Bushmaster XM-15 QRC (image JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

This is the first time I’ve wanted a Bushmaster AR-15 since I was a kid.

Bushmaster has been synonymous with the AR-15 for decades.Tens of thousands of them, if not more, are in use by law enforcement entities throughout the US, including the Texas Department of Public Safety. Even more have been sold to non-law enforcement civilians throughout our country.

In the past, Bushmaster has always been a decent enough product at a low price point. During the last several years of the race to the bottom of price, for a lot of companies, Bushmaster was the price point to beat.

Bushmaster XM15 (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster XM-15 (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

But a strange little thing has happened. On the competition’s way down — in both price and quality — Bushmaster didn’t lower their price. And they upped the quality. The XM-15 Quick Response Carbine (QRC) is one of the lowest, if not the lowest-priced Bushmaster AR-15 in their line-up. It’s also one of the better budget ARs I’ve shot.

Bushmaster XM15left side (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster XM-15 left side (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

Out of the box it looks a little weird. It shouldn’t. Not too many years ago, a carbine-length handguard and a 16” barrel length would have been what all the cool kids wanted. But in this new day of full-length rails (and they are good days) all that naked pencil-thin barrel looks strange. So does the lack of sights.

The XM-15 QRC model is a flat top with a receiver-length Picatinny rail on the upper receiver and no front sight. Instead, Bushmaster includes a Chinese-made miniature red dot optic. As far as quality, it functions well and I had no issues with it during the review. I didn’t fully test the battery life, but I left it on overnight without issue. The field of view is fairly small, there is a bluish tint to the image, and there is no night vision capability. It’s a cheap, workable optic.

Bushmaster XM15 red dot optic (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster XM 15 red dot optic (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

If you would like to add irons, you have a wide variety of rear sight options available to you. There are fewer options to add a front sight, like replacing the gas block with an A2 style front sight, or going with something like the exceptional Ultradyne Sights.

It’s been a while since I shot an AR with this short a handguard. Even my SBR’s have handguards all the way out to the muzzle, so getting out of the habit of reaching forward took some getting used to.

Bushmaster XM15 flash hider (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
The XM-15’s A2 birdcage-type flash hider (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

Of course, the result in a carbine-length hand guard ending well shy of the end of a lightweight muzzle is that you can start and stop that muzzle with a quickness. That’s great for moving to your target, or transitioning between targets. Of course, that also means it’s easy to move that muzzle during shot strings, making precise controlled pairs and follow-up shots more difficult.

In the old days, when you bought a Bushmaster AR the guy behind the gun counter, (who knew everything ever because he almost went to Vietnam), told you to throw away the non-MIL-STD Bushmaster bolt and buy one made by Colt.

In the old days, for shooters who really wanted to do a lot of shooting, there may have been some truth in that. Those days are gone. I popped the pins on the Bushmaster and pulled out the BCG and compared it to ones I pulled from my Colt ARs. Then I called the Bushmaster representative to confirm what I was looking at.

Bushmaster left, Colt right (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster left, Colt right (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

Yup, the XM-15 QRC’s carrier is chrome-lined 8620 steel and the bolt is Carpenter 158. They are almost identical. I say almost, because the gas key staking on the Colt bolt is a little bit deeper, but the staking on the Bushmaster bolt has been done well and would certainly pass inspection. Staying with the MIL-STD theme, the budget Bushmaster XM-15 rifle’s upper and lower receiver are forged 7075 aluminum alloy.

The barrel is the familiar Melonite-coated 4150 Chrome-Moly steel, with a 1:8” twist and topped with an A2 birdcage flash hider. The 16” barrel contour is defined by the Bushmaster website as “Superlight”, and it certainly is.

I’m not a fan of pencil barrel at all. I know a lot of folks are, and it’s appropriate on this “Mil-Spec” themed rifle. I find a thin barrel heats up fast, whips too much for precise shooting, and I’ll sacrifice a few ounces of weight to keep the muzzle down in fast fire any day.

Bushmaster XM15 right side (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster XM-15 right side (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

Obviously, because of the traditional hand guard set-up, the barrel isn’t free-floating. You’ll see the effect that the thin barrel profile and traditional handguard/gas tube set up has on accuracy.

Using the supplied red dot optic, my groups at 100 yards never got below 4 inches. In this case, it’s the arrow, not the Indian. The red dot is quite large, I’d guess close to 4 MOA, That’s suitable for CQB work, but not ideal at 100 yards or farther.

