My Thoughts on The Colt LE6920MP-B AR15

So, before the recent Sandy Hook shooting as of late 2012 I decided to go into my local sporting goods store for a AR. At the time there was a wide selection of AR's and I had my pick of the lot. Now when shopping AR's in the $800-$1300 range you can find a wide array of crappy AR's to some well built ones. Now before this I was prettymuch an AR noob but I am a fast learner and I wanted to round out my collection. I scoured the Bowels of the internet and forums for about a good year before I came to the point of being comfortable buying an AR. At this point I had heard it all, "Cheap AR's are ok... you aren't going to war", "Only Buy Mil-spec, everything else is crap", "Build your own!!! Nothing can beat hand selected parts", ect. When it did finally come down to buying one I had prettymuch made up my criteria. What I wanted out of an AR was:
-Modern Carbine
-A Quad rail/ hand guards capable of accepting accessories
-BUIS
-Magnetic particle inspected barrel/ bolt carrier
-Gov Profile barrel w/ M203 cutout
-Preferably a flip down front sight
-Threaded muzzle
-Chrome lined bore
-M4 feeding ramps
-Mil-Spec buffer tube

everything from that point I could compromise on. So I ended up looking at a few Smith & Wesson M&P's, a DPMS, a Bushmaster, and Even a Sig M400. I made my way to the Colts and at that point I fell In love. What I saw was the Colt LE6940 (Not a typo.... just keep reading) It met all of my requirements above and included a Monolithic quad rail.... and that is where things trailed off for me. Rather than buying that day I decided to research this 6940 because I was curious about the mono-quad rails. Based on what I could find about them I found less than Stellar results... well at least not $400 extra worth of results. Basically It was a free floated AR that was better suited as a DMR than as a patrol carbine. At this time I was assuming in a few years I was going to shoot out my barrel, I was most likely going to replace a bunch of things and I was also wanting a mid-length handguard in the future... this meant that the carbine length mono was not the way to go.

So upon giving up on the 6940 I moved over to the 6920MP-B... which aside from a few things met most of my criteria. It is basically your standard M4, fitted with Magpul Furniture. I have always been a fan of magpul and what they do to help lighten up and make the AR a KISS platform where necessary. Overall the Furniture seems to give the rifle a more cosmetically pleasing look. while at the same time it is slightly more ergonomic than a standard M4A1 variant.

Out of the box this rifle is compatible with a Optic and allows for co-witness with your BUIS. I went with an EO-Tech 512 (the full sized AA battery model). with the factory zero I was able to cowitness and shoot 4 MOA at 200 yards out of the box. This is exceptional.

Really by paying for a Mil-Spec AR you are paying for parts guaranteed to last. As far as performance or accuracy go thats really up to you the shooter. I would say with only around 400 rounds through this weapon that I am not an expert on this specific platform. but on every one of my shoots I was out in the desert and hiking with the weapon. On windy days I experienced zero malfunctions with the weapon system. I will attribute this however to the fact that I spend alot of time maintaining my weapons.

If I had to do it all over again I would buy this still buy this rifle. AR's are like Legos in a way so they are very easy to customize. I am also very sure that this guy will not stay in its stock configuration for very long. I am looking to replace the upper with a piston setup maybe a Ruger SR556 Upper. All in all this a great rifle and what I would say is the bare minimum for the Modern patrot/survivalist. Granted if the money is available I would suggest Investing Battle rifle or a Piston AR. Carbines are more fighting weapons... and the AR simply isn't cut out for medium game hunting as a backpack rifle.