Custom AR-15s in the future of movies
 

I am starting to wonder if we'll be seeing more and more custom AR-15s than standard M4s in future movies? The recent trailer for John Wick 2 made me think of more and more armorers will start tacticooling a lot of their guns for a character's personal rifle in movies as time goes on. I wonder are we going to see less and less of the bone stock M4 with the fixed carrying handle or even the stock M4 with just an EOtech and replaced with different handguards and stocks from now on and when does it stop being an M4 and just a custom AR?

It should be classified based on the lower and upper i.e. Colt M4 with DPMS upper or something like that.

Good question, and one which I have thought about myself. Yes, the marketplace for ARs is now full of different lowers/uppers/accessory configs that defy any simple typology (i.e. M4A1 vs. M933 vs. Mark 18 CQBR, which is how it used to be). And yes, this trend is carrying over to Hollywood and making it harder and harder to ID any given weapon we see in the media. (Indeed, given some of the exotic-looking ARs we are seeing in movies lately - i.e. those in "Suicide Squad" - I would be challenged to easily ID an AR unless I talked to the movie's armorers myself. The fact that I've lost track of the market doesn't help.)

Since we often won't know the make/model of the lower, I would think the most expedient approach is to use "Custom AR-15" as the catch-all, and describe make/model of accessories to the best of the IMFDB user's abilities.

Also to not confuse new comers to the site or those that don't know the difference, if a character is using a "custom" AR-15 and is firing full auto, we should point it out since an AR-15 is a civilian weapon originally and not a select fire weapon. Example is in Jack Reacher Never Go Back. In John Wick 2, he's shooting this rifle in semi.

I like the idea of simply identifying "AR- platform rifle/carbine/what have you" and then try to identify the optics mounted to said platform.

I like to put it simply. "AR-15" is simple enough and then putting down what we think the furniture is attached is a good idea. But I will still like to emphasize since we're IDing a weapon as an AR-15 opposed to an M4/M16 type, it is a civilian weapon and if it is seen in the show in select fire, we should point that out for people of more...liberal views that might stumble upon our website and use it as a source and misunderstands that AR-15s in the real world aren't full auto typically or originally designed to be select fire weapon.

Dude, I think we're way past that; "AR-15" now refers to a type of firearm that is not necessarily select-fire or semi-auto only. The days when "AR-15" = semi-auto civilian rifle and "M16" or "M4" = select-fire military rifle are long gone now. And visually, it keeps getting harder and harder to tell the difference between civvie vs. LEO/mil-only ARs (with pinned flash hiders on 14.5" barrels becoming popular in the civvie market, even barrel length is no longer a distinguishing visual indicator.) I realize that this may confuse non-gun geeks, but it is inevitable due to current trends in the AR-15 market (there, I said it! :D)

Bear in mind that there has already never been a simple way to make this distinction in the world of AKs. The shorthand way to describe a Kalashnikov-pattern rifle has always just been "AK", regardless of whether said AK is a select-fire Eastern Bloc/ChiCom weapon or a semi-auto clone for the U.S. civilian market.

Also, engaging in word games for the sake of trying to educate anti-gun liberals is futile and not worth our time, IMHO.

Also, if you want to be really pedantic about the use of AR-15, the name was originally used for the granddaddy Armalite AR-15 which was select fire. As for civilian guns, I believe that Colt has the trademark on this term so the only guns that you should really call AR-15s are Colt manufactured civilian rifles.

I'm just saying that we live in a world were the use of terms can change how people view them and movies and fiction in general have done a lot of disservice to the gun community by portraying firearms usage and availability incorrectly like full auto guns being so common in gangster movies and how easy it is to actually get them or that no common civilian in movies own guns. Hollywood, while promoting the entertaining value of gun fights have also been anti-gun in how it tells us that guns are cool to look at but you shouldn't own one and we show you why with cool movies. It's a double standard.

Because we are a site meant to accurate tell our readers what gun is used and how it is used, it should be part of our "job" here to correctly inform the readers what they are looking at.

Hell, we nitpick different lowers on "M4s" and at least 1 time, the recent Siege of Jadotville pointed out the FALs were correctly portrayed as full auto. We are a site of nitpickers. We tell people if an MP5 is an actual MP5 or an HK94 that has the paddle release missing.

Hell, the Blackhawk Down page points out the one Ranger character firing his rifle in burst and says a Ranger wouldn't use the burst feature in combat.

The AK has a different history in America and name recognition than the AR-15 that had a very complicated start as "America's rifle". The AK started out with the common name "AK" because of it's creator but the AR-15 went through brand name changes, copy rights, etc. Even with AKs, we point out differences and will use correct names if we can properly ID it.

No argument there. Alas, as I have often emphasized in the past, we are fundamentally not a political site, so trying to fight that battle on IMFDB does not seem like a good use of our collective time and energy. There are other, better (dedicated) venues for that purpose.

Again, no argument that our job is to inform viewers of inaccuracies where we see them, or to provide as much detail as possible on the guns. (i.e. if there is visual evidence that an AR-pattern rifle is a semi-auto civilian model, or was converted to full-auto from a rifle that was originally semi-auto only, I see no reason we can't point it out.)

This is fundamentally not probative to the issue at hand, which is the proper term of reference for an AR-15-pattern rifle, and whether usage of said term should be discouraged. My attitude is that it does not need to be, for reasons I have stated earlier.