As advertised, it came bore sighted right out of the box. Using the supplied quick-detach mount, I found it shot center for elevation and 2 inches right at 25 yards with the first round fired. That made adjustments quick and easy, which was much appreciated. If you wanted to pound targets right out of the box, you’d be pretty close just picking up the gun, loading it, and having fun at the range.

Bushmaster XM15 scoped (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster XM-15 scoped (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

Replacing the red dot optic with a custom US Optics 10X scope, the rifle was capable of much more precise shooting. Placing the rifle in a Caldwell Stinger shooting rest and shooting five-round groups at 100 yards, the best shooting round was IWI’s M193 55gr FMJ printing an average of 2” groups for four-shot strings.

Not all 55gr FMJ surplus shot quite that well, but surplus M855 and Winchester’s 64gr Super X shot not even ¼” larger groups. Black Hills 77gr OTM actually produced the worst groups, which was a first for me, at 2 ½”.

For those of you who cringe at anything more than Minute of Angle precision, I’ll remind you that is better than what any service rifle, M16A2 or M4-type, I was deployed with achieved. My deployment guns just happened to be Colts, and the standard there was closer to 3 or 4 inches. It was a rare day that I could get to 2 MOA with any of the guns I was issued, even with a telescopic sight.

As it is, a competent shooter with the XM-15 is capable of striking a 19” silhouette reliably up to 600 yards, the same distance the maximum effective range our drill sergeant at Ft. Benning told us our M16A2 service rifle was capable of. Folks, he was being generous to us Privates and those worn-out guns, both.

Bushmaster XM15 chamber (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster XM-15 chamber (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

When it comes to reliably sending lead down range, the Bushmaster performed flawlessly. I lubed the gun with Rem-Oil prior to shooting and passed a bore snake down the barrel. At no point did I lube the gun or disassemble it in any way again until the shooting portion of the review was over.

I shot surplus M193 and M855 from multiple vendors. I shot commercial soft point hunting ammunition from two vendors. I shot 77gr OTM rounds from two different vendors. I used both the supplied 30-round Magpul magazine as well as a standard metal USGI style mag.

At no point did I ever have a failure to load, fire, or eject any round, even with mixed rounds inside the mag. I never had a magazine fail to lock or drop when the magazine release was pushed. The bolt never failed to lock back on an empty magazine, regardless of type or weight or round used. The gun ran perfectly.

It also ran hot as hell. Unusual for me, I spent most of my time shooting this gun in one drill. I have a longer range match coming up where targets will be engaged using almost entirely alternate positions. So I shot standing, kneeling, and off a bipod at a 100-yard target.

I simply shot the entire magazine at the fastest pace that would allow me to consistently strike the 12” circular plate. I’d then go back, reload the magazine, and shoot again. I never loaded more than one magazine at a time, and I did all loading by hand without the use of an assistance device like a magazine loader or Uplula. This went on for 400 rounds, the better part of a cold afternoon.

The handguard got pretty hot, but never too hot to hold. I wasn’t wearing gloves, and if my support hand inched forward, the heat from the barrel and bayonet lug let me know it. I should have been paying closer attention.

Bushmaster XM15 melt (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster XM-15 melt (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

I didn’t notice anything was wrong until the next day, when I pulled the gun out for accuracy testing. The front section of the hand guard, where it butts up against the gas block, was melted. Not a lot, but definitely melted. Now, the only way to get the hand guards off is to break them. I didn’t want break them, so they were left on.

Who’s the nerd, or who just stood for their first promotion board? What is maximum sustained rate of semi-automatic fire for your M16 or M4? I hope you said 45 rounds per minute. That’s the rate of fire your rifle should be able to sustain indefinitely. Obviously, as I was loading a single magazine by hand each time, and only shooting 30 rounds of aimed fire each time, I was shooting a lot slower than 45 rounds per minute. I also wasn’t shooting an M16 or an M4.

Bushmaster XM15 hand guard (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster XM15 hand guard (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

The hand guards didn’t melt because they’re poor quality. They are fine quality for an A2/A3 rifle. They melted because a thin barrel and a carbine-length gas system heat up quickly, even at that rate of fire. Clearly faster than I was expecting.

I contacted Bushmaster and asked them what a customer should do if this happens. The answer was the right one; contact customer service and Bushmaster will fix it.

