I spent a couple of hours sunday at the Spokane gun show in hopes of finding a good deal. Honestly, I do not know why I bother. What few good deals that may be there are usually gone in the first few hours of the first day of the show. This show was no exception.
Once you get past the beef jerky, beanie baby, and knock off optics booths, you’d only find deals like $32.99 for a 550 rnd brick of .22lr that I could buy for $14.99 just a couple of miles down the road at wally-world. Or $22.95 for 9mm Blazer Brass (which I can still buy elsewhere for 8.95) range ammo. Or a plain-jane DPMS M4′gery “marked down to $1799″.
There were a few dealers there who were selling handguns at competitive prices. But most of the private sellers were bound and determined to get their price even if it meant no sale. Despite the fact someone at the table next to them would have the exact same item for 20%-30% less.
But none of that really matters since I was only looking for one thing. A dedicated .22lr upper for my AR. None were to be found. But I did find a dealer that had the new colt .22lr AR’s. The prices for the complete rifle started at about $560 for a standard M4 configuration, $580 for standard M16 configuration and about $620 for the M4 with quad rail foregrip.
The rifles seemed solid but very lightweight. They looked like they would accept standard at grips and stocks. But it uses a proprietary magazine (no black dog mags), a proprietary fire control group, a cast lower and upper, and it did not appear that the upper could be mounted to a standard AR lower.
The safety selector switch was also non-standard. To switch from safe to fire, you had to rotate the selector switch a full 180 degrees, where a standard AR (non-military semi-auto only) only requires a 90 degree turn.
So in the end, I decided to pass up on the colt .22lr AR’s. I’ll be holding out for a dedicated .22lr upper that will drop right on to my lower. The whole point of me getting a new upper in .22lr is so that I can train using the exact same configuration as my standard AR. The colt just wasn’t what I was looking for. But I was tempted to get one for my kids.