Well we sure do have plenty of them on the market but I love the way that looks from the factory, and you would expect that it should be a high-quality coming from SA.
So it's another cheap AR-15 with a Springfield roll mark on the receiver. Why would I want this over a Palmento State Armory $500 build? Springfield makes good guns, so does Smith & Wesson... but when it comes to the AR-15 platform they punt and play off the gullible thinking their brand actually means something.
Now give me a good free-floated modern AR-15 with a better than average trigger and bolt, a commercial buffer and nice stock... at a decent price ~ $600 ~ and that would stand out from all these generic price point guns. I can build one for that, you would think a mass-production facility could do the 20-30 minutes of assembly and hit that price too.
The pre-release hype was a bit much.
Bunch of tri-athlete type guys and girls climbing hills, smeared with mud in Under Armor style clothing to "defend their legacy"
Its an AR with Bravo Company plastic , a heavy tungsten buffer, a set screw to take up the slop between the upper & lower and a Pmag that we can't have.
MSRP of $900.
The only new AR that even caught my lately was the new Sig, I can't remember the model of it. That was probably the biggest redesign for that platform in a while.
Funny how the handguard melted off in a couple of the reviews....
Sig is the only big company that's innovated anything new lately. Armalite, Aero, FN have some pretty decent >$999 AR-15s if you have to buy a factory gun.
I've never been a huge fan of factory AR-15s but I heard a very interesting take last night from Adam Kraut (gun rights lawyer from PA, is running for NRA board).
Essentially he said: There's fair number of Springfield die-hards out there and that they judge the acceptability of a platform based on whether Springfield manufactures a version of it. If them making an AR-15 type rifle gets more people to use and/or accept the platform, it's a good thing.
It does look very basic for that $900 MSRP though.
Its horribly basic for $900, but people are going to eat it up because its a Springfield. Then they get it home realize they want all the bells and whistles the coolkids have and proceed to drop $1500 on a free float tube, aftermarket trigger, piston kit, and the half a dozen other things that you need to 0per8e.