If you're going for a long distance rifle you're going to want to put you money into the Barrel, the bolt, and the upper but you still want a decent lower but you don't need to go dumping $400 into it.
When you're building a pistol make sure you pay attention to your local and state laws.
On the pistol I wouldn't worry about the lower to much as you're not using it for long distance you're using it for short range self defense. one thing you do want to avoid in a lower is the plastic lowers, I had a bud break two plastic lowers from rough handling. The last thing you need is to be in a self defense situation fall and break your lower. Stick with the aluminum lowers.
That’s good advice there.
I’ve assembled several but I’m not sure that you save much money.
The lower is essentially just a trigger group housing, mag well and handle. The upper is where your bolt, bolt carrier, barrel, barrel extension, and rail is contained, the parts that really matter. You can spend big bucks on a rail but a decent free floated rail and the barrel and bolt are where I would spend my money. Milspec triggers suck but for your purposes any from a PSA nickel boron coated trigger for $30 bucks or so on up will be night and day better and will be good to go IMO.
As far as reliability AR’s have been around long enough and enough of them built and scrutinized that just about any will generally be reliable for civilian use. The higher end milspec and better parts are great but unless you’re using it for prolonged use in a war zone it really isn’t needed for Joe average that shoots a few rounds hunting, a mag or two at the range and puts it away clean for home protection or back in the safe until the next range day. I like quality guns but a cheapo AR realistically will do what most people need it to do without issue.
