09-14-2012, 12:21 AM
The AR15 market is a strange beast. I can't think of any other market where the retail customer has the ability to demand critical components from the supply chain at these volumes, to where manufacturers have to compete on almost the same playing field, especially smaller manufacturers.
You can chalk it up to the design itself, being so modular, user-friendly, ergonomic, inherently accurate, with limited gunsmithing skills (if any) needed to put them together.
Combine that with the fact that the stooges in Congress tried to tell Americans that they couldn't own such a weapon, and you have a recipe for an unrelenting high-demand product that won't go away.
I think the real blame lies with the design: too easy to work with, which isn't a bad thing for me because I'm able to troubleshoot & prevent problems starting with inspecting the parts before even attempting to move forward. This experience has come at a cost of over two decades of working with AR's though, which the new consumer doesn't have...and I'm still learning about things that were under my nose (literally) the whole time.
You can chalk it up to the design itself, being so modular, user-friendly, ergonomic, inherently accurate, with limited gunsmithing skills (if any) needed to put them together.
Combine that with the fact that the stooges in Congress tried to tell Americans that they couldn't own such a weapon, and you have a recipe for an unrelenting high-demand product that won't go away.
I think the real blame lies with the design: too easy to work with, which isn't a bad thing for me because I'm able to troubleshoot & prevent problems starting with inspecting the parts before even attempting to move forward. This experience has come at a cost of over two decades of working with AR's though, which the new consumer doesn't have...and I'm still learning about things that were under my nose (literally) the whole time.