Again, if you can ID it, then sure.

But the issue you brought up is whether we are misleading viewers by calling everything "AR-15", vice "AR-15" for civilian models and "M16/M4" for mil models. My point is that in practice, this is no different than calling all select-fire and civilian AK-pattern rifles just plain "AKs." If we accept the latter, we can accept the former.

For the record, as a guy with a Ranger tab and a CIB, a lot of the commentary on the "Blackhawk Down" page real makes my teeth grind.

I understand the double standard there.

Well, I didn't put any of the commentary there so I definitely mean no offense when referencing it.

Oh no. No worries bud. What I was getting at is that pedantic remarks such as what's on the Blackhawk Down page are really obtrusive and unnecessary.

If there's anything offensive in there, please feel free to edit the page accordingly.

We could just change it to "fired his rifle in burst" and leave the context up to interpretations. But military doctrine does train troops to only fire their rifles in semi and never in full auto/burst unless they're using a machine gun.

I would be surprised if that was true. In the British military you are taught to use full auto in a load of different circumstances. Suppressing fire, breaking contact, clearing rooms, fighting in trenches or other confined/close spaces, all of these are situations where even regular infantry are trained to use full auto with their rifles or carbines. If it is true that the US military tells soldiers never to fire in full auto then that is a waste of a capability of the weapon, like telling somebody that they can only use the long range aperture on their irons and are not allowed to flip to the large aperture.

Correction. The US military doctrine trains troops to not shooting rifles in full auto or burst in most situation. Today it's a little different from 20 years ago.

I don't know of the modern British military training. We have seen historically post WWII, the adoption of a semi-auto only FAL tells a bit of the MOD's mindset for their troops but what the bureaucrats want their troops and what the troops actually did is not the same.

The FAL semi-only thing was the classic reason of believing that troops would waste ammo for not much gain. However, the fact that the conversion to full auto was so commonly done in the field kind of goes to show that in some situations there is a need (or at least a perceived one by soldiers on the ground) to go full auto. And this was with full power 7.62mm guns rather than the relatively controllable 5.56mm guns of today.

That may be true, but every time full auto is ever brought up whenever I talk to the few friends I know in the military, they all say they've never fired their rifles in full auto/burst in combat.

Then they've never had to break contact in a complex ambush in southwest Baghdad.

Full auto is useful in certain circumstances.

The single, well aimed shot is a great thing, but not everybody gets the opportunity to be Bob Lee Swagger.

Ah, the ol' "shoot the guy in the chest then fire 19 warning shots for his friends in one triggerpull" tactic

I think despite the fact that there were reports of the Brits picking up and using full auto FALs during the Falklands, I think most quickly discover how poor a FAL handles in full auto.

I don't really think that was the main way that British soldiers used full auto FALs, it was by adapting L1A1s. On a related note though, a lot of full auto Para FALs were adopted into the SAS inventory during the Falklands.

The L1A1 actually has an auto sear, it just lacks the selector position. What you do is that you wedge a match underneath the back of the sear so that it no longer acts as a disconnecter. Assuming yo do it correctly, like this the gun runs exactly the same as a regular FAL. Because this is obviously unofficial people learned how to do it from hearsay so didn't always know where to put the matches, and have heard of people putting them behind the firing causing the gun to slam fire and dump the whole mag.

As for when this was actually done, it was done a lot on blank fire exercises with people acting as the enemy, but it was also done operationally on occasion in more close quarter environments. You had to have damn good trigger control though, as the gun was always full auto and couldn't be switched to semi without breaking it open and removing the matches.

As a further aside, I don't see where a .30 Caliber battle rifle is worth anything in full auto other than as a man portable AA weapon.

However, with some training, you can run an M-4A1 in full auto fairly well. Especially with a grenade launcher and an ACOG hanging on it.

And the burst feature on the M-16A2 is nothing but a modern version of the magazine cut off. Except sometimes you get a single shot, sometimes a three shot burst, and sometimes a run away gun. I'd rather have semi-auto only than hope the burst works when needed.

As a further aside, I got to shot an L1A1 at IBOLC. Most enjoyable. However, I don't think I'd want to lug one all over Rhodesia. Or fire one on full auto.

I've fired a FAL before, but only in semi auto made by DSA and when rapid firing, I think I used a line from a guy on youtube, Colin Noir. The rapid fire on a FAL kinda takes your breath away. It's not the same as when shooting an M1A. It made me want a FAL more than any other 7.62 battle rifle.

Don't buy an FAL unless you absolutely, truly, love them; you'll get more for your money out of an AR10 or G3 pattern gun (M14 belongs in trashcan, just don't). Don't be like me, having to hand fit my $50 mags to my precious, precious baby using a rasp

I'd get a G3 pattern rifle if any of them actually existed with paddle releases in America. CETMEs are all designed before H&K redesigned them with paddle releases and it's always bothered me when I try to reload them.

I wouldn't buy a FAL type rifle for any practical means. Just to collect it and to occasionally shoot it at the range. I've been looking at the S&W M&P 10 for my .308 AR.

I'd like a H&K 91 so I could be like Burt.

I'd like a FN-FAL so I could re-enact the Bush War, to include the short shorts, in my backyard.

No desire for a G-3 type 7.62mm rifle.