Help My Father See the Error of His Ways
I've owned an AR 15 for close to three years now, and when it came to advice on what to buy and what to avoid, I've lurked these forums and others and I have never regretted a single purchase, even if I had to replace something to fit my growing experience and evolving style.
My father, however, who has only held an AR 15 once a year at his job in corrections, is assembling parts for an AR 15 and is dead set in the belief that he can get away with buying the most dirt cheap parts and furniture and still have a rifle that runs as good as any BCM, Noveske, Daniel Defense, or LWRC. That is laughably false, and I've said that to him countless times, but he refuses to listen to reason. I've told him everything I know about the AR 15. Everything from the basics that he's heard in his training, to some of the finer details he was unaware of.
Now he wants an AR of his own; a build that he primarily wants for plinking but will also double for home defense. The problem is that he wants to spend as little as possible, and he is willing to sacrifice build quality if it will save him money. He wants a DPMS upper group, an RGuns lower kit, and Tapco furniture. I've told him all about the problems that people have experienced with RGuns and DPMS, and I've told him that he would be wasting his money on Tapco trash instead of getting Magpul products that only cost a little bit more for better polymer. But he'll hear none of it. He somehow doesn't see why he should spend more for one thing when he could spend less for something else that looks exactly the same. When faced with the prospect of spending money, his logic seems to take a plummeting nose-dive to the point where he doesn't even have the patience to sit down and do research on the parts he's ordering. And when he does, he ignores what people who have these parts have to say about them, and instead focuses completely on the item descriptions and their cost.
I've said and shown him everything I could think of. He refuses to read through articles and charts, and my words fall on deaf ears. Are there any other guides, written in a way that a caveman can understand, that compare AR 15 models? Or guides that specifically mention what products are to be avoided/bought?
Or maybe I should just let him have his budget AR 15 and wait for it to fall apart at the range?