Swapping out for new factory hand guards is pretty simple. One can choose to see this as a failure to account for the heat from a carbine-length gas tube and a thin barrel and remind yourself to let up when the hand guard gets warm. Conversely you could see it as an opportunity to justify the replacement of the plastic hand guards and six-position stock with some new wood furniture for a very classy look. I know what I’d do.

Wood carbine foregrip (image courtesy blackgunswood.com)
Wood carbine foregrip (image courtesy blackgunswood.com)

So I guess now I have to say it in out loud. Remember this TTAGers. Remington Outdoor Group is getting better and making good guns.

Last year one of the employees in the organization told me they were taking the next couple of years to step back and improve quality on all of their lines, including Remington, Bushmaster, Marlin, and others. I was skeptical. Then I saw the Remington 700 5R, a new Marlin 1984 and the new Remington Model Sevens. And now this. Their rifles are definitely seeing the quality control improvements I was promised.

I’m not sure what’s going on with the $796 MSRP, but it doesn’t look like anybody is selling it for near that. A gun shop near downtown Austin notorious for high prices sells the XM-15 QRC for $672. Other shops within an hour’s drive sell it for $579 and I can quickly find it online for $509. Brownells has it for $539 ($499 without the optic) . For a complete rifle from a reputable company, with mil-spec guts and an optic, complete and ready to shoot out of the box, that’s not bad at all.

The XM15-QRC is a fine rifle for the money. It’s a light weight rifle at 5 lbs, easy to shoot, and next to nothing to carry. The fact that it comes with a workable red dot optic is just gravy.

Bushmaster XM15 at rest (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)
Bushmaster XM-15 at rest (image courtesy JWT for thetruthaboutguns.com)

Bushmaster XM-15 QRC (Quick Response Carbine)

SPECIFICATIONS: Bushmaster XM-15 Quick Reaction Carbine

Type: Rifle: Semi-Auto
Caliber: 5.56 NATO|223 Remington
Finish: Matte Black
Action: Semi-Automatic
Stock: 6-position collapsible stock
Sight: None
Barrel Length: 16-inch Superlite Contour Melonite Coated 1-8 Twist
Overall Length: 35 with Stock Extended
Weight: 5.18
Capacity: 30+1
Mags: 1 PMAG
Receiver: Aluminum A3 Upper, Aluminum Lower
Muzzle Device: A-2 Birdcage Flash Hider
Mini Red Dot Optic, Forward Assist, Bayonet Lug
MSRP: $769 (found online easily for $509-$579)

Ratings (out of five stars):

Style and Appearance * * *
Welcome to MIL-STD, which is ok. But just ok.

Customization * * * *
You can change everything on this gun, but because of the traditional handguard set up it’s not nearly as easy as a full length rail and free-floating hand guard.

Reliability * * * *
It ran 520 round without any trouble firing any round. The front of the handguard melting is an issue, but a minor one.

Accuracy * * *
Good enough for government work, and better than most issue rifles.

Overall * * *
If the hand guard didn’t melt this would be a solid 4-star budget priced AR. But it did, so points off there. Either swap those guards out or ease up on the rate of fire and you’re left with a rifle that’s got a whole lot going for it at a great retail price.

44 COMMENTS

  1. the roll stamp next to the snake (cool snake) says cal multi. what’s that, if not wylde? is it alluding to the ar’s swappable chamberings?

    • “is it alluding to the ar’s swappable chamberings?”

      That’s it. All lowers I’ve seen in the last few years are marked ‘multi’ because you can mount uppers of essentially arbitrary caliber on them.

    • I purchased a new Bushmaster AR- 15 XM15 E2S, it has a 22″ barrel which is marked 1/9 .223. My question
      on this rifle concerns the .223 chamber. I find it hard to believe that a AR-15 rifle was built to shoot the civilian .223 round only, and not the 5.56. I heard from a fairly reliable source that the chamber in this gun was a hybrid, and was capable of handling the 5.56 round, mabey a WYLDE chamber?. I hope you folks can get to the bottom of this for me as I would like to return the gun if it is in fact .223 only.

      Thanks, George

  2. No manufacturer should be in the business of producing/selling non-free floating, poorly ventilated, no M-LOK handguards at this point in the development of the AR platform…NOBODY. I don’t care how cheap the price point is.

    • Yea fucking Magpul and their foreends, and all those people making reproductions. God can’t they see how unpopular those things are.

