How fast can you shoot an AR 15

[shortthrow50]

you should worry about your ar and firing too many rounds.

if............ you bought a real peice of shit and you dont clean it. If your worried about that then buy any ak variant and youll never have an issue. You can even shit in the chamber and you wont hurt it

[Rundownfid]

you should worry about your ar and firing too many rounds.

if............ you bought a real peice of shit and you dont clean it. If your worried about that then buy any ak variant and youll never have an issue. You can even shit in the chamber and you wont hurt it

This is all true and; given the quality of most AK ammo you probably will put shit into the chamber.

[Lycanthrope]

And.....given that if some of my guns shot groups like most AK's I'd be looking for new barrels. Luckily, it's very easy to rebarrel an AR.

Barrels will have throat erosion at differing rates based on the cartridge and abuse. Some people don't care if the gun will shoot 6 inch groups at 100 yards....as long as it isn't keyholing. Others are going to throw away a barrel that hits the 2 inch mark.

I have dedicated match rifles and a couple I built just to hammer rounds through for practice and fun.

Lycanapplicationthrope

[Yellowfin]

Doing dots drills and/or the shapes/colors/numbers drill can get some ammo out fast in a useful manner, but probably not enough to cause any concern. The biggest question is how good you are at controlling rapid fire for accuracy.

[madAB]

It's an AR-15. The gun was originally designed and built to be a full auto machine gun. Shoot the living crap out of it.

[DreadPirateMoyer]

What Lycanthrope said. Yes, how fast you shoot does matter, and does affect the life of the barrel. Hypothetical example using arbitrary numbers:

Let's say you go to the range one day with your AR-15. You shoot one bullet, let the barrel cool, shoot another bullet, let the barrel cool, and repeat this process for the rest of the gun's life. Your barrel in this scenario maintains the accuracy you desire for about 30,000 rounds (sure, that's terribly boring and no one would ever shoot an AR like that, but it's an extreme example to illustrate the point).

Now, let's say you replace the barrel and go back to the range. This time around, instead of letting the barrel cool between shots, you decide to shoot it as quickly as possible, reload, shoot even more, reload, and repeat this process for the rest of the gun's life. Your barrel in this scenario maintains the accuracy you desire for about 5,000 rounds.

Why did the barrel in the second example have a shorter life (measured in rounds fired) than the barrel in the first example? Because of heat.

The second barrel got hot as all shit, and when metal gets hot, it expands. Thus, as you kept firing it and kept getting it hotter and hotter, the bore actually got tighter from metal expansion. Each time you took a shot, you were forcing bullets down an even tighter bore than before. Because a hot barrel is so much tighter than a cold barrel, there is more friction between the bullet and bore. This causes the bore to wear much, much faster and have a much, much shorter lifetime than a barrel that is allowed to cool in between shots.

If a barrel gets too hot, it can constrict so tightly that bullets will cause it to literally burst, though you have to do insane things to your rifle to make that happen. Additionally, it can sag so much that your bullets wear against the top or drift off target.

Essentially, if you're worried about your barrel's lifetime, DON'T GET IT TOO HOT. Hot barrels have shorter lifetimes no matter how you measure it (time or rounds). However, that's not fun, is it?

Solution: buy two ARs -- one you beat, and one you treat.

---

Source: I'm a civil engineer and I work with the mechanical/material properties of steel every day.

[offshorebear]

I've done .13 split modified bill drills. ( A little lower accuracy standard than a bill drill, lol)

[shortthrow50]

its a good thing our military doesnt use ar-15 type rifles in combat. imagine if they got into an hour long fire fight. They would have ruined guns within 10 minutes after firing a few hundred rounds in bursts. oh wait a minute... i forgot were only talkin poppin off a few rounds at the range at paper. wheres the face palm button haha

[DreadPirateMoyer]

Cute.

When you're talking about accuracy vs. round count, yes, military barrels used in combat don't last nearly as long.

[harold63]

The main damage this causes is to the wallet.

If you have a decent AR, then this^^^.