I should have thought of this earlier, but hopefully better late than never. With all the first-time gun buyers and especially all the people posting about "first AR builds" I feel compelled to mention the importance of verifying reliability. I'm not talking about manually cycling the action with live/dummy rounds and doing some dryfire in the garage. Take the firearm to a range and live-fire it. Others in the self-defense community will know who Massad Ayoob is. His sage wisdom is 200 rounds with no malfunctions as a minimum. ------------------------------------------------------------- This is my Ayoob-inspired process that I perform myself and teach my students: Firearm - 200 rounds, minimum. This is a sweet spot on the diminishing-returns curve, I can expound on this if anyone wants. Test the firearm with the weakest rounds (in terms of muzzle energy) you're likely to use. You are more likely to have a malfunction from a weak round than a strong round. Ensure every function of the firearm works as intended. Slide lock/last round hold-open, manual operation of action, check optic (if equipped), make sure holographic/red dots don't cut out under recoil, make sure the optic doesn't come loose under recoil, and that it holds zero. Be sure to test rapid fire. Make sure everything works when the gun is hot. Magazines - 50 rounds each, minimum. Can be performed concurrently or separately from firearm test. Firstly, the most crucial step is to **NUMBER YOUR MAGS.** This can be done overtly or discretely, but ensure there's some kind of a positive identifier on each mag so if you start experiencing malfunctions, you can isolate it to a specific mag. If new magazines are being tested, load them to full capacity and leave them that way for 24-48 hours. This sets the mag spring and removes "false" stiffness. During validation, load magazines to only a partial capacity of 3-5 rounds each. The primary reason for this is to ensure feeding reliability when the mag spring is offering minimal force. Another important reason is it ensures you get plenty of chances to verify the firearm will go to slide lock/last-round hold open (if applicable). It also gives you more chances to practice reloading drills. ------------------------------------------------------------- Way too many students come into my concealed carry classes naive to the possibility that a brand-new firearm/mags/whatever wouldn't work correctly out of the box. On average, I'd guess about half of them have to be talked out of carrying a handgun *before they've even personally fired it.* Those who follow police use-of-force incidents know that even department-maintained firearms are not immune to problems. The amount of malfunctions you can see on bodycam footage should be enough to prove my point for me. If you intend to use a particular firearm as a tool of defense, you owe it to yourself **and your family** to be completely sure that it is mechanically up to the task, as a completely separate element from your skill level in operating the weapon system. I've seen a lot of of factory-assembled firearms malfunction out of the box. That by itself is enough to warrant reliability validation, but compounding this issue is the number of people who've chosen now to build their first ARs. Don't get me wrong, building ARs is not hard, I've built many dozens over the years, and I'm not trying to bust chops here, but if it's your first time, you don't know what you don't know. You may be sure you did everything right, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When the commies are trying to kick your door in is the worst possible time to learn your home-built AR likes to double-feed or is light-striking because the hammer spring is in backwards. As much as I'd like to see tensions simmer down and disappear, we can't lose sight of the possibility that we may be on the eve of a period of mass unrest, the likes of which our country hasn't seen in over 100 years. With ammunition availability being as volatile as it is, it may be too late in the game for many of you to do this "right" by what I outlined above, or to diagnose/fix any issues you may uncover, but any reliability testing is better than nothing if your life or the life of a loved one may literally depend on it. Feel free to repost this anywhere and everywhere. If you have an issue you need help with, drop it in the comments below. I don't know everything about every weapon system out there, but I'm happy to try to help. Stay safe and God bless, pedes.