn't all that dirty. What a far cry from the M-16s I saw in Nam! It is more accurate than my old eyes can hold. It likes any old brand of aftermarket mag you shove in the magwell, completely unlike my Mini-14.

All ammo was NATO, the overwhelming majority being M-855. I do not shoot steel cased ammo in any of my centerfire rifles and I have no desire to. I had a bad experience years ago trying to shoot steel cased ammo in my M-1 and that just soured me on the stuff. It seems to me that steel cased ammo seems to be on the economy end of the ammunition spectrum. Lower in price and quality. It has a place in the marketplace, but not in my rifle's magazine.

I am well satisfied with my Bushmaster. I don't give a rat's purdell who made it or who owns the company.

I have no complaints.

I own the patrolmen's carbine and the light weight carbine...both have been excellent weapons and are highly accurate. I've fired thousands of rounds through mine and have NEVER had a failure to fire or a malfunction of any kind. To me they have been very reliable and accurate. Ever time I pull the trigger they go bang! The price on each gun was very economical; I paid $699 for the Patrolmen's Carbine and $650 for the light weight carbine. For the money I don't know how you could do much better.

Had one of the earlier ban era rifles and never had anything but good to say about it. I also have a couple of rifles built on current bushmaster lowers and they have been perfect in fit and finish. Not sure what's not to like about them.

My good friend's son worked for Bushmaster before the buy out, and he was offered a position at the new Remington owned company (he had to move his family to NY state). All reports I have heard are that he really likes working for Remington and that they treat him very well.

And now, with Windham Weaponry up and running, a lot of the folks that weren't willing to relocate are working for their old boss again in ME, on the same machines, in the same plant. Not a terrible outcome in my mind.

The Marlin comments show an even greater lack of knowledge and understanding. Rifles were being made without "as built" drawings and with a tremendous amount of tribal knowledge. The "sin" that FG committed was to move the company to AL. There was a huge brain drain with few employees wanting to move to the south. It took a number of years to reverse engineer the product in the marketplace. FG never set out to destroy Marlin and ultimately the product should be better when the dust settles. I had to send two new 1894 rifles back to Marlin a few years prior to the buyout due to manufacturing issues so it wasn't all roses back then either.

Click to expand...

Oh man, ain't it the truth. Controlling manufacturing processes is a huge challenge. The engineering community has to be very involved on the production floor and aware of any and all deviations from the print, or process instructions. Seek to understand why they're not following the instructions (it probably isn't working for them) and to help the production crew understand your intentions. Then you either have to update your instructions, or enforce compliance.

I have just completed the design and build of a semi-automated assembly machine for a product line where I work, and we're not even done running production trials and our maintenance supervisor is already trying to tear apart and re-configure the machine. His intentions are good, but his ideas are not always well thought out. One small change at a time followed by careful evaluation please.

In many respects, small manufacturing companies are easier to run. But when you get into large scale, multi-facility companies and move production lines from one plant to another, the head aches begin.

SSN Vet. Spoken like a guy who obviously understands the ins and outs of manufacturing. Most don't.

I have not and will not purchase a Freedom Group firearm. If you want a Bushmaster buy a Windham Weaponry.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk