Thread: Went shooting yesterday....

Originally Posted by fm2176

The HK 416 itself is based on an AR lower

This is a good point, too. The HK416 is basically a gas-piston AR (and not the only one, either... plenty of companies other than H&K offer gas-piston ARs or uppers). It doesn't make a lot of sense to shit-talk the AR design and then say that the HK416 is a superior design, when the HK416 itself is a member of the AR family. It's like saying "GM cars are crap... a Pontiac would be a better choice!" I assume Bowzer meant to direct his criticism at the DI gas system rather than at ARs in general; it should be borne in mind that the DI gas system is not an inseparable feature of all ARs, and that if you don't like DI gas systems, the versatility of the AR design makes it easy to get an AR rifle that doesn't have a DI gas system.

In fact, I think it could be argued that the existence of gas-piston ARs (such as the HK416) is a tribute to the modularity and adaptability of the AR design. If the AR design wasn't so adaptable (and successful), H&K wouldn't have made their own AR variant.