How much weight can an AR-15 support?

[DreadPirateMoyer]

Let's just say you parked on top of an AR-15 with your truck, or you laid it beside your bed at night and stepped on it, or laid it on your bed and sat on it, or packaged it in a cardboard box and the box got crushed by the other boxes on top of it, or you put it in a Pelican case and had to jam it closed by sitting on it...

...how much weight/pressure would it take until your gun broke? Seems to me like it would be a butt ton. Most of the pressure would be on the receiver and handguard, I'm guessing. Has anyone seen any crazy "man standing on AR-15 suspended between two cinder blocks" pictures?

For the nerds, 7075 aluminum has a shear strength of approximately 84,000 psi, I believe. The amount of applied force would have to be pretty insane to achieve that over the area of the entire receiver. But hey, I don't know the thickness of the receiver for the calculations, so I thought I'd ask if anyone just knows what it would take to break it.

[jtwalker]

OK, gotta ask ... WHY DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ?

You could try it with your AR and let us know.

[animalmother85]

If you step on it, you'll probably be ok. If you swing it like a baseball bat into a telephone pole, it probably won't be. If you run it over with your truck, you should not own one to begin with.

[DVE]

Is this a (sarcastic?) follow up to the sleeping on top of an AR thread?


This question is incredibly nonsensical.
It depends what you're trying to achieve? Making it inoperable? Completely smashing it? Where are you applying the force to?

In order to make some of the weapon caches inoperable in Iraq, they were driving over the barrels.

I've tramped on them more times then I can remember.

[streaker69]

Guys, this is a serious question, because you never know when you may need to defend a skyscraper against a team of international thieves.

[DreadPirateMoyer]

Exactly what was just said above. :-P

But really, just curious, and no, it's not a sarcastic poke at another thread. Curious because hey, it might be helpful to know someday, especially when it comes to packing the rifle. The Pelican case example is something I've often thought of for a real world scenario (because I travel with one [w/ egg crate foam], and depending on attachments, it's really, really tough to close).

[EDIT]To qualify, inoperable or damaged enough to degrade performance.[/EDIT]

[autotech6506]

I wouldn't wanna do that with an ar15. where the barrel extension goes in to the reciever would be a weak point. if you wanna test it you could put your rifle over two chairs and then put weights on top of it until it fails. or you could just jump on it yourself to see what happens :-)

[silverado_mick]

I've seen them support the weight of a fully equipped Marine with no ill effects.

I've seen a SAW run over with a HMMVW. Hanguards and carry handle broken, feed tray cover retaining pin broken, gun still ran.

Grunt logic: Gunz r metal, metal iz hard.

[streaker69]

I've seen them support the weight of a fully equipped Marine with no ill effects.

I've seen a SAW run over with a HMMVW. Hanguards and carry handle broken, feed tray cover retaining pin broken, gun still ran.

Grunt logic: Gunz r metal, metal iz hard.

Those were MilSpec M16's, not consumer grade AR15's.

[Lee-online]

My friend slipped on the ice and fell on his issued M16 while it was slung over his back. It bent the barrel and failed the bore straightness test.