I'm fairly certain you exclusively use social media to inform your world view on guns and likely don't shoot enough to have the experience under your belt to speak on any of this. PSA guns are bad. Their ammo is great. The company is ethical. None of those things have to effect you if you don't want them too.
Their guns are, Mostly, just fine and go bang.
What's bad is final QC (not all the time) and checkout and certain components being assembled incorrectly or being slightly out of spec leading to tolerance stacking that causes issues.
I've watched their factory walkthroughs and yep..... South Carolina workforce mass producing stuff. You're going to get errors at their scale unless you hyper automate it to reduce human input or you have someone spend 2-3x the amount of time per rifle/firearm to make extra care and those costs money.
How many would be getting PSA if their prices went up by 50% immediately?
Suddenly a $500 AR is $750....
Now I'll say that their SABER ARs and JAKLs should essentially be 100% out of the factory and they even say those guns are made by a special team..... I'm not sure they mean "special" or specially trained.... we'll see. The issues I've seen with the JAKL weren't assembly errors they were parts not being made to spec errors. Haven't really seen a mega fucked SABER
I like this concept, and it made me think of watches in the same way. "Bro that Seiko 5 is the cheapest automatic made you need to get a Rolex Swiss made or nothing" is a retarded fucking take and yet the same exact thing is said about guns constantly. Not everyone needs a mechanical toolwatch, or 200 meter water resistance, or anything a Casio World Time can't do PERFECTLY for 30 bucks. Grabbing a PSA as a plinker you MAY have to use as a defensive weapon is a completely valid option.
Just get what works for you. PSA does no questions asked RMA. If you are a person who won't reee about sending your rifle into PSA for repairs if anything happens, there's not much reason NOT to buy a PSA and beat it to shit with normal use. If you'd rather buy once cry once, there are plenty of "Rolex" options you can buy.
Agreed. Shit you can just buy a PSA lower and go insane on an upper too.
Speaking of the watch analogy, Rolex has released movements that beat themselves to death due to a QC error and no one shit all over them. Oh and their newest generation of movements actually couldn't keep in timing spec for the first year or so due to another manufacturing error.
Sure, most PSA products will go bang and likely only need minimum work if there's a problem, but there are quite a lot of garbage firearms being dumped on their customers. That's fine if it's just something you take out once or twice a year to magdump into trash or plink at soup cans, but not fine for someone betting their life on it. Some people buy these guns, put 2 or 3 mags through it and believe they're "good to go" when they're really not.
Quite a lot is an extreme overstatement. You see autists getting asshurt over an out of spec gas port or someone getting a legit QC fuck up and that suddenly becomes the norm.
Meanwhile Remington literally made trash for nearly 20 years and they're still getting passes.
Kimber makes revolvers that might seize up and become inoperable and people still jerk them off.
The Ruger American was a bad design and was killed in less than 5 years.... People still buy Ruger semi auto pistols.
The general populace doesn't train, they're like Kyle Rittenhouse that gets put into a bad situation with an unlubed M&P Sport. You can stomp your feet all you want but they aren't going to the range to practice precision, consistency or tactical reloads but they still deserve something that fires at least half of one magazine when it counts and the only threat to that is Turkshit ammunition.
Agreed. The amount of people that fire more than 1 magazine in a self defense situation is extremely low.
At least for the AR platform it is relatively simple that you can build one from parts/rigging. Good luck making a watch movement from scratch.
Even the best weapon without maintenance will fail. I think people need to realize there's the following groups:
Piece of shit (Taurus, L85, FAMAS, INSAS)
Cheap and you don't care if it breaks (HI-Point, PSA, SCCY)
Cheap and won't break really with sporadic maintenance (S&W 500, G3, SVD, AK outside burgerland)
Expensive and won't break easily (KA, AEK)
Expensive and requires precise maintenance (SCAR, AN-94, ADS, MDX)
Phased Plasma rifle in the 40 watt range (G11, Styer ACR, Pancor Jackhammer)
Agreed. Even then, if your bargain AR gets through 5 magazines of cheap as shit steel case / lowest quality brass case out of the box without issue..... You're probably A-OK for 5,000 more rounds. Take it home, break it down , clean and lubricate and you're set.
Saying otherwise to quite literally 95% of gun owners in the USA is asinine and reeks of "MUH MILSPEC COLT M4 IS THE BEST EVUURRR CUZ MILSPEC"
Eg, a cousin of mine wants an AR. His budget is just about $650. For him, a PSA premium AR kit or a S&W M&P 15 Gen 3 is absolutely fine. I doubt that rifle will see 1,000 rounds in it's entire life.
Furthermore, a PSA lower will absolutely host a $1900 DD upper or $2200 KAC upper just fine.
Speaking of Out of Spec, USGI M4A1s absolutely can be on the very edge of "in spec", shoot 4 MoA and still get issued. They can have Bolts that slipped past QC and will shear locking lugs at 1,500 rounds. Overlarge gas ports so they are over gassed to shit, and so on. Still MILSPEC.