Armalite

Based on sales figures and some good, old-fashioned SWAG math, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million AR-15 rifles floating around the country, give or take a couple of million. And guess where all that AR popularity started? Armalite.

The gun industry is filled with good people. One such person is ArmaLite president Tommy Thacker. Tommy is currently raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and we thought we’d help him out by syndicating his letter to friends and family to see if the GunsAmerica readership would also like to get involved with this worthy cause.

If these Armalite ARs don’t look familiar, it is becasue they are all new. Armalite has overhauled the line. They were one of the few companies at SHOT this year to come out with a total redesign. They re-envisioned all of their AR pattern guns, and are working on the rest of the catalog. And so far, we like the new direction.

As a retired US Marine Infantry Unit Leader, I’ve had to rely on a rifle for survival. I have nothing against hunting or competitions, but I do very little of either. I spend the majority of my time now training law-abiding citizens how to survive life-threatening situations. I specialize in armed response. I demand high levels of accuracy and absolute reliability. And the ArmaLite M-15TBN has met my standards, and then some. This AR excels at variety of utilitarian tasks and delivers spot-on accuracy well past 600 yards. If you’re only going to own one AR, the 15TBN would be a good choice.

The AR-31 is the latest bolt action rifle from Armalite that has been developed as a short action version of their successful AR-30 and AR-50 rifles. Unlike the AR-30 series of rifles that were chambered in .338 Lapua and .300 Winchester Magnum, the AR-31 is chambered in .308 Winchester, although more calibers may become available in the future. When I first saw the AR-31 with its black barreled action rails, and chassis, the first thing that popped into my mind is “man is that thing tactical”. The AR-31 is more than just a “tacticool” rifle though, as it’s laden with features that make it a heavy-duty precision rifle suitable for Regular Joe’s and Law Enforcement professionals alike.

In this short-action version of the AR, Armalite shortened the receiver and has changed the forestock to get a shorter bolt action. The rifle has a 24-inch barrel and uses AR 10B magazines.

There were not a lot of rock star new guns this year at SHOT Show 2013, but one of them was the ArmaLite AR-30A1. It is an out of the box, sub-MOA sniper rifle that comes in either .338 Lapua Magnum or .300 Winchester Magnum. ArmaLite was kind enough to put us at the front of the list for testing this gun, and this week we shot the .338 Lapua Target version of the AR-30A1. Overall it not only performed flawlessly, but also handily beat every chassis and chassis-style sniper rifle we have ever tested for out of the box accuracy, recoil, ergonomics and just overall feel. The AR-30A1 is a tight, clean, long range sniper machine and will be equally at home in a SWAT truck gun rack as it will be on the line at a long range F-Class match. At a direct from ArmaLite price of $3,599, there is not an out of the box sniper rifle on the planet that compares to the AR-30A1 in this price range. I would even go so far as to challenge rifles twice the price to prove why they are worth more.

Precision marksmen have known for years that ArmaLite produces some of the finest long-distance rifles out there, at an extremely reasonable price, out of the box. At the 2013 SHOT Show ArmaLite continued the legacy by unveiling the AR-30AT. Chambered in either .300 Win. Mag. (with an MSRP of $3,460) or .338 Lapua Mag. (MSRP $3,599), the rifle’s looks alone are enough to attract shooters, but it’s the performance that keeps them coming back. Both versions boast .25 to .75 MOA performance at 300 yards. The .300 Win. Mag. version comes with a 24-inch barrel, with the Lapua chambering boasting a 26-inch tube. Regardless of chambering, the barrels are chrome moly, have a one-in-ten-inch, right-hand twist, are fully free floated and are tipped by ArmaLite’s recoil-reducing, accuracy-enhancing brake. Each gun weighs 14.5 pounds, the stocks can be adjusted for lengths of pull between 13.6 and 15.6 inches, and the buttpad and cheekpiece can also to tailored to each shooter’s needs. A rail atop is long enough for law enforcement to mount night-vision optics in conjunction with their daytime scopes, it uses a robust Mauser-style safety and the bolt-actions come with a five-round box magazine.

We always get the question on AR-15 articles, “do they make one that is California legal?” The answer is yes, many companies do make California legal guns, and Armalite, the original “AR” in AR-15, is the latest to offer a series of guns specifically addressing statutory requirements in The People’s Republic of California. It is a Cali-legal version of their very popular Special Purpose Rifle (SPR), Mod-1, and despite the limitations built into the gun because of the California statutes, it is a beast of an AR with all the key features you would want in a high quality M4 sized carbine for tactical work, personal defense and3-Gun competition. The monolithic upper is unique in that the bottom three Picatinny rails on the quad are all replaceable for flat or half flat sections, and it comes with the extra sections so you can choose your configuration. Armalite has carved a niche for themselves in the new AR-15 market by offering only guns with high end features, and this gun is the flagship of their line, now Cali legal. The SPR Mod-1 carries an MSRP of $1,554, and comes standard with a chrome lined barrel, two stage trigger and hard coat matching finish, as well as the patented hardened Armalite bolt. Now Californians can buy the same gun as the rest of us, made legal for the arcane laws of their state, and the mods are easily reversible if those laws are ever changed. The SPR Mod-1 from Armalite is all you could want in an AR, made legal for California.