Quote Originally Posted by Falconman View Post
I assumed that the naval special warfare command would teach me how to shoot pretty well, but thats another conversation I don't wanna get into.
what are you going to do between now and then? I understand you don't want to get into it, but again if you want to be a SHOOTER and not an OWNER, and don't have a money tree, it's part of the equation. If you can afford to build your dream gun, go to a training class, change out the parts that didn't work out, and get regular practice after your class, plus pay for the magazines and ammo that are required to do all of this (not to mention ancillary items) then by all means assemble the dream gun. I am dead serious. But when we give advice it's typically done with the idea that budgets, and time, are limited.

This forum started out very training-centric, and those of us that have been here since the beginning are still so. In recent years we've seen a LOT more threads like yours where a person reads the forums, collects their list of ideal parts, and then wants opinions. The thing is that many of us also made that mistake personally, and if we had it to do over again we'd start out simply with the gun and go learn to shoot it.

So what you are saying is get a cheap ar and spend the rest of the money on mags,ammo, etc.?
Less expensive? yes. Cheap? no.

I see from the posts above that you're now thinking of getting a Colt. I think this is a great move as it will get you the best likelihood of having a functioning and reliable carbine. There are other brands that are very close, and others that even exceed in in certain areas, but in terms of across the board, the Colt is the way to go.

However, as mentioned in previous posts by me and others, "close up work" and "long range" tend to be at least somewhat mutually exclusive, and if you're thinking long-range is where you'll spend most of your time the Colt may not be it. Conversely, I will bet that at this stage the Colt will be more accurate than you with quality ammo.