For pure shooting fun, what would you choose...

Status
Not open for further replies.
Shootin'=Stress Relief

Just my 2 cents...I love shootin my Olympic Arms M4, easy on the pocket and shoulder. But I must admit, given 30.06 was just as cheap as .223, I would shoot my 1944 Springfield M1 more...you know you just tagged that target at 100 yards... :evil:
 
Having used an M16 plenty in the Army, I had no desire to buy an AR15. The Garands cost less, have an interesting history, aren't expensive to buy or work on, and are great fun to shoot. And they have Walnut stocks. A nice Garand never fails to attract a crowd at the range, of young and old. If you're of military age but not a veteran the AR is much more popular, while taste for Garands usually comes down the road.

AR ammo can be had more economically than milspec 30.06 but unfortunately we almost all wind up shooting less than we wanted. So it can take a long time to burn up the money you saved over an AR.
 
Thanks for all the replies...

You folks have been great. I've hesitated posting my reply to all these posts for not wanting to disappoint anyone. But, hey, this is the High Road, so here goes.

I've got to face it. I want all three rifles. No way can I swing that right now. Fact is, even getting one will be a bit of a stretch. But, a guy needs goals and I've now got one.

Marlin 1894C. If I find a wild deal on a used one, it'll be the first I buy. As someone said, if you want to relive the glory days of the Old West... Well, I'm into riding horses in a big way. Not quite ready for CASS, but I do watch more than my share of westerns on the Western Channel. However, unless the unbelievable deal presents itself, this rifle won't be the first one I buy.

M1 Garand. I posted this same question with a poll attached at the AmBack Forum. As you might imagine, the M1 won the poll hands down. And, many of you here picked it as well. Got to be honest with you, I'm not sure I'd enjoy the pounding of that rifle for an extended period of time. But, once I have some experience with centerfires in general, this rifle will be on my must-have list. (On a side note, Rexrider's comments about the SKS in another thread have me considering that rifle. And, someone else mentioned the M1 Carbine. Hadn't thought of that before.)

AR. Can't afford it. Will shock the wife, I'm sure. Will cause me to go out and buy a safe first. But, can't escape the fun-factor! Y'all have convinced me I've got to give this platform a chance first. The political climate will never get better, and could get worse. The resale value should be fine if need be. Just holding one makes me want to have one. What else can I say? I found out tonight that one of my friends has had 3. He currently has a RRA that was built to his specs. He previously had a Bushy. I've been invited down (after deer season) to shoot his. It'll take some time to set back the cash anyway and research what I want, so I'm excited.

And, 444, you can bet I won't be asking for advice on where's the cheapest AR for sale! I don't have a large collection of firearms. But, what I have is quality and I won't be changing that tune just because it might take a bit longer to save up for my next purchase.

Thanks, again, to everyone who posted their thoughts. I've enjoyed reading them. After I do some research and thinking, I'll have questions for the group regarding ARs, I'm sure.
 
AR.
-Longer, more fulfilling trips to the range with 20-30 round magazines and no kick.
-Cheap ammo since you don't reload.
-Customizable.
-More likely to piss off the anti's!

;) Good luck, I'm sure you'll be happy with whatever AR you choose.
 
NoBite,

The M1 Garand is a great choice, even though I'd pick an AR for my first choice. As a matter of fact, you can put an AR together for nearly what an M1 will cost you...

Regarding recoil: A M1903 Springfield beats the ever livin' beejesus out of me, but I can fire hundreds of rounds through the M1 Garand with no pain at all. If you have never fired one before, you will be amazed by the reduction in felt recoil that the gas action makes...

I have a couple of Win. M94 Trapper carbines, one in .357 and the other in .44 Mag, that are great fun to shoot (and I'm not even into CASS stuff), but I'd still pick the AR first.

That's my opinion. But then again, we all know that opinions are like you-know-whats...
 
cheygriz said:
To me, at least, this would be a total no-brainer!

There is nothing in the world that gives you the almost perfect combination of light weight, low recoil, excellent accuracy, excellent ergonomics, ease of maintenance, durability, and a plethora of accesories as the AR platform.

And just for good measure, they hold their value quite well.
Click to expand...

Light Weight--No lighter than a good bolt gun

Low Recoil--Yes, felt recoil is very low, even for a .223

Excellent accuracy--by semi-auto standards. But you'll be lucky to find a std barrel factory AR that delivers .6" or better 5-shot groups consistently. A Savage .223 will do that for half the price, and the brass will last longer.

Excellent ergonomics--Compared to many battle rifles yes. But for shooting with a scope the ergonomics are actually quite bad. You need tall rings, the stock doesn't have enough drop, and the stock is too short for precision prone shooting.

