Battle Rifle Company Cleaned up Their Act

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SilverCat

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Hey all,

I'm not sure if this has been posted or discussed, but I don't see it, and this article went up two days ago.



If you don't know, Battle Rifle Company received one of the worst AR company reviews I've ever seen, once upon a time. But it looks like they've seriously cleaned up, and it's nice to clean up their reputation.

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/05/12/battle-rifle-company-vengeance/

Thanks all!!
 
They might have cleaned up their act, but, imho, it's a day late and a dollar short. In this highly competitive AR market, if you're a new kid on the block, and you screwed up big time right out of the gate, it's over.
You don't get a second chance to make the first impression.
 
There's just nothing I hate more than to see a business fail.
Now, when the review first came a while back, I couldn't care less because they were doing a crappy job. But hey, that tour of their shop and up to date methods sure seems nice to me.

Another thing, I haven't heard of a shop where a customer can walk in and have an AR built right there, from the parts they pick out. Neat idea, if that's what they're doing.
They might have just done it for the reviewer, I don't know.

But it's pretty surprising that a company contacted them for a re review, after admitting they first performed poorly.
It's a really good story to me.
 
I remember these guys, they had AR's at SHOT Show with exposed gas blocks, said it was intentional and claimed some undisclosed government agency was buying a bunch of them because they looked bada**.

Good luck to them I suppose, but yeah, it's a tough market even for companies without such a humiliating start to their existence.
 
12131 said:
They might have cleaned up their act, but, imho, it's a day late and a dollar short. In this highly competitive AR market, if you're a new kid on the block, and you screwed up big time right out of the gate, it's over.
You don't get a second chance to make the first impression.
Click to expand...
Exactly. As long as this company is under the same ownership, that means whatever caused them to screw up so badly is still there. Read a few reviews of their products from the SHOT show:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2013/05/07/battle-rifle-company-ar-platform-rifles/

http://vuurwapenblog.com/2013/05/04/pretty-much-the-worst-ar-15s-ive-ever-seen/


Then read some of the owner's posts on a popular AR forum:

http://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?115755-Battle-Rifle-Company&p=1634849#post1634849

That's the post where he makes excuses for the inexcusable: specifically, the exposed gas tube. And then go look at some of the first few pages in that thread (everything before page 6 is from before SHOT), his rhetoric is full of marketing jargon without a lot of substance. He talks a lot about their "custom" triggers, but then when they got to SHOT show all the reviewers agreed that their "custom" triggers were worse than standard AR triggers.

I'm impressed that the owner managed to stay professional and courteous in the face of all that criticism, but that's about all I'm impressed about. If the company made such bad products and then proudly displayed those products at the SHOT show, then something was obviously fundamentally wrong with the company: They obviously had a serious quality-control issue that seems to have been combined with an overall lack of knowledge about the AR platform.

So I don't see how one positive re-visit from a gun blogger can make up for that. More importantly, I don't see any reason to buy from them even if they have managed to fix all the problems that caused them to make such shoddy products: If you had the choice between two similar rifles at about the same price point that were sold by two different manufacturers, wouldn't you rather buy from the company that didn't screw up as royally as this one did?
 
Sam Cade said:
Last year, Battle Rifle Company "issues" were discussed and a company rep showed up to not answer questions.

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthrea...t=battle+rifle
Click to expand...
Ha, that looks very similar to the thread from the other forum I linked above, except the guy from BRC stuck around a lot longer in the other thread.

From reading both of those threads, I appears the BRC owner has either been intentionally mis-representing what his company offers, or he just doesn't know much about ARs. Or maybe both. I don't care how many good reviews they get from now on, I still don't see any reason why anyone should buy their products; there are many other more reputable companies offering excellent products at reasonable prices.
 
I just had a chance to read through that new write-up on TFB...

"After the smoke cleared I was surprised with some Battle Rifle Company swag and made an honorary member of the team for the day"

Wow, ok. Cheese on brotha.
 
