April 2016 Volume 17 • ISSUE 190 | Page 39

Combine a solid rifle with a sling, good ammo, holographic red dot sight, and flashlight, and you have the makings of an excellent home defense rifle that, with a little training, anyone in the family can operate. The 5.56mm cartridge is inexpensive to shoot, has more Which caliber is best for the AR-15? Well, that answer depends on what the rifle will be used for. The 5.56mm chambering is perfect for home defense, target shooting, varmint hunting, or a very minimum chambering for deer and pigs. If deer hunting is the main usage for the rifle, get a 6.5 Grendel or 6.8 SPC. Want to shoot pigs in the brush? Buy a .458 SOCOM. If you want to shoot suppressed and have readily available factory subsonic ammo, go with a .300 Blackout. range than a .22LR, and is highly accurate in the AR-15 platform. All of the above make it a nobrainer for target shooting. Want a rifle just to bring last eight years seeing great popularity in the AR-15 platform, it comes as no surprise that it has slowly made its way into the hunting world. Equipping an AR-15 rifle with a high quality 3-9x optic, free float handguard, fluted barrel with a carbine length gas system, and chambering of choice for the game to the range to punch tiny groups in paper at 200 yards? Equip the rifle with a heavy bull barrel, match grade trigger, high quality bipod, high magnification being pursued gives you an excellent hunting rifle. The AR-15 isn’t just any other black rifle anymore only bought by collectors of military style guns. It has grown in popularity and is now being purchased by competition shooters, hunters, ca- scope with heavy duty mounting hardware, and match There is also a rifle called the AR-10 which is essentially a “beefed-up” version of the AR-15 and is designed to handle .308 length cartridges. The possibilities are endless. sual collectors, and people interested in grade ammo. This setup gives you an amazingly accurate target gun. Some of these guns recoil so little that you can actually see the target when hit versus, say, a 30-06 where you will have to reacquire the target to see where the bullet hit. Along with having a huge gun culture, America is steeped deeply in the hunting tradition. With the having a great rifle for defense. If you are a gun owner and don’t own an AR-15 style rifle, then go buy one, you won’t be sorry you did. Buy lots of mags and ammo too, because everyone will want to shoot it. It defines our nation’s gun culture. It is America’s rifle.