Steve, Pat of course told me that. And far be it from me to think even for a second that I know even a tiny fraction of what Pat knows, my experience tells me that isn't nessessarily the case. Pat has infinitely more experience in this matter than do I, but in the few carbine classes I have taken, I have seen far more problems with Colts than I did with Bushmasters. In the class I took from Pat, one Colt went totally TU and another one had all kinds of problems. Those were the only two with problems in the class. The guy that had some problems was staying at the same place as I was and we cleaned our rifles together. This guy was totally convinced of the superiority of the Colt and made comments to that effect even though he was having problems and I wasn't. In my Gunsite Basic Carbine class we had two AR15s that had some problems. A Colt that had the bolt break in two and a Bushmaster that had a variety of problems, however I am not sure how much of that was operator error. The guy with the Bushmaster had no experience at all with the weapon before the class and had problems throughout. He was also shooting one of his friends handloads.
I am not saying Pat isn't right. Again, he has seen a few thousand more of these classes than I have, so he certainly has more information to go on, but the very small number of carbines I have seen doesn't back this statement up. All I can base my opinions on are my own personal experiences and my Bushmasters have performed flawlessly.