Ode to a retro AR-15

[imarangemaster]

The recent posts of M16A1 builds took me back to basic training: B-6-3, Ft. Ord, CA ,April, 1974. I recently happened upon my basic training "yearbook". I found pictures of me, an old 22 year old in a company of 17 and 18 year-olds. I even managed to keep most of my mustache (they told me because I was married and had a kid already, but I doubt it) and my ever present pipe full of Captain Black Tobacco. They called me "Pop" or "Dad" and I was the assistant Platoon Guide. I was often their confessor or fixer if they screwed up. I tried to mitigate their screw ups and keep the DI off their @ss. In basic, I truly did fall in love with the M16A1, and easily shot Expert. In the Hogans alley with a drill Sgt. hanging on to my belt as I advanced, it sprung to life in my hands, and I never missed a target. I had supreme confidence in the weapon. In the next three years as an MP, I would draw my M16A1 from the arms room seldom: Money runs, occasional raids, dignitary protection, and once as an MPI Investigator when detailed to a task force with the FBI looking for the Symionese Liberation Army in the Ft. Ord area.

I never carried an M16A1 in combat. Fast forward a few years, and I again had an AR retro platform: A GAU-5 A/A or GAU-5P as an Air Policeman in the AF reserve. Once again it felt familiar in my hands. Later, however, I did depend on the platform to keep me alive. Ten years after basic, I occasionally carried an M16A1 as a Police trunk weapon in Washington State, and again twenty years after basic, I constantly carried a confiscated XM177E2 as a LEO trunk weapon as a rural Deputy Sheriff in the Sierra Mountains and foothills. I used it frequently. It was my partner in high risk arrest and warrant service, drug raids, and fugitive hunts in the mountains and forests. I really appreciated the compactness and light weight of the XM177E2 trudging through the woods chasing fugitives. More than one goblin froze as he looked down the barrel of it on a raid or high risk arrest (one wet his pants on his front room floor, but he was a biker that was a child molester.. he almost died then). I always had confidence in the AR15 platform. It is an old friend. It is comfortable. It is trusted. It is reliable. I can depend on it when the chips are down.

Aside from professionally, I have in my personal life built, carried, and sold AR platforms since the 1980s. Always it was retro, both because it was what I knew and also it was what was available. I about 2006, I finally built an M16A2 clone with an FN 1/7" barrel and a Colt upper. It was too damn heavy and I sold it. I tried an M4gery in about 2009, mounted all the crap on it, and HATED it! It was almost 10 pounds! In 2010 I returned to the retro and built an almost XM177E2, that changed to a slick side GAU build. Then I embarked on what would become my current 601 build. At just over 6 pounds, it is light, accurate, and reliable. It is the AR15 as intended by Eugene Stoner's design team at ArmaLite. It is the AR15 developed for ARPA and issued in project AGILE in 1961 and 1962 to be carried by US Special Forces Advisers in Southeast Asia even before there was MAC-V SOG in 1964. It is the ArmaLite AR-15!

I had this bizarre sense of Deja Vuseveral weeks ago when I was shooting the GAU and 601 in the Siskiyous with my son in law. The sound of the recoil spring and buffer going by my ear as I fired, the "slap, rack, bang" of the magazine being seated and the weapon charged, the feel of the triangular hand guard resting in my off-hand with the sling around my forearm and elbow. The smell and taste of burned propellant. I could almost hear Drill Sgts. Gallagher and Prater saying...

"Assume prone firing position. With one magazine of twenty rounds of 5.56 ammo, lock and load. Render weapon safe and stand bye for the command to fire. Ready on the right, ready on the left, ready on the firing line. Commence fire!"

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