Maintenance--You've got to be kidding. The AR is one of the most maintenance intensive firearms ever invented. You really do need to do a complete field strip with detailed cleaning of very small components very regularly. Read a few posts and you'll see that the AR is a shoot for an hour, clean for an hour piece. The gas blows right back into the bolt where it fouls quickly and the carbon will harden up if you don't clean the bolt religiously. The AR is the only gun I know where a half-dozen special tools have been devised to get the bolt clean. And you need to keep spare parts with you--gas rings (I recommend the one-piece spiral rings), ejector, ejector spring.

Accessories--Yes there are a ton. Other than a trigger replacement and a freefloat handguard set-up, most of them are a waste of money. Put your money into a good scope and a Harris bipod, if you want to shoot small groups.

Value Retention--Yes, as long as you stick to name brands and don't tart it up with a lot of expensive and mostly useless M4 wannabe accessories.

- - -

For a first rifle I would recommend an accurate bolt action .22 with a stock with a wide flat forearm and an adjustable trigger. For a first centerfire rifle, I'd recommend a Savage 12BVSS in .223, or a Tikka T3. But frankly I'd get a cheap Rem 700 action, put a good custom barrel on it, bed it into a good stock and you'll be way ahead of the game. I would go .308 if you want to shoot deer, or 6BR if you want to shoot paper. The 6BR will have less than half the recoil of the .308 and should shoot in the 2s and 3s if it is built by a good smith.

AR is a good fightin' gun and a nice black fashion accessory. But it is a very maintenance-intensive gun that isn't particularly well-suited for scoped shooting, without expensive modifications.
 
Not to annoy, but what range will you typically be shooting at?
I had two Marlin 1894's, a new Cowboy Limited in .44 and an original in .38-40, and I sold off the new one (not because there was anything much wrong with it, aside from the Marlin lever dysfunction, where a surface on the lever wears a groove in the lifter) but I'd say... look around for some old ones if you can, there might be something that'd make you very happy. Neither is so much fun at 100 yards.
The Garand is a joy. Cases of .30-06 in garand clips are somehow abundant and reasonable lately, and I see Garand clips of match ammo fairly regularly. It's a huge piece of American history and our marksmanship tradition, not much you can't do with it. If you get one, get a good sling, a shooting jacket, and a mat, and see how it performs from prone, maybe compete with it. There's not much it can't do, and it's just cool knowing my grandfather was teaching recruits to shoot it back in the 40's, and now I'm trying to master it myself.
The AR15, well... there's a lot to know about them. For the unwary, it's a potentially endless $ minefield of accessories of questionable utility and tacticality. The AR15 is many things to many people, and the A2 Government Carbine fan is probably farther from the Delta HBAR shooter than a CETME fan from a FAL fan. AR world is it's own small, bizzare planetoid, with customs, politics, and bitter rivalries alien to the general enthusiast. On THR, no one will offer to take a pipe to your head to correct your misperceptions on the best rifling twist rate/bbl length for a given projectile, or questioning the utility of an ELCAN optic, but beware... Bewaaaaaaaaare! ;)
 
Lever guns are fun to shoot plates with.

M1 is good for punching paper, has mild recoil and you can use 30.06 to take pretty much any game in North America that's name doesn't start with Polar.

AR, neat, but have a lot of hype. Also suffer from a similar problem that 1911 pattern guns do; Everyone makes them so the quality of examples can vary greatly.
 
Maintenance--You've got to be kidding. The AR is one of the most maintenance intensive firearms ever invented. You really do need to do a complete field strip with detailed cleaning of very small components very regularly. Read a few posts and you'll see that the AR is a shoot for an hour, clean for an hour piece. The gas blows right back into the bolt where it fouls quickly and the carbon will harden up if you don't clean the bolt religiously. The AR is the only gun I know where a half-dozen special tools have been devised to get the bolt clean. And you need to keep spare parts with you--gas rings (I recommend the one-piece spiral rings), ejector, ejector spring.
Click to expand...

Yo
No disrespect intended, but do you have any actual expereince with and AR? I do not consider the cleaning of an AR any more intensive then any other semi-auto rifle. To say it takes an hour to clean after an hour of shooting is not even close to true.

It simply does not get THAT dirty. Yes, I do recommend cleaning the bolt and carrier after a day at the range but it is easy and quick to do. There can be carbon build up on the bolt but it is for the most part self limiting and will not have an impact on reliablity.

I am by no means an AR expert but have been shooting my Colt since '95. I have gone over a 1k rounds before cleaning without any issues. Even after shooting 300 to 500 rounds the rifle hardly looks dirty (using AE .233 and Maylasia 5.56).

NoBite,
You will enjoy an AR, no doubt about. Don't worry about cleaning issues. Maintain the rifle like you would any other and you will be fine.
Any questions you may have about ARs can be answered over at AR15.com.
http://www.weaponforums.com/
http://www.weaponforums.com/forums/board.html?b=3

There is a lot of info available and plenty of people to help you with questions (including cleaning and maintence).

