Anyone here into firearms?

MacCool

20+ years shooting the AR platform, 15 of them on a high round-count SWAT team training twice a month, two AR15 armorer's courses, and 15+ formal training courses wherein I have seen all manner of malfunctions and equipment failure on a wide variety of rifles.

I do confess I have a UTG rifle case for one AR around here somewhere which hasn't fallen apart in 5 years.

UNKNOWN_370

Kool beans. Much respect to the job and position.

BUT... Again, I have seen these buffer assemblies run well on DI guns at the range with a couple of friends that run them on AR builds. I dont know how much trust I'd have on this with the extra impact from piston rifles, but this will be fine on a DI gun.

While i'm sure you seen dozens of failures, if not hundreds? I also know that police and SWAT usually run, RRA, Bushmaster, Stag, BCM components. You wont find a malfunction on a police gun from a UTG buffer assembly. Thats the kind of product that gets tested in civilian ranges and sporting events brother.

that said, with a serious shortage of parts. Its just an option. Even though I seen these run flawless... I did say just to make your build operational.

decided to go on amazon to find a review. While one guy seemed to have an out of spec part. The rest seemed to be doing well.

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: UTG Billet Mil Spec Buffer Tube Kit Heavy Duty!!

I'm sure I can find more credible reviews and discussions if necessary.

When it comes to AR's. One thing you should know with your extensive experience. There isn't a perfect AR out there off the shelf. You will always need to change something, even on the highest end of gun, Sights, trigger assemblies, sometimes even the whole lower due mag bevels are way too thin for anything more than basic plinking (depending on Builder) .
also different builds match different parts, and what works in one rifle may not work in another.

Govt contract AR's leave you limited to Only certain brands. I'm sure UTg isn't on the SWAT contract list.

MacCool

There is a wide variety of ways these rifles get into service depending on the agency, all the way from contracted purchasing to allowing individual officers to use their own weapon, but you're right in that when contracted, the purchasing decisions are generally made by the bean counters and not the people actually using them.

My opinions on rifle or component quality are based on what I've seen over the years. Having seen a lot of failures of one kind or another, I've developed a set of biases relative to what brand of rifle or components I would ever own to put to hard use. When people start taking about rifles, there is always someone who chimes in and says "My Bushmaster has been completely reliable". You're right, any company can occasionally make a bad rifle, or in the case of Bushmaster, for example, occasionally make a good one. I tend to view it from the standpoint of "if I want the best odds of getting a reliable, high-quality rifle, what brand would I buy based on the performance of the many brands I've seen in hard use?"