http://www.defensereview.com/the-bi...pingement-gas-system-makes-the-m4-unreliable/
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010...mplaints-about-american-rifle-reliability/?hp
http://www.ar15.com/content/swat/keepitrunning.pdf
Assuming that my links work, I would really recommend the articles above for those that doubt the AR's reliability and don't trust the recommendations from those of us that own AR's.
I'm not a Mini 14 guy but I know a little bit about the platform and this is my take on the weapon. I'm not going to talk about the accuracy and reliability of the rifle because I don't have enough long term shooting to judge.
I will say however that up until recently there was only one magazine manufacturer for the Mini 14.....Ruger. The mags were around $30. Tapco makes a Mini 14 mag now but I don't know how good they are. There was a Nutnfancy video from last year in which they caused consistent jams but I believe they tried to correct the problem.
Sooooo.....call this a +1 for the AR/M4 platform. Mags are at least half the price of those for the Mini 14, they are available everywhere and from a host of manufacturers. I've used 5 different brands of mags in my M4's (clones but I'll call them M4's) with perfect reliability. Do you like steel, polymer, aluminum? They're all available.
The Ruger is not as modular as the AR/M4. You can do a lot with it and there is a very good aftermarket out there but there is not as much gear for the Mini 14 as there is for the AR's. Sorry but it is what it is.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe that the Ruger qualifies as an "Assault Weapon." Call this a +1 for the Ruger as you don't need to be 21 yrs old to own it and you hopefully won't end up on the evil black rifle list.
Everyone knows how to work on the AR's and parts are plentiful since it seems like everyone is doing a build today. Common parts are easy to stock up on in case of another Assault Weapon Ban (sooner or later one will get through). Mags are cheap and also easy to stock up on in case of another mag ban (and sooner or later one will get through again). I bought 10 from
www.dsgarms last year for around $90. They work perfectly and have the Magpul followers. Most of my Magpul mags were just about $15. Pretty reasonable overall.
Let's talk about a plus for the Mini 14.
Ruger makes it. That's it. Other than a few custom shops there is almost no one doing anything with the Mini 14 besides Ruger. When you buy one you know who made it and you know that it came from a trustworthy source (lots of Ruger luv in my house).
On the other hand there is a lot of people making M4's out there. There are some outstanding companies, some good companies and some guys making really pretty paper weights. Then there's the Bubba's making jam o matics in their basement because they read how to make a build on arfcom. The good thing is it's easy to fix an unreliable AR if you know what's wrong with it. It's not hard to find an AR guy or smith to work on it if you don't know what's wrong.
Just buy a top tier brand and there won't be an issue. Heck, buy a 2nd tier brand and there shouldn't be any issues.
My shooting goes in cycles. I get on a kick for a year or two and shoot ____ a couple of times per month while only shooting blackpowder, skeet, rimfire, hunting rifles, etc every couple of months. Then I switch it up and rediscover that _____ is the greatest thing ever and wonder why I haven't been shooting _____ this year.
Should I get bored with my AR's I can change everything on them. I can set them up for the bench or 3 gun matches. I can set them up for home defense or drop a CNMG .22lr conversion kit and head out to the indoor range up the road. I can buy a different upper and shoot 20 different calibers. Heck, I can even buy a .50 cal conversion or crossbow kit if I want to get really rediculas. The sky is literally the limit.
One more thing. The AR's of today are not the M16's of the 1960's. They are reliable and the experiences of military men and women with the M16A1's are irrelevent. The AR's of today are not even the M16A2's of my experience in the 1980's.
BTW, when I was in the military we absolutely trashed rifles with the kind of stupid over cleaning that the military loves. Any cleaning agent that you can imagine from brake cleaner to Spic & Span was used in order to get our rifles white glove clean. We also never ever took a magazine out of service. As you know most reliablity issues are magazine related and I never saw a single magazine of any kind being taken out of service. Give a Marine or soldier a couple of bad mags and you just created someone that will spend the rest of his life talking about what a piece of crap the M16 is.
I'm going to go a little off topic but it's relevent at the end.
Some people jump right into the Assault Rifle market and buy an AK without doing an research. They all talk about how the AK is soooo much more reliable than the AR and that's why they bought it despite having zero experience shooting AR's. They use this excuse as a reason for buying their Century Arms AK. Sure, it might have magazine wobble, canted from sights and possibly the wrong barrel (Tantals) but it's uber reliable compared to those unreliable AR's that they've heard so much about but never actually shot. There's nothing wrong with AK's but you can get a budget AK for much less than an AR and those that do seem to have to justify why they did so. Thus the AR reliability trashing commences from those that have usually have little experience with the AR/M4's. I've seen it before. There's a lot of great AK's out there and there's a lot of mediocre AK's made from cut up parts kits and US made recievers. I've got nothing against the AK platform or it's owners but they all seem to feel the need to perpetuate the myth of AR unreliability despite many of them having never owned or shot one.
I don't think you'd go wrong buying a Mini 14 or AR (or AK for that matter). It's all down to what you want to do with it and what makes you want to part with about $700 without getting buyer's remorse.