I swung into a fun store on the way home where I had bought an AR (Sabre M5) about a year ago. Store guy and I were talking about Sabre AR's and he brings over a sweet SPR and hands it to me. Charging the trigger he says try it. Nice! NM trigger. The trigger on mine was terrible but I kept working on it (single stage) and made it much better. Now we have worked the action on this rifle several times, pulled the trigger, worked the collaspable stock.... so I started to push the take down pin to look inside. Guy starts to stammer quietly and says "uuuhmmm please don't do that". He goes on with some BS about a guy messing up a shotgun or some thing so I handed the rifle back to him.



Is there some reason why a customer cannot open an AR to look at the feed ramps, bolt, etc?

Store policy?

We had a guy field strip a Garand one time, took him and his friend more than an hour to put it back together. After that, we stop letting people try to field strip it unless they had cash money to buy.

Understandable.  I don't think that popping the top on an AR to check a trigger is a big deal.  It would have been better had he just said it was store policy and not given some other story.

Because I have seen people pull the back pin and have the upper pivot and slam into the lower hard enough to mar the plastic grips. To a lot of folks "rack rash" Is not NIB anymore. The pins and upper lower mating surfaces may be tighly fitted and repeated opening and closing may loosen them. In the end you didn't need to see.  If you were buying then yea you can open it.

It appears that is the thin line.

But those Sabre Tactical AR's are sweet aren't they?  I am getting one of their AR-10's as soon as they are released.  (I hope)

???

Perhaps if you had asked first? He had know idea what you were doing, or if you even knew how. Last thing he needed was the carrier falling out, etc.

 

Retail stores in general are not going to let you take apart any firearm...they don't know you or your level of experience...hence the guy above and the issue with the Garand.  With that said...the next time you want to see the working action or parts just ask the clerk to take it down or field strip it for you.  Most will do this...they are trying to sell you a gun after all and will do what needs to be done to close the deal.

I thought about that when we first started talking I had asked for a spanner wrench for a loose nut from a RRA handguard I had installed on a Sabre.  I had stated that I had bought an AR from them a year prior.  We talked about the brand and I went into detail about my trigger issue that I repaired.  I also mentioned that I own a AR-10 .... blah blah...



I have bought all of my guns new from local dealers and I have never had this happen before.  I just thought it was strange how he responded.