I am about to buy my first AR.

After seeing all the posts, and shooted with several AR of my friends, disassembled them to how they are made, I decided that I want to buy an Olympic Arms K4B, to my judgement is the closest one to an M16A2.

Before to go to Israel fo holidays, three days after the WTC attack,I called the Italian distributor, and he told me that there were no problems to get them.

I went some days ago to my favourite gunshop in Rome and the owner told me that he has several rifles from Oly (most of them are K3B) booked, money as anticipation cashed, but nobody know nor the price nor the time of the arrival for these rifles.

Yesterday I went to range to shoot with my Garand, and I shot olso with a K3B of a friend of mine (btw, it's a honey of rifle, but I would prefer minimum a 14" of barrel instead of 11"...) and he told me that Oly (and others) are not sending rifles because there are strog requests from "special teams" in USA.

Finally I took a look in the Oly site, and they say that there is a HUGE quantity of back orders.

What should I do? I fear I cannot buy it...

*FREEDOM IS NOT FREE*

All I can say is good luck, have a little patience.
Hope you get the rifle
-Chuck

Civilians are buying up everything in sight. It's like the period just before Y2K.

The military has plenty of M-16s for their own use. They don't need to buy any significant numbers of new ones. And anyway Oly isn't in on any government contracts.

I think this is the correct answer. About 10 years ago, I ordered a Oly lower, and it took them something like 6 or 8 months to deliver. Olympic Arms does not have tremendous capacity, and I think that the WTC attack in N.Y. just caught them without any rifles.  It will take them a while to build up their inventory for the domestic commercial sector.

Oly is junk, get a [b][size=5]BUSHMASTER[/size=5][/b]

Yeah,gotta go with a bushy!!!   [0j]

Hmm...  What do others think is the closest AR to an M16A2?  I am also planning on buying my first AR soon and I had decided that I wanted to go with the Bushmaster XM15 target match A2 20in.  From my research that seemed to be about as close as you could get to an M16A2.  Am I wrong?

Nope, Bushy has all mil-spec parts... don't know about Oly, but I here lots better reports about Bushmaster than Oly.

I hear Oly has tighter chambers, and magwells too.

In Italy Bushmaster has reputation to be prone to jam and to have bad customer service. I didn't see in the catalog of the italian importer anything looking like a M16A2.
Keep in count that what is displayed in the Bushmaster catalog is DIFFERENT from the italian one.

The other choice are: to buy a Colt made before 1994 (the others are without flash hiders and simply crappy...) Stoners (very high costs) and Oly. I saw the K4B, since I wanted a regular rifle and not carbine, and K3B, pratically a CAR15 with the long flash hiders and collapsable stock, very popular here in Italy.

I guess I have to book the rifle from my gun shop and hope for the better...

Shalom

I am curious about the gun rights in Italy. Are all civilians allowed to own guns? Do they have to be registered or licensed? What about high capacity? I have always been interested in knowing the gun laws of other countries. Anyone who knows any interesting facts about gun laws abroad, please post here or start a thread.

In Italy there is both licencing and registgration. You can buy everithing is classified "Common Firearms" in the National Catalogue of Firearms, issued by the government.
In this category there are weapons for hunting, selfdefence and target shooting.
AR15s are classified (due their cartridge and characteristics) like hunting rifles and you can own as many as you can buy.
Everytime you buy a weapon, within maximum 48 hours, you havo to register them to the nearest Police station. The same is for ammos or reloading powder.
There are three kinds of gun licence:
-Rifle for shooting
-Rifle for hunting
-Self defence (handguns only)
The first two are relatively common and easy to get, the third one is becaming harder and harder to get. Once you get a gun licence you can use it for 6 Years, but the Self defence you must renew once a year and every six month you should pass a shooting test.
To get a gun licence you should submit documentation to Police that you haven't criminal records, no drug or diseaese that can obstacle your capacity to will or understand even temporarly, and to be a member of a shooting club.
In these last days, a new law allow to buy compressed air guns with less than 75 joule of energy or muzzle load firearms without gun licence.