>>18962191Long dead meme. The AR-15's reputation has been the victim of our dumbfuck military. The M16 in Vietnam had issues specific to the time (that were largely the fault of our military, not the rifle design itself), and the Army's ung-bung solution of adding a forward assist was a pretty retarded one. From that point on, the principle issue with AR reliability (particularly in a military context) has been magazines--USGI mags are flimsy dogshit that were meant to be disposable, but naturally, the Army keeps them in service for way longer than they should be (and, more recently, when soldiers starting buying much more reliable PMAGs during the GWOT, the Army banned them from doing that).
If you look at the infamous reliability tests the Army conducted in the 2000s, you'll find that the M4 had a SHIT TON of magazine related stoppages (whereas the other rifles tested were allowed to use their own, higher quality magazines), and when those were subtracted, the M4 was actually more reliable than most of the other rifles tested. The fall test was especially retarded--the Army testers recorded a HUGE number of jams for the M4 because they didn't understand how the burst-mechanism worked (if you fire, say, a 2 shot burst, then your next shot will fire only one round. Each time this happened, it was recorded as one or several stoppages). Anyway, moral of the story, don't use shit magazines.
Shortening the gas system, especially with the 16" civilian ARs with carbine-length gas systems, hasn't helped either. And speaking of the gas system, the AR-15 isn't fucking direct impingement. It does not function by shitting a bunch of gas onto the bolt carrier like people seem to think. It's arguably a cleaner system than a lot of other rifles. You really don't even need to baby them and clean them all the time, either. Lubing them up every 1,000 rounds or so is sufficient, see:
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