Cheers
Rexider
 
Garand is one that I want but I already have the "funnest" gun around. Saiga-1 in 308

any of the chamberings are good and fun and an actual new manufactured AK style semiauto for under $250!!
 
I second Yo's comment on cleaning ARs. I first shot them in the service in 1966 when the ammo came in plain white boxes, intermittently afterwards, and put a lot of rounds through my personal CAR-15. One hour to clean sounds just about right to me. I did it enough times.

These days when I shoot a semiauto military rifle it is usually the Garand, with the M1A in second place. Cleaning the M1 requires a patch of solvent, 6-8 trips down the bore with a brass brush, chamber brush (M3A1 tool), about 3-4 patches to take out the debris and fouling, and an oiled patch. The gas cylinder gets a couple of drops of bore cleaner via the end of the op rod. Check the greased areas for adequate lube and put it in the rack. Total time about ten minutes if I'm slow.

My notes indicate that when I last had the gas cylinder off it had been otherwise untouched for three years (and probably 1000 rounds). Very little carbon and still going strong. Only reason I pulled it was to peen the splines a bit to retighten it slightly.

I very occasionally go after the copper fouling with Sweet's but that's pretty optional and infrequent.

Don't currently have a .223 (the wind blows a lot here, and ranges are extended) but if I did I think I would get an AR-180B for the simpler tappet action and ease of cleaning.

BTW the Garand is a pussycat to fire if you have a proper position and are slung up properly. Offhand it is a blast, and in sitting you just rock a little in recoil and come right back into lineup. Your grandmother could shoot the M1 (a little help holding up the 9 1/2 pound rifle would help, though...).
 
Ak are way too fun

Ak's are great for all ages and sizes - plus the ammo is cheap. AR are cool too since they have such light recoil. .50cals are fun to shoot stuff (applicances, lawn mowers,ect.) :cool:
 
Yo No disrespect intended, but do you have any actual expereince with and AR? I do not consider the cleaning of an AR any more intensive then any other semi-auto rifle. To say it takes an hour to clean after an hour of shooting is not even close to true. It simply does not get THAT dirty. Yes, I do recommend cleaning the bolt and carrier after a day at the range but it is easy and quick to do. There can be carbon build up on the bolt but it is for the most part self limiting and will not have an impact on reliablity.
Click to expand...

ARs? Yep, I have three lowers, four uppers, including a complete Colt orginal 7.62x39 AR. I've also "fixed" more than a few ARs belonging to fellow shooters. In each case the problem was inadequate cleaning, usually gunk in the recess where the little spring for the extractor goes. A tiny metal shaving in the ejector channel will also disable the gun. You really do need to soak and swab the bolt, get all the gunk out of the carrier, use pipe cleaners now and then on the carrier key, use a special swab to get the bbl extension lugs clean. And you need to check the buffer channel regularly if you're operating in a sandy environment. By contrast, cleaning a bolt action involves 5-20 minutes on the barrel (depending on how badly it fouls), one pass of an oversized bore mop in the chamber, and a CLP patch to wipe off the bolt face followed by re-application of grease. With my tight-chambered customs, I really only have to clean the barrel (no fouling gets on the bolt), and they clean up with 4-5 wet patches. Same with my 45-70 (smokeless)-- 4 to 5 patches down the bore, wrap a patch around my little finger to clean the chamber and then wipe down the face of the breach block. Takes about 10 minutes.

The AR is the most maintenance-intensive firearm I've ever encountered, including other direct gas impingement guns I've shot (MAS, Ljungmann, Hakim). I consider the AR an outstanding prototype that got rushed into production before they corrected critical flaws. It's fun for three gun matches and the like though, but then so's a lever gun, and if you're talking about an 1866 or 1873 shooting pistol cartridges, clean up takes about 15 minutes after a match.
 
Yo,
As I said, no disrespect intended and I apologize for calling you out. There are plenty of people out there who will trash the whole AR platform but never owned their own rifle yet alone even shot one. Not that you were trashing it, but I did not want NoBite to get scared off by thinking the rifle was impossible to keep clean and keep in operation.

The details you pointed out for cleaning are correct. NoBite, take note on the areas Yo mentioned. In my opinion however, I still don't think it is too difficult to maintain. Clean it regularly and you are good to go.

After reading your reply, I did take a moment to think about cleaning the AR compared to other semi-autos that I have owned. Not much of a list, a SKS (first semi-auto) Mini 30, Marlin Camp 9, and a Colt Sporter in 7.62x39. So yeah, in retrospect, I guess the AR's did take the longest. All those mentioned were sold at one point due to financial hardship back in '93-94. For a long time the Match Target bought in ‘95 was the was the only rifle I did own so I guess I just got used to doing what was needed to be done without even thinking about it too much.

