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Gunsmithing (no politics)

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Caspian Sea Monster:
The short version is that the AR-15 is gas-operated like an AK, yes, but the piston is in the back of the gun, machined directly out of the bolt itself, and the gas is carried there by a skinny little tube that is often compared with an automobile exhaust pipe.  Some people consider this a serious weakness, and I think they are all sadly misguided and misinformed about one of the most clever rifle designs ever devised.

As to what makes one particular autoloading system superior or inferior to another, that's a very deep rabbit hole that both I and my laptop battery are too tired to dive into right now.  And yes there are plenty of types - pure blowback, mechanically-delayed blowback, gas-delayed blowback, blow-forward, short-stroke recoil operated, long-stroke recoil operated, short-stroke gas operated, long-stroke gas operated (like the Kalashnikov,) direct-gas operated... I could probably come up with a few more obscure ones if you pressed me to.

Edit: Yes, same as M16.  The M16 is the US Military's designation for a few different specific variants of the AR-15 family.  And yeah, you are correct; the Garand and AK are both long-stroke gas system guns.

GarandMarine:
Back to the AR-15 Barbie doll comparison you can convert an AR-15 to a piston driven style system with conversion kits that go for $300-400 roughly. Honestly if you're not good enough about cleaning your rifles that you like the idea of having to put less elbow grease in, the problem is the shooter, not the rifle.

CSM is absolutely correct on preferences between operating systems. I actively shoot all kinds of rifles and I honestly think that preferring one over another in a "all my rifles must be X" sense is bollocks. I like AKs and appreciate their design. I have practiced the profession of warfare with the M-16 and it's system and find it excellent, it's siblings in the AR family like I own now are similarly solid. I've fired some really weird operating systems and found they worked just fine too. If you're a responsible shooter who takes good care of their equipment your firearm will not fail you whether you're on the range, hunting or fighting for your life.

Meanwhile someone is selling this beautiful creation in my local.



Goddess DAMN I wish I had the 6.5k being asked for that beautiful classic. (Hollis 12 bore double rifle, it's got a closer relationship with field artillery then lesser rifles)

On a side note for the curious, the following's my current "shopping list" for various acquisitions in no particular order. This is the curse of the collector folks, I actively shoot, I hunt, occasionally I compete, and I carry for self defense but mostly I buy guns because I like'em.
Rifles:
.300 BL Upper
Mosin Nagant rifle
PSL rifle (aka the Dragunov knock off)
Ruger 10/22 (small semi automatic .22 caliber rifle, popular in the U.S.)
17XX Long Land pattern Brown Bess musket (Reproduction, I will never make the kind of money originals go for and if I did I would immediately donate such arms to a museum)
Sig 516 (modern variant that eats STANAGs*)
Mare's Leg in .45 LC (a pistolized lever action rifle, Zoey's gun in fire fly is an example of a mare's leg)**
FAL

Pistols:
Walther PPK (Yes. I'm a dork, got it)
Smith and Wesson Highway Patrolman revolver (classic American six gun)
Ruger Vaquero (reproduction of the Colt Single Action Army, /the/ six gun. in .45 Long Colt) **

Shotguns:
Double barrel 12 gauge**
Model 1897 Trench gun**

Expensive One Day Purchases: (every rifle on this list all told will run me /at least/ $2000, more when/if optics get involved)
IMI Tavor (the newly import legal civilian model of Israel's next gen assault rifle, and my one true love***)
M1A rifle (Not an M1 Garand, but in fact the civilian variant of the American M14 rifle)
Barret .50 Cal rifle. (Why do I want to be able to lob shots down range up to two miles? Because I can.)

*STANAG: STANdardization AGreement. Refers to a NATO document that standardized rifle magazines amongst NATO members. Such magazines are often just called "STANAGs". AR-15s/M-16s are the most prevalent rifle that uses STANAG magazines.
**These older arms are for competition in an American shooting league called "Cowboy Action Shooting" which is stupid amounts of fun. It combines cosplay, classic firearms and practical shooting skills in a glorious living history/renn faire atmosphere. It's directly comparable to modern three gun competitions which also focus on the interplay of "the big three" (shotgun, pistol and rifle) but of course uses modern arms. CAS is a bit easier to get into in many cases as three gun like most high end competition sports requires a lot of time, effort and money to even vaguely get good, CAS communities are a bit more greenhorn friendly and have more of a "fun" focus at the average event.

