This Shooter Saturday feature is on the HK416[7] also known as the MR556[762] for the civilian market. Lets face it I could fill up this Shooter Saturday with hundreds if not thousands of AR type weapons and I'll probably occasionally hit one or two but I was thinking what would be the one AR type rifle that I would pick up if I wanted one price no option and availability on hand and I keep coming back to the HK416 models from Heckler & Koch. Matching the tried and true gas piston operation of the G36 with the hot-swapable ability of the M4/M16 platform with the quality control of Heckler & Koch makes for a damn fine war machine. Then make if civilian legal and holy hell I want one...badly.
There are several reasons why I think the Hk416 family of rifles are some of the best AR platform rifles available now. Besides H&K's reliability and precision craftsmanship they have some of the best barrels available using their famous cold hammer forging process. After the barrel is their free floating 4-quadrant rail system that can be taken off and on repeatedly without worrying about changing the zero of the barrel. The most important improvement of course is the gas operated piston system which is the HK-proprietary gas piston system found on the G36. This system unlike the regular gas system of the standard M4/M16 keeps carbon fowling and hot gases away from the action keeping the internals of the firearm clean and cool allowing for better more reliable operations.
The civilian model carries many of those features over to a weapon with a legal barrel length and semi-auto only firemode but apparently only shipping with a 10 round mag for those nanny states that don't allow for hi-cap mags. Looking at a starting price of $2000 that isn't entirely bad for a high quality AR rifle but then it climbs from there so be expecting to pay a bit more when it hits stores. Which might not be until next year. Like the HK416 it will be offered in either 5.56x45 or the 7.62x51 so there is also that option to go with as well. Either case some pretty nice AR platform rifles.