And yes, in comparison...the Marlin 1894 is a breeze to clean.

NoBite,
Yo did make another good point with in his reply concerning the AR.

Value Retention--Yes, as long as you stick to name brands and don't tart it up with a lot of expensive and mostly useless M4 wannabe accessories.
Click to expand...

When you get an AR, keep it simple (KISS). Murphy loves accessories. This applies to any firearm. Learn the rifle first. Learn to shoot with the iron sites before going to optics. If you go with a red dot type optics that uses batteries make sure your setup can switch back to iron sites quickly. Don't ever put yourself in a situation where you are betting on batteries

Once you have the rifle you will start to get a feel for what kind of shooting you want to do. Add to the rifle once you know what you want to do with it. There are plenty of examples of pimped out ARs out there. Some are very nice setups, some make no sense at all.

Sorry for the hijack of your thread. Cleaning and maintenance was not necessarily what this thread was about, but hey, cleaning and maintenance is part of shooting.
 
If cost is an issue you may also want to look at an SKS. AIM surplis and SARCO have some unissued M59/66 SKS's that are beautiful.

I take my SKS to the range every trip - way too much fun plinking stuff with it. VERY accurate.

Ammo is cheap - 7.62x39 is about $80/1000 at the local gunshows.

Good luck!
 
Yo,

Obviously, you're a bolt action guy. Which is fine, we all have different tastes. A group of .6 inch is not to be had in a caual "fun" gun. For a "fun" gun, groups of 2 inches are more than adequate.

I like the .22s as well, but I would suggest a good semi-auto like the 10-22 or the various offerings from Remington and Marlin over any bolt action. Especially now that hi-cap mags are starting to come back online.

As for a scoped AR being dificult to shoot, "you gotta be kidding!" I have a Trijicon compact ACOG on my Bushmaster Dissapator, and it comes to the shoulder and "points" more naturally than any of my dozen or so scoped bolt guns. Offhand or prone.

I'm also very "perfectionist' about cleaning my ARs. It usually takes me 20-25 minutes to thoroughly and properly clean an AR. About the same as a bolt gun.
 
I agree with those who don't think that cleaning their AR-15 is a long job. I, also, am pretty anal when it comes to cleaning my guns, and I find that the AR-15 is easier to clean than, for example, the Marlin M1894 ot the M94 Win. carbines. It doesn't take much longer either. And, on top of all that, you don't have to fiddle from the muzzle end...
 
I know it's not on your list but why not an AK? Cheaper than an AR and you customize as you go. So much you can do with them, fun to shoot, and ammo not bad to come by either.
 
Lever guns are the original "hillbilly assault weapon" and are lots of fun. I don't own an AR, but I understand they are finicky about ammo and can be jammomatics. OTOH, the SKS is inexpensive to buy and cheap to feed and boringly reliable. Plus, it shoots a bigger bullet than the AR. :)
 
Of all the toys in the safe, the one for me to take to the range just to have bunches of fun with, is my brass framed Henry 44/40 by Uberti- this thing just lets me take my mind back 150 years or so, is a joy to shoot, and is very accurate as well- nothing I have compares to cranking up the sight and shooting at metal gong targets at 200 and 300 yards- somewhat expensive yes, but I've saved thousands by not having to pay a shrink instead :D
 
I often read things on this board that I disagree with, but I try to keep my mouth shut (doesn't always work). Other times, I am so amazed by what I read that I can't help myself.
It is totally beyond the capacity of my brain to imagine what could possbily be difficult or time consuming about cleaning an AR15. I have cleaned dozens of different AR15s and M16s, hundreds if not thousands of times and I must be missing something. :confused: I guess maybe I am doing it wrong, However my method seems to work: I put between 5 and 10 thousand rounds downrange from AR15s every year and have never had the slightest problem. Maybe I need to find out about these special tools, so I can make a ten minute job into an hour or more too. At least twice I have gone to a schooting skul and fired in excess of 1800 rounds a week through my AR15s, spent no more than 15 minutes a day cleaning them and didn't have any idea I needed any special tools. Cleaning rod ? Solvent ? Toothbrush ? Papertowels ?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

R
  • Locked
  • Poll
which rifle would you choose?
Replies
20
Views
1K
Father Knows Best
F
M
  • Locked
For fun, configure three AR's...What would you do if you had the money?
Replies
15
Views
991
sfc_mark
sfc_mark
B
  • Locked
Please help me choose!
Replies
12
Views
915
Brian Dale
B
U
  • Locked
what would you choose?
Replies
14
Views
691
a-sheepdog
A
tcoz
  • Locked
Which would you choose?
Replies
2
Views
417
ttarp
T
Back
Top