Bushmaster quality?

[Esq.]

Bushmaster, DPMS, Del-Ton, & PSA are the fat chicks of the AR world.

True enough....

[26 Inf]

Bushmaster, DPMS, Del-Ton, & PSA are the fat chicks of the AR world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6qvJp4zPlY

[Bret]

I have several Windham Weaponry AR15's and love them. They all run great, even the one in 7.62x39 on full auto.
https://youtu.be/ma82EphaORQ?t=4m40s

[wetidlerjr]

I have had two complete Bushmasters from around 2000-2001 and I still have one of the lowers that I use with my 22LR upper. I never had any trouble to speak of but I wasn't a high round shooter with either rifle.

[Slater]

Bushmaster, DPMS, Del-Ton, & PSA are the fat chicks of the AR world.

Does Spike's belong on that list as well?

[sjc3081]

I had a Bustmaster Carbine around 1996 went single shot after the gas key came loose after about 500 rounds.

[slowrx]

I find it hard to believe that "an agency" is having problems with their guns. Why? Because SURELY they have many highly educated Experts telling them what to order etc....People who KNOW that certain guns are junk etc.....who would tell them so, who would provide persuasive examples of how Junky those guns really were- assuming they were actually doing their jobs etc....Again, as YOU SAY, the difference, and I have to believe at LEO pricing it's even LESS of a difference, in cost is minimal.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that, even though it should. Some agencies budgeting and policies basically reward the cheaper contract even though you and I know spending more once would be the smarter option. So if the colt is 1$ more than the bushmaster, guess what they are buying...bushmaster. The caveat is that other agencies with big money cities can pretty much say this is what we want and they get it. My agency swat team has bushmaster sbr's (although modified enough to basically only still retain the factory lower) but we aren't a large $ agency. Two of our neighboring agencies, one has KAC sbr's and the other has/had hk416's. TLDR its not that simple.

[dperdue]

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that, even though it should. Some agencies budgeting and policies basically reward the cheaper contract even though you and I know spending more once would be the smarter option. So if the colt is 1$ more than the bushmaster, guess what they are buying...bushmaster. The caveat is that other agencies with big money cities can pretty much say this is what we want and they get it. My agency swat team has bushmaster sbr's (although modified enough to basically only still retain the factory lower) but we aren't a large $ agency. Two of our neighboring agencies, one has KAC sbr's and the other has/had hk416's. TLDR its not that simple.

I know of an agency that has the surplus a1 rifles on loan from the government, that have been converted to carbines. Some by the officers themselves and some by an outside source. They are quite the hodgepodge of parts. Some are extremely high quality and others are built using airsoft grade junk.

[donki1967]

My duty rifle is a HK416 FS.Personally I have a Bushmaster XM-15 MOE M4-Type Carbine, and both have equal accuracy at 100m with SS109 (62gr) cartridges.

[3ACR_Scout]

Another factor in Bushmaster’s “survival” is their widespread name recognition based on their (unfortunate) association with mass shootings and the way they’ve been covered in the media. I would bet that a lot of Americans couldn’t identify Colt as a major manufacturer of military weapons, but they would recognize Bushmaster as a producer of “assault weapons.” My brother-in-law, who is also in the military, has an M&P Sport but rarely shoots it. A couple years ago, after I took him out to shoot my midlength BCM, said, “what I really want to get is a Bushmaster.” It was simply the first name that he associated with AR15s.

My Bushmaster XM15-E2S was the first AR I bought, purchased at the end of 2004 right after the AWB sunset. Us older guys will remember that back then, if you couldn’t find a Colt, or didn’t want to want to pay $1,000+ for one, nearly everyone would tell you to buy a Bushmaster as the next best thing. The big question back then was whether or not a rifle had a chrome-lined barrel, which seems to be almost a given nowadays. After Bushmaster, Olympic, DPMS, Rock River, and the few other manufacturers of the early 2000s were considered to be inferior. I was not very satisfied with my Bushmaster; between the commercial receiver extension (which sounded like it had sand inside it when I pulled the charging handle back), semi auto bolt carrier, mushy selector, and plastic GI-style trigger guard, it just felt “cheap” compared to the military rifles I was used to. I never had any functional issues with it, but I didn’t really put it through its paces (I was deployed too often to take any classes after buying it). I just didn’t have a lot of confidence in it and wasn’t excited about getting out to shoot it very often. I didn’t know much about the technical specs of ARs, but that rifle killed my interest in civilian ARs for almost a decade until I bought my first BCM (after reading this forum for most of a deployment).

I recently upgraded my Bushmaster with a BCM RE assembly, FCG, and furniture, a Colt selector, and a PSA premium BCG, and it functions great and feels more “solid,” for lack of a more thorough technical assessment. It’s interesting to read the comments about overgassing here, since my rifle seems to have a stronger recoil impulse than the military M4s I’m used to. I’m going to experiment with an H2 buffer to see if I can tame the recoil a little. This rifle will end up being a training / loaner rifle that I’ll probably use to experiment with new components once in a while.