For this company to recover in my eyes from their horrendously bad introduction, I'd need to see them pick up some serious military or LE contracts. I will not be interested in them for years to come until they prove themselves.
 
Well, either way, I hope that they cleaned up. I like what silicosy said, about how they need to pick up some mil/le contracts.

Just trying to get some good stuff out their if it is true. Like I said, I hate to see a company do poorly if they've actually reformed.


None of it really makes a difference to me though, I've never bought a full rifle. I build everything.
 
SilverCat said:
I hope that they cleaned up.
Click to expand...
I'm not convinced they really did. Read the thread I linked above from M4carbine.net. The owner of BRC was either being disingenuous about his products or he didn't really know much about the AR platform. Then they managed to make such a terrible display at the NRA and SHOT shows. And that was only a year ago.

But now they've supposedly cleaned up their act? My question is "how"? All the things that made them such a failure are still there: The same owner is there who put a carbine rail on a mid-length gas system and proudly displayed it an NRA show (and then claimed that an unnamed federal agency actually requested that). The same owner is there who bragged about their "custom triggers" that turned out to be worse than a standard AR trigger. One carefully planned visit from a gun blogger doesn't mean a whole lot to me.

SilverCat said:
I've never bought a full rifle. I build everything.
Click to expand...
And that's what this company is doing too; they're regular guys who are assembling their ARs from parts made by other companies. Heck, even I can do that. I just don't see why anyone would buy a rifle from these guys when there are plenty of more reputable manufacturers out there making rifles at the same (or lower) prices. And most of those manufacturers didn't make a terrible product for at least 3 out of the 4 years they've been around.
 
Sam Cade said:
Anyone know who makes this ultra-jumbo brake mounted on on the .308?

IMG_4943.jpg
Click to expand...

Holy hunk of metal, Batman.

The end of the muzzle is NOT the place you want to hang a butt-load of weight on a "battle rifle."

I'm starting to wonder what sort of real experience these guys have... as someone who regularly runs service rifle competitions, I just have to sit back aghast at some of this "tacti-cool" stuff I see people slapping on rifles.

A - It doesn't help you be a bad-ass marksman.
B - It doesn't look "cool" to people who really know how to run a rifle.

Some people think 22" quad-rails look cool. I *used* to be one of them a decade ago, but then I learned how to really shoot, and realized that hanging a boat-anchor worth of weight in front and pushing your center of gravity forward does not help you shoot accurately or precisely.

My last couple of AR builds were real beauties of parts selection (not look), designed to be precise, functional, low weight, which I can shoot very accurately offhand at 200 yards. I built a mid-length gas system with an MI fore-end, mid-weight 16" fluted match barrel, that clocks in with sights empty at under 7 pounds. I wanted to beat the M4 weight profile while getting a heavier, stiffer barrel that'll be more resistant to whip and heat induced walk. (I've found that light weight and rear-ward center of gravity trumps heavy stability for off hand slow fire shooting, for me at least, since the major factor is muscle fatigue).

(Edit to add: the "PS90 match winning incident" I had last year was the real "lightbulb" moment on this. I shot the best score I'd ever shot standing, sitting, and prone with that diminutive little pea-shooter, and came to the realization that rearward weight bias on center of gravity and trimming off weight in front of the support hand really matters a lot for shooting from *any* position.)

I say this not to brag or be condescending - but rather to illustrate THAT is the artform, building an AR-15 (or rifle, in general) which fulfills a specific goal.

And nowhere in that goal criteria was "looks bad-ass." Cosmetics need to take a back seat to function, I'm sick and tired of all the tacti-cool garbage out there. Looking cool does not help a rifle perform, and (generally) serves the opposite purpose; makes it handle and shoot worse
 
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^^

I was speaking with an associate who is not known for being on the far right side of the gene pool, and I said to him "You do realize that half of the people you meet are of below average intelligence". He looked at me and said "Hmm.. I think it's more than half..."...

I rest my case.


Willie

.
 
Much more than half of the people I deal with. On the Internet it's more like 80 to 90%.
 
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