How Accurate Can an AR Get?

[Limeyfellow]

They can be made very accurate and the more money you are willing to pump into the action, the better the accuracy. Of course you can go out to $10000-15000 on the rifle, but that is not your average AR15 you pick directly off the shelf or rack mind you. An AR15 can be anything from say 4 MOA to .25 MOA depending on what you do to it.

 

[AK103K]

An AR15 can be anything from say 4 MOA to .25 MOA depending on what you do to it.

More likely what you feed it. Other than your standard, crappy, issue type AR trigger, which you can actually often overcome, ammo can be more of an issue. You can have that very same 4MOA to .25MOA swing in the same gun at the same time, just by swapping mags.

You never really know what you have until you actually spend some time with it. Even then, you might have a $2500 custom rifle, and if all you feed it is GI ball, your realistically probably only going to have a $2500 2-3MOA rifle.

 

[FlyinBryan]

my 16" heavy barrel bushmaster will shoot 1" very consistantly.

my brother was impressed and bought one exactly like it and it is just as good.

my friend was so impressed that he sold his match target colt and bought the same model with the same results.


all are box stock and have harris bipods.


on a side note, not accuracy related:

mine and my brothers have had a combined 8000+ rounds, all handloads. they have combined for exactly zero stoppages of any kind.

not one single failure to feed, extract, eject, or return to full battery, NEVER, NOT ONE!!!. the forward assists have never been used.

it cracks me up when folks say ar's are accurate, and ak's are reliable.

 

[Crunker1337]

Sorry if this is a stupid question... but at what range does your Bushmaster shoot 1" at?

 

[HJ857]

My Bushmaster Patrolman M4 will shot an inch at 100 yards, but only with carefully handloaded Nosler BT's at a ridiculously long OAL.

My standard 55 grain, magazine length loads yield 2.5-ish inch groups at a hundred, or 9 out 10 shots in the head zone of an IDPA target at 300.

 

[bogie]

A while back John Feamaster won a BR match with AR using surplus AA2200 powder....So, they can very accurate. I have DPMS upper with 75gr VLD Bergers that is very accurate!

What I heard was that it was one target - he couldn't keep things consistent enough to run all five.

 

[FlyinBryan]

oops, sorry crunker, 100 yards.

like hj857 said. handloads only. hornady 69g hpbt or nosler custom competition 68g bullets.

standard 55g fmj opens it up to about 2"

i also seat mine fairly long since bushmasters are chambered to fire 5.56 nato.

i love my bushmaster. its the best ar ive ever had.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Those are one inch grid squares. Both targets were shot at 100yds with a factory Bushmaster trigger and a 3.5x TA11 ACOG (donut reticle). They were shot from a bench with a Grippod for front support and an I-SERT soft case as rear support. As indicated, ammo was Black Hills Blue 75gr Match. Barrel is a 16" midlength SS 1:8 Lilja. Here is the rifle in the configuration used for all of the shoots (minus the suppressor for two of them):

The "oops" is where I started on the wrong diamond for a subsequent group. The downside of a 3.5x scope - tough to tell if you have already shot on that target at 100yds.

 

[Crunker1337]

Bartholomew Roberts... I don't see your post, save for the signature.

EDIT: Now I do.

 

[SP Shop Foreman]

This accurate.

http://www.shooterready.com


Allen
SP

 

[taliv]

bart, that looks so much like my gun. i'm running almost the exact same config

and getting almost the exact same groups suppressed/unsuppressed. really, that looks just like the target i shot today, except my suppressed groups were low and to the right instead of left

 

[.38 Special]

I had an Eagle Arms "Eagle Eye" that was reliably capable of 5 shot 1/4" groups at 100 yards with two brands of factory match ammo. It was the most accurate factory rifle of any type that I have ever fired.

It also came with a 1.25" diameter bull barrel and weighed 18 pounds without scope, so was essentially a very silly rifle.

 

[Crunker1337]

An 18 pound AR-15?! That is sort of... goofy.
Aside from the bull barrel, what made it so heavy?

 

[.38 Special]

Dunno. I always figured it was just the barrel. I don't know what 24 inches of inch-and-a-quarter bar stock weighs, but I'll bet it's in the neighborhood.

And yes, "goofy" is the perfect word for the rifle. It was hanging on the wall of the local Turner's Outdoorsman for at least a year (price tag $1200 in, I think, about 1990) before I finally decided I had to have it. At the time, I also had a Remington 40X BBRKS in .222 -- essentially a factory benchrest gun -- that wouldn't go much better than .4" at 100 yards. So I was impressed with the capabilities of a made-for-accuracy AR15.

 

[SNEAKY PETE]

My OLD SP-1= .421 CTC 10 shot grps@100

Old Sneaky here. I'll admit that the title is a bit misleading. The Lower belongs to my '72 Colt SP-1 with a JP Enterprises adj fire control grp set @ 1-1/4>1-1/2# and the Upper is Their( JP Enterprises) Grade II upper with a 24" cryo super-match SS barrel, heat sink, Free-floated front H/G, adjustable gas block, flat-top with a Weaver T-36 scope( 1/8 moa dot). Shooting off the bench thru a Moly treated bore with handloads using '77 LC brass, Hornady 55gr V-max moly projectiles, Win S/R primers and 25.5gr IMR-4895 seated to 2.249+/- .001 with a runout of +/-.003. I regularly shoot sub-3/4" 10 shot groups off the bench @ 100. total cost of gun as shot, <$ 1500.00. I really like JP Enterprises--good equiptment- nice people. THANX--SNEAKY