Help me pick a rifle.

[Oleg Volk]

I'd like to get a .223 rifle for self-defense. AR15, especially an SLR15, is my top choice -- except that the gas blowback make its use with a suppressor difficult. So I am looking at a .223 rifle that takes AR/STANAG magazines and has the following qualities:

- Iron sights that can be co-witnessed with an Aimpoint
- optic rail
- adjustable or short LOP stock
- some way to mount a flashlight and a forward grip (or doesn't need the grip)
- threaded muzzle

Conventional or bullpup layout, doesn't matter. Has to be available now, not next year. Please base the advice on rifles you've used, not on the spec sheets.

I disqualified SU16 for several reasons.

 

[Shipwreck]

Buy one of these

 

[MagiKBullet]

a robarm xcr seems to fit your criteria

 

[taliv]

oleg, assuming you're willing to put one together from the exact parts you're looking for, as opposed to buying a complete rifle from some place like bushmaster/RRA, here are a couple of threads discussing some choices.

http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=261320
http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=233214

note in the 2nd thread, rbernie, myself, bartholomew, and bozemanMT all selected almost identical components for our rifles. odds are good you'll be very pleased with a similar setup.

edit: btw, i'm a fairly short trip east of you and you're welcome to come shoot it this weekend.

 

[ratseal]

Taliv, thanks for the links to those threads. They were helpful to me.

 

[taliv]

You're welcome. you also building now? if you do, post your choices.

 

[silverlance]

out of the box, sounds like the xcr to me. spendy at about 1600.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Hmmm, I don't know that I can suggest anything. AUG, AR180, piston AR or Daewoo? All of them have different flaws and to be honest, I think a lot of the gas blowback from a suppressed AR comes out of the ejection port (much like the MP5SD).

Of the rifles listed, I probably liked the AUG the next best because it is nice and compact and suprisingly ergonomic for a bullpup. The trigger doesn't win any prizes though. The AR180 is decent; but the olds ones tend to have wobbly folding stocks and the AR-180B doesn't handle sustained fire as nicely as an AR. Combine that with a proprietary mounting system and it would be low on my list. A piston AR has the nice ergonomics; but it is still going to blow gas through the ejection port, so I can't say if it will offer you relief during suppressed shooting.