Do you baby your AR?

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Do you baby your AR?

Uh, no. I did over 20 years on active duty.

(Now if you were to ask if we babied our blue steel and wood beauties, maybe there'd be different responses...)

Beat me to the punch there, Dave. Had to wonder what the OP was doing to get all that sand all over his gun.
I was kinda wondering that too... especially INCONUS. Even an Army guy couldn't get that much sand on his M4 in the desert.
 
Thanks, it’s a simple milspec build, I tried to keep it lightweight and slick

I've been keeping my eye out for a similar upper reciever, preferably without a shell deflector.

Once I find one (and have spare change for it and a few other small parts) I'll have a 16" LW sibling to yours.
 
I’ve got $1k+ into each of my ARs, damn right I baby them. Feed them hand loads and even let the barrels cool now and again. If that’s babying, I’m all for it. Do I know it will work dirty, muddy, or when full of sand? I’d wager yes.

I’ve yet however to drop a rifle in my 41 years of hunting and shooting. Came close once after firing a 12 ga sans ear pro. Wish I had had ear protection as dad cuffed me good over that, right on the ear.
 
Most of the guns I shoot are tools but I do have “for looking at” ones. None of those are AR’s though, I don’t find them aesthetically pleasing but they make great tools for certain jobs.
 
I will not intentionally abuse my AR's but Im not going to baby them either. I've spent too much time in the Army with several combat tours and know what they can take. As others have said they will take quite a bit of abuse before they stop working. While nothing made is "GI proof", the M16 family is pretty close to it.

As a machinist (44E) that worked with unit armorers (45B) to repair weapons, I have seen my share of M16s that have been used and abused. One of the worst was when a M16 with M203 was laying on a tall curb and got ran over by a 2 1/2 ton truck. Even though the barrel was no longer straight in the receiver, it still functioned fine.
 
Beat me to the punch there, Dave. Had to wonder what the OP was doing to get all that sand all over his gun. Surely no one would do that on purpose......right?
I've done way worse hunting up on MaunaKea lol. The last time I fell up there it was harder to get the lava dust out of the action than it was to fix the dings in the carbon barrel lol.
 
I baby my guns as in I always clean clean after shooting, and keep them in top shoe. But I don’t mind dust, dirt, rain getting on them in use.

What I DON’T do, and to this day don’t understand…., is intentionally sprinkling sand all over the gun for the sake of a “Look at Me” photo opp. The way you clearly did here. But that’s just me.

Is that what you think i did? Sprinkle sand over the gun for the sake of a “look at me” post? Really? If i wanted to post a “look at me” or bragging post I would have used my Radian or Geissele AR, even my Kalashnikov AK103 but this is just a different ant about how someone feels the need to go on and on about something they aren’t familiar with just because they bought a $1200 AR and they dont want to put a single scratch on it and this is one of the cheapest build you can do. Absolutely not bragging or a look at me post over a $300ish dollar gun. ;):D



i can remove the photos if you dont like it or they offend you o_O
 
Is that what you think i did? Sprinkle sand over the gun for the sake of a “look at me” post? Really? If i wanted to post a “look at me” or bragging post I would have used my Radian or Geissele AR, even my Kalashnikov AK103 but this is just a different ant about how someone feels the need to go on and on about something they aren’t familiar with just because they bought a $1200 AR and they dont want to put a single scratch on it and this is one of the cheapest build you can do. Absolutely not bragging or a look at me post over a $300ish dollar gun. ;):D



i can remove the photos if you dont like it or they offend you o_O
OK, sooo...just curious. How did all that sand get on the gun?
 
:thumbup:

Sand in my neighborhood ALWAYS blows all over my stuff like that. I swear! It just “mysteriously” ended up like that. From all the super-duper, sniper-ninja force, combateratin’ I’ve done all day!
 
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It’s kind of funny, when I went to buy my first AR back 04-05 ish I remember telling my wife “If I buy an AR as much as they cost I’ll baby it and want really enjoy it like I want to, I could just buy an AK. They’re garbage when brand new and I wouldn’t have to worry about it. Not to mention it costs less than half what an AR does.”

I talked myself into it and bought an AK, I still have it and it’s in the 12-15,000 round neighborhood. It’s had one malfunction, a slam fire and the closest to cleaning it I’ve ever come is spraying some brake clean in the firing pin hole after the slam fire. It’s been abused heavily, especially when it had a bumpstock attached.

Crazy how times change. That assessment would likely be just the opposite today.


I’m on my third AR since then, it sits in the safe most of the time, serves no real purpose. Not babied, not abused, not really shot much.
 
Anybody wanna question how I got snow on my Jeep or grime on my crankset? As a guy who used to live 8 miles from the beach I was a frequenter. Nearly 30 years later I think I’ve finally washed the last of the sand out of my nooks and crannies. And don’t get me started on what jogging down dirt roads looks like in the shower tub, it’s like a spray OFF tan.




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As much as I enjoy playing, I’m old enough to understand the consequences of pushing just a little too far. Not all tools are hammers nor certified calipers so it pays to treat them all well lest they lead a shortened life.


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Exactly! Because sand falls from the sky JUST like snow does! :rofl:

Didn’t you mean “the snow on your AR, when you are staging a picture.”?
 
I baby my guns and pretty much everything I own. I figure that I work hard to buy things so I might as well take care of them. I am realistic though and recognize that despite my best efforts, there is a chance that guns will get scratched, marred, incur holster wear, etc. My T/C flintlock has a number of scratches from hunting, climbing into/out of tree stands, walking through the woods, etc. However, those were all accidental and not the result of abusive treatment, gross negligence, etc.

That said, I would not be concerned about any AR failing to work if it got some sand or dirt on it.
 
I, too, often take pictures of the things I do and carry and use, while using them.
This one is “staged” since my pocket tends to be dark inside it.
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Tsk, Tsk. Shame on me.


Another staged photo. I purposely got this pistol wet, to wash it off, and thought to take a picture. How scandalous!:eek:
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Methinks someone’s not been to the beach before.
 
Shot a three gun match once and it started raining pretty hard. My second to last stage was in an enclosed bay that had an narrow entrance of two berms about 8 feet apart. The stage started outside the bay and you engage several target at near contact distance as you enter the bay down this narrow corridor. Shooting with an AR-15 into a berm that is less than six feet from the muzzle in a hard rain storm produces an amazing amounts of mud splatter flying all over. We were covered in mud splatter after that stage, shooter, guns, gear. Fun stage!
 
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