Quote History Quoted:
It's a very interesting article. Thanks for posting.
My take away from this is that only the military rifles undergo the testing as required by the government. The commercial rifles are not tested to the same military specification. That could also explain why the commercial guns aren't cleaned after test firing.
View Quote
I can see that would most likely be the case.
It's obvious that Colt
does at least test fire them. As stated above I have
never gotten a NIB Colt AR that did not have obvious signs of having been fired. I always run a dry patch through the barrel when I get it home; there's always fouling on the patch. You can also see copper streaks on the feed ramps and often brass specks on the bolt face. So it's obvious they do indeed test fire each one. A lot of other AR's I've owned come so pristine from the factory that you know they never saw a single round of test firing. Nobody can clean off firing evidence that well. My purpose for this thread was out of curiosity to find out if the test firing is a couple of rounds or a couple of magazines. I had been told years ago that the factory fires two rounds to test cycling and the bolt hold open. Based on the evidence it's apparently at least the equivalent of a couple of 20-round magazines. I'm betting that's a holdover from Vietnam when 20-round mags were the issued flavor.
Anyway, the bottom line is, knowing that a lot of people buy a Colt AR NIB and just put it away, those people can at least have some confidence that it was test fired at the factory. I know some warranty issues don't show up until several hundred rounds have been fired, but at least people who keep their Colts in brand new condition can rest assured that their rifles left the factory with a handful of rounds successfully launched down the pipe.
I can't tell you how many AR's I've owned and gotten rid of since 1992 that didn't work 100% right out of the box. In this day of another pending ban, I made the decision weeks ago to get rid of any "aftermarket" AR in my stable and stick to the horsies.