    • I have a pre-Remington Bushmaster. The shorter version with a heavy barrel. I put a CMMG flat top upper key lock on it with an eotech 512, and Diamond Head flip up sights. People and their m-lock obsession makes me laugh. You can use key lock for m-lock parts. Magpul fanboys. The whole thing is done in NP3 internals and externals. I tried cerakote, and was not impressed. Started wearing in a month. Had my glock slide done, and it was showing holster wear in a month. Fancy paint IMO. I could give a shit about M vs K. Their fu@#$ng holes! My AK is M-lock, but only because I liked the furniture if it was key lock I would have still gotten it, and I still have my M4 style upper as a backup. I remember 20 years ago when they said if buying an AR stick with the A, B, C’S. Armalight, Bushmaster, and Colt. Glad I got mine 16 years ago.

    • As JMR alludes to, there’s a pretty huge market for these rifles. I’m not interested in another modern evolution AR right now. I’ve lost count of how many I already have. But a bone stock A2 as I was issued, or an old school Commando? Heck yeah, you’ve got my attention.

      • I have this strange compulsion to get a 11.5” Colt Commando upper too. I keep telling myself that I should build one with a light weight BCM rail so I can use the Costa ‘C Clamp’ grip like all the cool kids, but I like the look of a fixed A2 front sight and know that a 11.5” free floated barrel is kinda dumb. We’ll have to see what happens.

    • Free floating rails are just unnecessary weight on most people’s rifles. This rifle could shoot 3” groups at 100 yds without them. With a bargain priced barrel this is about the best you are going to do.

      I don’t have a problem with a FF rail, but most will add at least a pound of weight. Cheap rails can also come loose and cause more problems than they solve. A Magpul Moe handguard is fine for mounting a light. Don’t be that guy with a Barska laser, a crap light and a bunch of cords and tape switches velcroed to their rifle.

    • Restaurant all over Austin known for strong drinks. Baby A’s.

      I’m sure there was some point to your post but it’s not exactly clear.

  3. 7075, good bolt, good price. Nice starter rifle for someone just getting into it and build off of, definitely need some irons on it. But then I want irons on everything, these new bolt guns drive me nutts.

  4. Other than the fact that it melted, this AR puts me to sleep like a lullaby. It’s as if Bushmaster tried to make the blandest AR-15 that they possibly could.

    I’m not sure that is 100% a criticism – there are worse things than a bland-looking but functional rifle. Then again, the one and only interesting thing about it seems to be that it melted… so… not sure where that leaves me, I guess, other than annoyed that even the blandest of bland AR-15s is legally unavailable to me in NY.

  5. Sigh! Just another AR. Really, who gives a shit? A mediocre rifle for mediocre people.

  6. Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t Remington own Bushmaster now and the good old boys from Bushmasters beginning go on to start Windham?
    Regardless I’ve got a Bushmaster Varminiter I brought somewhere around (95?). Been a great rifle, the only thing I’ve had to replace was gas rings and trigger springs. Still shoots .5 inch groups at 100 yards.
    If this new carbine is half as good it will be a good base for upgrading or maybe just leave it as it is.

    • I thought it was Windham first, then bought by bushmaster then the workers went and started up Windham again later. I have Windham in my safe I’m holding for a kid, never really dug deep into the histroy of them thou.

      • They are and Bushmaster was based in Windham, Maine- that’s probably the confusion. But once they moved production and put most out of work, they decided to keep working. Which was very smart when Remington had no QC, and now that they do, Windham is already established and has a following as a good manufacturer.

        Smart business is a lot like smart politics!

  7. Thanks for the review. It’s good to know what possibly to avoid in an AR package from a through review. This rifle will be heavily discounted in a few months.

  8. Your suggestion to replace plastic hand guards that have ventilation holes top and bottom with wooden hand guards without any ventilation holes seems misguided.
    I do like the look of the wooden hand guards better, but I think they are more likely to get hot and burst into actual flame!
    Seems like you would want handguards with double heat shields.

    • I second DocDuracoat’s comments.

      If the factory-standard ventilated handguards melted, then non-ventilated wood handguards — which insulates fairly well I might add — seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

    • The heat shields weren’t the issue. The melt happened where the hand guard meets the retaining ring, not in the body.

      The wood would likely do better here, and certainly wouldn’t melt. You could definitely make it catch fire if you weren’t paying attention.

