If a man was looking for a buy off the shelf AR-15 and had around a grand to put in it, what's the best one for reliability, accuracy and overall quality?

Uses:

Home Defense
Coyote Hunting

Your not specific enough. But you might look at the RRA operator, currently going for 1k.

I would buy a Stag myself.

I think a coyote gun that doubles for home defense would do the trick. While you can use an M4 for coyote hunting, I would suspect you would do more coyote hunting than home defense.

Lets work on a profile. I assume you would want a 16-18 inch barrel for manuverability, a flat top for optics, .223 or 5.56 for ammo(?). There are many stock options, fixed or collapsible basically. There are weight choices, mostly barrel contour. There are handguard options, basically free float vs not, may help accuracy for hunting coyotes.

I bought a Rock River midlength upper with a 16 inch lightweight barrel (not chrome lined) with an aluminum free float tube with a flat top receiver, it has a rail front gas block so the fixed sight is absent. I have a LRB lower with a 4 position stock. It weighs 7.5 pounds with scope loaded. It fits easily in the truck for roadside coyote encounters. I could easily add folding irons and QD scope mount and have a fine home defense weapon. I am into this, built to my desire for roughly $700. I think you have plenty of budget for a great rifle, just figure out how you want it.

Rock River, Stag, Armalite, Bushmaster/Remington/DPMS and many others make a great AR.

18 to 20 inch barrel would be fine.

Yes, more coyote hunting than use for home stuff.

Optics yes, probably a red dot or something similiar.

Anything under 9lbs scopes is fine.

A lot depends on what type of stock you want, coll or target. If you want the best set for accuracy a Magpul, but they are heavier than the adjustables. The rra comes with a free floated guard, yankee hill fold down front, removable A2 iron rear site, chromed bolt and carrier, Ergo grip. Above mentioned brands are great, but in these tight money days its the extras that make a difference.

What about the Smith and Wesson units?

If you go with RRA you wont be disappointed. They all the varieties your looking for.

I bought an operator for my wife. 1/2" groups with 40gr BT and X-terminator. That was just a handload I worked up for another rifle, I didn't even tune it to the rifle.

I don't think you will go wrong with S and W either. CDNN has a bunch on sale for the $7-800 range. Mostly tactical type guns though.

I've had great luck with mine.

Terry

Armalite. The original. kwg

Colt equals quality parts. For a compact carbine, the 6920 is hard to beat. For pure AR accuracy, take a look at the 6724 stainless barrelled rifle called the HBar Elite. Very accurate.

Read this, contains most if not all the info you're looking for.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?...mp;single=true&gid=5&output=html

Sportsmans Warehouse has this

Sportsmans Warehouse

I am not any kind of expert.. I have shot numerous colts and bought a rock river. In my experience the RR is much more accurate. I dont have any bad opinions on any, just that the several rock rivers I have experience with shoot much better groups than the colts did.
I'm not saying you cant make one shoot better, just that if I was buying for out of the box accuracy, I would go with the RR. No problems meeting the 1" moa guarantee on the one I bought, I was pleasantly suprised.

I have a Bushmaster XM15E2 and I paid $820.00. Spend the rest on ammo and mags.

White Oak Armament, with DMR barrel and A4 receiver (not listed but it's an option).

+10000000

should be able to find one for your budget, maybe a little used, but it's not gonna matter....this is thee way to go imo

It would be hard to beat the Rock River Predator Pursuit for that money.

BCM, Colt, S&W M&P, DD, etc.

I have a RR Predator Pursuit, and could not be more impressed with reliability or accuracy. I dropped the RR National Match trigger in it, and hand load. Not as light as the M4, but puts the copper and lead where I want it.

I was at a gun show yesterday and overheard someone telling how great their AR has been. Then heard the round count "without a single jam" it brought to light that most any brand will work for what 90% of shooters use them for and how they use them.

For me there's only a few brands that I would buy and my builds get only proven parts.

This one:
http://m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=65212

BCM is way ahead of most others...

I agree with what TWR and bearstalker have stated in the above post.

A box full of BCM stuff arrived at my door yesterday! This will be my first from them but I've heard a lot of good stuff about them.

Terry

They'll work just fine for your purposes. Put a 1.5-5X scope on it and kill lots o' stuff.

