[jester]

I ask you this,

What is the purpose of your buying the rifle?

I had a girlfreind who was a Nasty Guardsgirl...oh that sounds just so wrong. She was doing the OCS thing and while waiting she asked if I knew where I could get her a dummy 16 to train with. Ah she was so sweet and cute I didn't laugh at her to badly. Since there was little point to buying your own rubber dummy rifle for training. Especialy since they cost half as much as the real thing.

So, what is your purpose for buying a "rifle." Is it to practice and learn or relearn to shoot? Or is it to also practice the whole taking it down and reassembling it thing as well? Or is it just for the whole cool factor?

I personaly doubt you can use a rifle enough in the civilian world to develope a good sense of muscle memory. But, if that is what you want to do, then go with the real thing, IF you can find one, even the generic variants which some are more than reasonable. Or do what I am doing for my Cali legal ARs, buying the lowers and then the uppers. The downside, it is impossible to find the uppers right now, as well as it bewing hard to find the fully assembled ones. Folks are buying up the rifles, their components and the ammo like it is crazy as they expect a new ban to hit with this adminsitration.

IF it is shooting and honing your skills, then Get yourself a Ruger 10/22 and master the basics with an autoloader, or even a Marlin or AR-7. Just master the basics, trigger and breath control, sighting with proper sight alignment and then work your way up to the shooting positions, and even magazine changes with the rapid or even sustained fire. A benefit to the .22 is 500 rounds is between 12 and 20 bucks, for a AR class you can't get that much for under 300.

Thats just my two centavos.