      But even more fun would be cut the barrel to SBR it, push an A2 front sight on it and an A3 rear, and turn it into a Commando model.

    • …or, for around 35 bucks last time i checked you can get a simple two- piece Aluminum quad rail on Ebay or Amazon that snaps right in the same capture braces as the standard plastic guards this comes with. This solves the melting problem and also allows for mounting a high lumen tac-light, . They come in all sizes from short 7 inches to 12 inches or more which also solves your forward front sight radius needs if you want, and i believe by now, for a few bucks more they might have quick replacement lightweight slimline quad rails or M-loks also? which might only add a few more ounces, but then you could also get an ultra-lite stock also. Little pricier but would knock off a few more ozs from it too keep it about where it is if that’s a concern.
      As far as melting these things, I’ve seen it happen a couple of times when conserving ammo for a sustained ROF was simply NOT in the fire-fight plan of the day during a particularly ‘exciting’ engagement. Tactical weapon historians had to re-write the book on this type of combat after Nam and we had to adjust accordingly for a lot of ‘specialty’ combat situations and missions. You could always tell the well seasoned muli-toured vets by the amount of ammo they carried and how it was used. We put 20 round mags which was all we had because 30 rounders weren’t in the standard-issue flow of supply yet, but we could fit loaded 20 round mags in the cloth bandoliers that 20 round stripper clip ammo came packed in. Then we flung as many of these- 3 or 4 bandoliers of now loaded mags– or more –across our chests like we did when carrying linked belts for the sixty.
      Then instead of three or four of those old bulky ‘ammo pouches’ we rigged a pack belt to carry more grenades than standard carry load.
      The type of rodeo we were expecting in this super remote heavy triple canopy agent orange soaked jungle was shockingly surprising and fast and furious when we engaged. We could almost be at hand-shaking distance before we knew what was happening.
      So when the fireworks began, I’d instantly duck and flatten out off the trail, and let off the whole mag in my rifle on full auto by raising only my arm up from my prone position to point the rifle in the direction of the enemy, then methodically, drop the mag, still holding the rifle up and inserting another mag. It only took a few seconds total time after getting the hang of peeling a mag out of the bandolier to reload and fire it in one blast on full auto and repeat. With such a high cyclic rate these early rifles had, (less than two seconds maybe to empty the mag) the first few of us up front could keep a steady blast of unholy full auto firepower going almost better than a min-gun in some ways to keep their heads down from 4 or five men at once while the rest of the sweep platoon moved up the ‘Pigs’ to flank for a crossfire position and take over after we started to run low on mags, threw our grenades as fast as we could and fell back. This worked well enough until one time my gun jammed and i couldn’t unjam it, and when i got it back to the base camp and tried to fix it, it still wouldn’t chamber a round. Another guy said it happened to him a while back After sustained balls out full auto fire and he didn’t have time to try to fix it and just took another rifle. Which is what i did.
      (so anybody figure it out by now yet?)
      A few months later while training ARVNs at the base camp we had a chance to scrutinize closely one of the many broken guns we had laying around for parts. (No, in ’68 we didn’t have a base ‘gun shop’ with a full supply of parts. So we kept as many spare working weapons as we could, including working enemy weapons and ammo, and broken ones for parts in case it was just a bullet or shrapnel hit through the gun and you could take the good part from another broken one and fix it)

      What we finally figured out was the interface between the upper aluminum receiver and the Steel barrel would actually reach a temperature so high with continuous full auto blast as to soften the aluminum enough to cause it to bend just aft of the chamber (especially from rough treatment just after firing like using it like a cane to help to help get up fast to move out) later causing feeding jams during its highest temperature phase during firing, and when it cools, it’s not readily noticeable. But it will have a higher tendency to mis-align and jam bolt and feed interface if it got soft from too much heat, and bent enough to affect bolt function and extraction.
      This shouldn’t be a problem with a semi-auto if the recommended firing rate is adhered to. I also seem to recall that some years later they came out with a stainless steel receiver for the M-16 platform—maybe to use for a lighter SAW weapon, but i don’t think they make it anymore? After all, one of the main assets of the 16 was to be light, and handy enough to ‘abuse–like we did– or with one handed full auto cover firing while dragging a wounded brother back to cover. Or firing one handed because half of one of your arms is blown open by shrapnel and you can’t move it. (you won’t hit anything trying that with an M-14 on full auto if you could even hold it steady in the right direction)
      My favorite, and still today–only with the modern superior CQB optics was the Shorty carbine which i preferred to carry when we got them, especially with the 30 round mags. Decent night time flash suppression for night ambush missions and pretty well balanced when using it as a pistol.

