16 inch barrel on AR

B

biscuit_hunter

New member
I am looking into buying a bushmaster AR-15 and I was leaning torwards a carbine with a 16 inch barrel because it would be small and compact. But would the 16 inch barrel effect the accuracy very much?
 
The length of the barrel on a 16" gun is stiffer than on a 20" gun of equal profile, in theory the stiffer gun should be more accurate. How you can handle either gun will make more difference than barrel length.

I have two 16" guns now because I like then to be manuverable and to me a 20 or 24" gun is not. You will lose velocity, approximately 18 fps per inch is the difference I got on the chronograph.

I had a 16" V-Match that would do 1/2" moa but I don't expect that with my new 16" lightweight. Get a gun designed for accuracy instead of the M4 or lightweight profile and you just never know.
 
I have a 16" Rock River upper on my Ar with a 3x9 scope. I bought it for a coyote gun. I have been using the Black Hills remanufactured 55 gr. spire points and it shoots about a 3" group at 200 yards from a rest. It does better than that with handloads, but the Black Hills stuff is good enough for a coyote inside of 200 yards!
 
I have a 16" Rock River Pre-ban, with a chrome-moly steel
barrel, that puts my 55 gr. Nosler BT loads into .7 MOA
groups. I could probably even tighten that up a bit
more, with a free floating handguard. It is my coyote
calling gun, so 1.5" accuracy out to 200 yards is plenty
for the brush country calling I do in Wisconsin.

Squeeze
 
I bought a 16" Rock River M4 (turned under handguard) profile upper, as the heavy 16" ruined balance for me. The light profile is not any less accurate than a heavy barrel. Get a heavy, long barrel rig if you are a varmint hunter putting many rounds down range in a short time. The heavy barrel will heat up slower, be steady from a bipod or rest, & have better velocity from longer tube. If your on the move or hunt from thick cover, the lighter weight is only way to go for me. I wanted a compact calling rig that would shoot MOA & handle/balance well. What I got was all that, PLUS sub MOA accuracy!! Certainly surprised me! Like the rest of us, you will end up with another upper soon enough. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Take care,
HS
 
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As long as it is a good barrel the only thing about short ones is the muzzle blast will kill you and velocity will be down in the area of about 50fps per inch of barrel.
 
I have a RRA 20 inch Varminter, very heavy and very accurate.

I also have an Olympic PCR-16, 16 inch bull barrel. Still a bit heavy, but every bit as accurate as the RRA Varminter.

My son has a 16 inch Armalite with an M4 profile (lightweight) barrel. It's possibly the most accurate of the three. It only has a red dot sight on it, no magnification, but he still shoots MOA groups with it.
 
16" is freaking loud! You'll need to come up with some kind of hearing protection to use while hunting I think. This is why I'm looking into 20" options. I'm thinking about maybe a 20" A2 profile.
 
Right about loud! I've got an Olympic PCR-16 as well, shoots great but wear protection, I also have a Colt match Hbar lower with a 24"DPMS varmint upper, bull barrel. The varminter is heavy, heavy way too heavy to walk around with. Soon as I can I going to rebarrel that upper with a 20" SUM from OLY. By the way the Olympic shoots sub moa at 100 yds with cheap 55gr Federal or XM193. That heavy varminter demands expensive ammo, read 69gr SMK, to shoot sub moa. With the 55 gr cheap Federal (not XM193 - chamberthing) the heavy barrel shoots about 1.5moa. Rest of story, the little PCR-16 is a hot dog fine rifle with a pretty good stock trigger outfitted with a red dot inline and a Pentax 2-5X 20mm on top of handle all on an ARMS 39 mount. The Colt has a 4200 Elite Bushnell 4-16X 50 scope on a flattop. Whatever you do, get the flat top with a free float tube, I like the new Olympic K-16, light, free float tube, good barrel and $699 retail.
 
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