This gun has a street price around $750, and for that money the owner gets a tricked-out gun with a copy of the AK-74 muzzle brake and detachable top handle with fully adjustable aperture sight within the handle. This good-looking and well finished little rifle had a fluted, chrome-lined barrel. The barrel was 16 inches long with its permanently attached brake, and had a 1:9 inch twist rate. The actual barrel, without the brake, was 14.5 inches long. The mil-spec receiver had protective rails around the magazine release, and also had a forward-assist button. There was a deflection block to keep empties off the face of lefties.
The entire rifle — stock, forend, receiver and barrel — was evenly matte-black finished. The butt stock was very short, as was that of the Rock River AR-15, described below, and there was no trap in the butt. These short butt stocks are commonly called “Entry” or “Tactical” or “Entry Tactical” stocks, but by whatever name they go, you’d better be sure you want one before you buy. On the Bushmaster, this stock gave a pull length of 10.4 inches, which might be ideal if the shooter were wearing a bulky SWAT vest. For most shooters it would be two or three inches too short. Yet with a little practice we found it became almost comfortable. Without doubt, the short butt stock contributed to the fast handling of this rifle, and to the Rock River’s as well.
The pistol grip was small like original Colt AR-15s, which gave easy access to the non-ambidextrous safety. The forend was formed of two tapered plastic pieces, held to the receiver with the original-design, mil-spec sprung collar. Everything fit well, and all was tight. The front sight was a protected post with provisions for fine-tuning the elevation. There were sling swivels fore and aft.
Peering inside this well-made rifle we found no surprises, just excellent workmanship throughout. The rifle came with hard case, sling, and one ten-round magazine. We eagerly took the package to the range.
Our first shot didn’t connect with the generous paper target at 50 yards, so we moved up, and went to work on the sights. As they came, the sights were way off to the right, and the elevation was also off. When we got on the paper, the rear sight was nearly as low as we could get it, and the aperture was almost exactly centered within its protective ears.
The rear sight had the common two apertures found on AR-15s, a field sight with large hole and a smaller-holed leaf for more precise shooting, which was the one we used. Both the Bushmaster and Rock River rifles had the two-aperture setup.
The trigger proved to be a slight burden to achieving best accuracy, even off our machine rest. It broke at 7.8 pounds with a little creep. Also, the front sight on so short a rifle was out of focus for some of our shooters’ unaided eyes, never mind the aperture effect. However, from our machine rest we’re sure we got about all that all three rifles had to give.
The Bushmaster didn’t much like the Malaysian ball, but liked the two types of Black Hills fodder well enough. One group with the former ammo was over five inches at 50 yards, and no, the bullet didn’t strike anything on the way to the target.
There were absolutely no problems with the rifle’s feed or function. It gave the shooter a sense of reliability that inspired confidence. Our biggest problems were the heavy trigger and the very short stock, which made it very difficult to shoot from a dedicated bench rest. However, we got more than acceptable accuracy with the 62-grain Black Hills FMJ ammo, and even better results with that company’s 68-grain match ammo.
We also tried the rifle (all three, actually) offhand, for speed of target acquisition and handling ease. Both the Bushmaster and Rock River rifles were well suited to such close-quarters-battle-style shooting, probably better than the Ruger. The short stocks lent themselves to indoors work very well, and would thus be ideal for home defense or for SWAT applications.
However, we felt the average shooter would want a longer stock and a longer barrel. The longer stock would add lots of comfort for casual shooting, and a longer sight radius would give better field performance with iron sights. Mounting a scope on the Bushmaster would involve either getting a mount that would fit the handle notch, or removing the handle to use the Weaver-style rail beneath it. Then you’d have to find a scope that could be mounted far enough forward to keep it out of your eye. We believe these short-stocked .223 carbines are special-purpose weapons, however, and scopes would be out of place on them, except perhaps for a night-vision device.