      Had they made one little improvement in the AR platform, it would have ended the long time AK v. AR historic debate once and for all. which always seemed to focus on the AR jamming on extraction compared to the AK, which supposedly virtually never jammed. Well, i could never figure out why they just didn’t change the case ‘shape’ of the 5.56 cartridge to imitate the 7.62 x 39 round? Because that was the whole secret behind the perceived problem. The military had to realize that this was the whole problem to begin with, not mainly the ammo.

  9. Complete Palmetto Lower + Complete Palmetto Upper (both in the same style as this rifle) = $330. Click them together and off you go.

    Hell, I’ll be fair. Buy a rear sight for $30-$50 bucks or a Bushnell TRS-25 for $50 or a Holosun for $100. That’s $400 to $430 total, max.

    If you want a cheap/starter/high value rifle, you just can’t beat Palmetto.

    • meh…
      comparitive quality ones can still be built for less
      better ones can be built for the same
      and for just a bit more one can be built that will shoot sub moa to 100 yards with the right ammo

      • Yup, (that’s hillbilly for ‘Meh’) I totally agree. What many don’t realize is that most brand manufacturers don’t ‘fabricate’ all of their parts like their own barrels or bolt carriers or even receivers. The get OEM manufacturers to subcontract these kinds of parts or use generic ones. There are big companies/factories that specialize in having the advanced heavy industrial equipment to make barrels and bolt-carriers. Companies like Bushmaster and others all get some or most of their parts from these places discounted at a biz-rate so they can make money in numbers. The barrel on this XM-15, for instance, is probably an old contract pre M-4 ‘pencil’ barrel style that just had the old style triancle front sight grounded off. And a batch of which was picked up by Bushmaster for a super discount and ‘assembled’ much as you would your own kit gun.
        Alsmost anyone with mechanical or machining skills can make a 5.56/.223 sub MOA tack driver for under 500 bucks these days. it won’t be fancy, but it’ll be sniper grade. If you want fancy, lighter, super reliable, super tricked, etc. etc. You can also build one like that yourself. But accessories and costs can go up exponentially when you start doing that.

  10. If I owned that gumn I would have to swim under water and make brrrrp brrrrp noises, torpedoes away Captain Nemo

  11. I bought the same gun for $350 after rebate last year. Bought it for my 5 year old, for when he gets older. It’s a solid buy at that price range. A double heat shield Colt hand guard is practically free as people throw them away and it should be more durable than the Fisher price hand guard that Remington uses on these.

  12. I bought one in 2013 and it was made of plastic. I sent it back and they replaced the upper with an aluminum alloy upper. I won’t buy another one for the price I paid.

    • Are you saying that you bought an XM-15 from Bushmaster in 2013 and it had a plastic upper receiver? If so, too bad you didn’t save it, it would be one of a kind.

  13. Good GOD, How Many Bushmaster QRC Rifles Could One Buy For The Price Of That U.S. Optics Scope!!!

  14. How many ARs go for around 5 bills these days? Get a better set of furniture for it and a decent scope and youve got a 700 dollar deal

  15. meh…
    comparitive quality ones can still be built for less
    better quality ones can still be built for the same
    and for not significantly more one can be built that will shoot sub moa with the right ammo
    factory guns just dont interest me

  16. Bushmaster guns are pieces of junk and the company does not honor their warranty if you are the 2nd owner. Furthermore, their limited warranty is only good for 2 years after the date of mfg.. So it’s very possible for you to buy a NIB gun from a FFL dealer that was built 2 years ago, but with no warranty. Their guns are very fragile and susceptible to breaking, and CANNOT be repaired! If you are offered buy one, simply laugh at the seller, tell them them good luck, and move on. Cheers

  17. I’ve has a Bushmaster QRC for about 5 years. The red dot is junk. Put a decent red dot on and shoot away. Never had a problem. Like the pencil barrel and minimal equipment. Very light.

    I have premium AR’s and yeah there’s a difference, but I really like this rifle.

  18. You are not buying any AR for 300, 400, or 500. And you aren’t building any AR for those prices either. It’s a new world and new prices.

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