As in many cases lack of knowledge about an item can cause people to be driven to what appeals to the eye instead of what would best serve their needs.
I have to agree to a point and disagree to a point. This forum has saved me so much money it's amazing. I wish I could have found out about the crappy eye relief on most ACOGS before I spent a couple thousand bucks on optics that I just couldn't use. The internet helped me zero in on the TA33 ACOG finally and I've been in love with it ever since. Without the internet I would have thought all ACOGS were useless to me.
Your point is well taken, though, that groupthink can praise or damn an accessory just because of the mob mentalilty. Overall, though, I think we're better off with the internet than without it.
Truth.Quote:
I am not intimately in tune with every aspect of the AR15 market but going by the preponderance of offerings, I conclude that the well-decorated AR is more important to a larger segment of the market than the rock-solid, safe, dependable, durable, accurate AR is.
My peeve, maybe not so much an "AR accessory", but it would be crappy optics.
Aside from a decent rifle, decent ammo, and decent mags, the ONE thing you need to make a rifle work as it should is a reliable way to aim it.
Most of the rest of the "useless accessory" market can't really hurt the performance of an AR in more than a superficial way (except for maybe a BAD lever).
As a one-time owner of a crap optic, the "budget optic" thing annoys me the most as it's screwing with the most basic requirement of the gun- the ability to reliably hit what you're aiming at.
Think about it- some new gun owner goes out, buys a Colt 6920, Pmags, and a case or two of [insert your favorite bulk ammo here].... then slaps a [insert your most hated brand here] shit optic on top because some asshat said it was "just as good as..."
Now how useful is that otherwise good setup?
There should be federal jail time for purveyors of crap optics.... :laugh:
Aside from that, I've never cared for, or really gotten the point behind the AFG, and that mag-grip thing from a couple pages back is just plain stupid.
And anything Zombie, but thankfully that craze has died down a good bit.
I think what I dislike the most is the artificial "Battle Worn™" look. Nothing wrong with honest wear, but scuffing up a firearm that never gets further from the safe than the bench at the range is plain dishonest
A2 grip: It's cr@p. Useless and tons of better, more comfortable and more useful options.
Troy BUIS, or anything Troy for that matter: Never again sending my dough to a company hiring anti-2A apparatchiks and accomplices to murder.
Also, it's 2017, and there are far better BUIS options to choose from.
I think the bad for me is the tacti-cool techniques being taught today; I can deal with of ton of crappy accessories, but every week there's someone teaching something new and ground breaking, and IMHO, feels unsafe. For example, during last rifle quals they were teaching that several elite military, SWAT, and SRT operators were using the barrel up technique, which literally puts the barrel next to your partner's ear in the stack. How the hell is that safe?!? I get that some of the old technique of doing things must change, but sometimes the tried and true are the safest. at the end of the day if you go home safe that is all that matters.
I kind of hate sling points that don't have anti-rotation. I hate that KAC is so expensive and I still want an SR15.