I bought a CMMG 16" bargain bin for 625.00 shipped, 650.00 with FFL and it looked new, zero blemishes. The accuracy may be complete luck, but it easily shoots 1"-1.5" five shot groups at 100 with a pathetic, parallax plagued Weaver 2.5x7 rimfire scope that is currently in use. My loads are 55gr Blizkings over 27.2 grains of Varget.

I can't say it is the "best" but definitely affordable. I wanted to get in to AR's at the least cost possible and I have no regrets. I am waiting on a Leupold AR 3x9 to arrive and look forward to more load testing.

I've owned Colt, Bushmaster and Armalite in the past and would be happy with any/all of them but anymore I prefer RRA.

I have a RRA Preditor Persuit with a 20" barrel and a RRA Coyote Carbine with a 16" barrel..both shoot "lights out". The Coyote Carbine with the 16" barrel works well for both hunting and home defense. Nice guns...

Elwood

I have an R15 up for sale (classifieds) which will fit your needs perfectly.

Bump.

I'm looking at the Mod-2 in this link:
http://www.bravocompanyusa.com/BCM-Mid-16-AR15-Bravo-Company-s/142.htm

Any thoughts, or other suggestions?

BCM is top notch. Middies are pretty sweet.

The cheese grater handguard of the mod2 probably isn't going to give you anything functionally over the mod0 unless the cheese grater is free floated. Other than a light and maybe a VFG, what are you going to mount on your handguard? Unless you're going to use all that rail space, it is probably something you'll regret.

I don't know the cost difference between the mod0 and mod2, but consider how much of a discount you are getting on the rear sight and rail and see if it is really the right choice.

You might be happier buying the mod0, and adding the rear sight and *free float* rail of your choice at your leisure.

Wow, good response. Unfortunately, this is my first AR and I haven't a clue what mods/features I want. I'm just jumping in and will go from there.

So the Mod 0 may be the better choice. Good to know. Thanks!

Here's one I will sell, it's a Colt and doesn't have many rounds, (less than 100) through it with collapsible stock and regular stock. $899.00

You might consider the BCM mid lightweight instead of the regular.

I will call them tomorrow. Thanks!

Assuming that is all Colt except for the collapsible stock, that seems like a good buy.

If one wants what looks like an A2 with a collapsible stock added to it. It would come down to whether someone wants a shorter barrel and flat top upper receiver or not.

BCM would be a great choice but if you don't want a rail (cheezs grater?) have then put a Troy TRX Extreme rail/tube on it. It's free floated and lightweight, has an OD of 1.750" instead of 2" or more.

If you don't need a free floated handguard, this is the one I'd take for a general purpose do it all gun.
http://www.bravocompanyusa.com/BCM-M4-Carbine-AR15-Bravo-Company-lightweight-s/150.htm

The TRX Extreme is my favorite as well (13" version). I like that length to get my support arm out where I like it, and then run a flashlight on top of the tube in front of that.

I will say that with mid lengths, I don't feel as much of a need to do something else with the handguard as I do with carbine lengths. That standard mid length handguard is *almost* long enough.

After a couple of AR's, I'd say that there isn't a factory rifle that meets my criteria, but you can have what you want built.

I'd get a rock river lower w/ their two stage trigger, and have WOA build me a mid length upper w/ their SPR barrel in a mid length with a free float tube.

To me the M4's are too loud w/ the 16" barrel and give up a bit of accuracy on factory battle rifle copies, but the 20" varmint guns like the predator persuit are too nose heavy for a combination defense/varmint gun.

After my Armalite M4 I figured I wanted the above mentioned combo, but got tempted into the predator persuit due to dealer pricing, but then screwed over by RRA shipping everything UPS and breaking up the shipment so my savings were more than blown by $200 shipping fees.

The fun part of an AR is how you can change it to exactly what you want. You really don't need a gunsmith for 99% of the changes. An AR is really a component rife.
I went with Colt as this is what AR's are matched against. I also wanted a 5.56 chamber instead of the 223. Ammo is a little hotter and a 1/7 twist will let me shoot heavier bullets.
I bought an almost new Colt HBAR Target, Match, Competition for $850.

Changes are easy and there are thousands for parts out there to
build just what you want.
I wanted a varmit rifle so I cut off the front sight, installed an ambi safety (I'm a lefty) bought a LH ergo grip, lightened the trigger with JP yellow spring kit, added a Burris PEPR scope mount and a Redfield 4-12X AR scope. Waiting to see how it shoots before adding a Houge free floating front handguard.