***The TAR-21 (aka Tavor)
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLm0hfxTyVI

Caspian Sea Monster:
Cowboy Action Shooting: Because LARPing with guns is still LARPing.


--- Quote ---I actively shoot all kinds of rifles and I honestly think that preferring one over another in a "all my rifles must be X" sense is bollocks.
--- End quote ---

Variety is the spice of life - I am an equal opportunity collector.  That said, most of my interest has become invested in the AR-15 - what you get when you ask a team of aerospace engineers to design an infantry rifle.  Vanilla direct gas - none of this short-stroke conversion nonsense - and Colt/FNH/BCM or GTFO.

GarandMarine:
You get a complete piece of garbage for it's first generation combat rifle? Yeah sounds about right. My uncle's a Vietnam vet and has some very choice words about the M16A1, most of them not fit for reprinting in polite company. It's been a couple tech generations and I loved my FN M16A4 more purely then any woman I've ever been with, (and with none of the fighting of her sister that I dated in bootcamp, an M-16A2 that really hated military drill) and would happily put my neck on the line with her. (Belladonna was her name for the curious, I loved the old "beautiful woman/deadly poison" thing.)

If CAS is LARP, what is Three Gun? LARP: Call of Duty edition? XD not that I wouldn't participate in WW2 reenacting which really is LARP... but it's all the fun bits of the Marine Corps, running around the woods with your buddies with a small arsenal fighting the bad guys, with none of the negative issues that come with the above. (Nazis don't use IEDs, and even if they did, no one is dead at the end of the day at a reenactment barring a serious accident.)

I still need to show up at a local three gun run with my Garand, 1911 and a 1897 trench gun once I get one. No silly plastic stocks here, or high end special metals, no sir/ma'am, just steel, wood and 'Murrica.

Caspian Sea Monster:
I have come to realize that almost no one actually fully understands what happened with the first M16s.  It isn't a short or simple story, and yet its retelling has turned into a lot of sweeping generalizations and serious misunderstandings - a really annoying game of telephone.  Here's the short version that isn't bullshit:  The AR-15's introduction to military service was a disaster because of bureaucratic interference by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, to a treasonously idiotic level.  It was developed in the shadow of another weapon system and the prevailing mindset is "sure, we'll put it in service now, but the SPIW will just make it obsolete in four years anyway so it doesn't actually matter that much.  Don't bother spending any money at all on testing and further development, just push it into service as-is."  To which end the OSD (1) prevented known problems from being fixed (2) prevented suspected problems from being investigated (3) prevented further testing to uncover unknown problems and (4) introduced new problems that weren't there before McNamara's flunkies stuck their nose into the issue and started making uneducated engineering decisions from an administrative standpoint.  The rifle went into service in 1964 I think, and US Army spent four years fighting tooth-and-nail against the OSD to get all the bugs worked out.  The rifles that were rolling off the assembly lines by spring of 1968 were actually extremely reliable and dependable rifles (the one I intend to build is a semiauto copy of a 1972 USAF M16 and you best believe me, that is a nice rifle,) but few things survive a bad first reputation.  It also takes time to rotate out all the bad rifles for good ones, so the horror stories don't actually stop in 1968, but they start to stop there.

What you get when you ask a team of aerospace engineers to design something is a product where weight reduction (aluminium and plastic wherever you can substitute it in place of steel without getting too weak) and balance refinement (putting all the moving parts behind the breech and extending into the buttstock) are at the very top of the priority list, and concerns about cost/complexity of manufacture (machined aluminium alloy hot-forgings for most of the structural components?) are on the second page.

And yes, Three-Gun can be LARPing too.  :P

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