♪ Blessing in the mornin' ♪ ♪ Come back Sunday morning ♪ California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection. Play at Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. ♪ We got the store to sell ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card.

Visit yamava.com/palms to discover more. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, inspiration, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while also building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua, and I am your host, and today I'm gonna give you some practical advice on how to buy an AR-15 and not get taken.

(laughs) How's that for wading into the fires of current controversy? But frankly, AR-15s are wonderful guns, and I think you should have one for reasons that I have enumerated elsewhere in terms of the moral and philosophical arguments. Of course, it's your money, but it's hard to see how you can go wrong with going ahead and parting with some of it to purchase an AR-15 for yourself, and I thought you might enjoy a little bit of straightforward discussion on how to do that.

So I've got my buddy Mike. Mike, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. - Thanks, glad to be here. - My friend Mike is a, I don't know, do you call yourself a gun nut? - Absolutely, self-labeled gun nut. - Some gun people hate that term, and some don't, but I'll call you a gun nut, and more specifically, I would call you an AR nut, because of all the people that I know, I don't know of anybody that's put more time and thought into specifically the AR, what's called the AR platform.

So let's start by talking about what an AR-15 actually is, and then we'll move into why buying one. So what is an AR-15? - AR-15 would be a general term, not sure if it actually has a technical definition, but it's a pretty widely accepted general term that describes a firearm design that originated, let's call it the Vietnam era, and became well-known.

It started becoming issued to the US military in that period, and then has basically, in various variations, has been the standard rifle for the United States infantrymen ever since. And along the way, I'm not up on all the details of exactly what happened when, but basically, they started using the same design for civilian use, and it's developed quite a bit.

It's actually, the civilian versions are much more advanced now, in terms of the technical advancements, than the military versions. The military's pretty slow to adopt new weapons, but essentially, it's the same weapon, with the only distinction being full-auto in the military versus semi-auto in civilians. - If you were to go back and research the history, in the military, I guess it was the M16, probably A1 was the first one, and then it came out to the A2.

But if you go back and you look at Vietnam, you'll see the guys carrying around the big old black carry handle on the top, they're M16s. And then the civilian version of that came out as the AR-15, and there are different variants of that today. But it really was a revolutionary design, where, in terms of rifles, there was a major change in military history, as far as why the US military went away from a larger caliber, heavier, what's called a battle rifle.

The AR-15 or the M16 are not considered to be a battle rifle. So there's a whole kind of interesting side road to that discussion. But when it came out in the civilian market, it has, in many ways, revolutionized the rifle marketplace. That's why it is the most popular firearm rifle that's sold in the United States of America.

And I would say, how would you characterize why it's so popular? I would say, one, it's modular. - Right. What's really special about it is not so much, in some ways, it was ahead of its time when it was designed, and there are better designs out by now. But what makes it what it is today is the fact that, of course, for the first period of time after it was designed, there were patents and stuff like that.

And then at a certain point, patents expired, and what they call the military specifications for the weapon became public. And what that did for the industry was it gave everybody the same foundation to build on. So if you can imagine proprietary designs, only the manufacturer would really know all the details, and everybody else kind of has to figure it out on their own.

When the military specifications became available to everybody, it basically gave everybody the same blueprints to work from, which means everything is compatible. So basically, a mil-spec AR is the term for something that's based on those designs, which means that everything that is mil-spec is compatible. And one way that it makes it-- they call it "Legos for Men" because that makes everything modular because everybody knows that they can make stuff that's compatible with everybody else's stuff.

And in terms of the free market, you can just imagine how powerful that is. - It's been especially powerful, too, because with the exception of what, on the AR-15 rifle, is called the lower receiver, the lower receiver, which is the part that's stamped with the serial number for the gun, that's the only thing that's technically, according to the law, considered to be a firearm.

So that's the only piece of it that is actually regulated as a firearm. Every other individual component, whether that's the stock, the sight system, the barrel, you know, the grips, every other component of the rifle can be freely bought and sold on the public market, can be bought through the mail, it can be bought over the internet.

You don't have to deal with the federal firearms licensing. And so that's led to just this massive proliferation of quality accessories, ranging from the cheap to the very high end, that you can swap in and out of a huge majority of the rifles. - Right, and, you know, we had the assault weapons ban of '94 under Clinton, which, incidentally, was probably one of the main factors that fueled the Republican Revolution to take over the House in '94.

- Definitely. - And so that kind of kept a lid on the market for 10 years. But in '04, when that expired and was not renewed, the market just exploded. And like you say, you can-- the range is so big, from the cheapest to the most expensive, and everything in between, that it's just a really great illustration of what happens with the free market when it's allowed to do its thing.

- Right, right. So you can-- with the AR platform, you could buy anything from-- I mean, what would you say is, in current market, as we record this in end of February 2018, I would say current market price, the last gun show I went to, for a completed, put together, a complete AR, ready to shoot out of the box.

We're not talking about a parted, kitted one that you build yourself. But a complete AR, probably in the range of $600. - Yeah, you know, they say that Obama was the best gun salesman ever, and prices actually stayed high because everybody was a little bit nervous about what might happen under him with the regulations.

But after the election and Trump winning, it actually was really bad for the market, and so the prices went down below that to the point where you can find a name brand, a complete rifle, entry level for probably under $500. - Right, right. And that's not even necessarily the cheapest way to put a rifle together.

Because you can buy-- so again, the actual firearm is considered, but for legislation, what's called lower receiver. You could buy a mil-spec lower receiver for what? 40 bucks? - Yeah, they've been around $40 to $50 for quite a while. - Right. And so this is not-- if you're not familiar with the design, you're not familiar with the platform, you're not familiar with guns, when I say lower receiver, this is not something that you can actually put a bullet in and pull the trigger.

All you have is this little box of metal that has a little mechanism in it. And you just pay 40 bucks for that. You have to add-- - Yeah, it's literally a piece of metal with holes drilled in the right places in the right shape. - But it has a serial number on it, and that's what's considered legally the firearm.

And so probably the cheapest way to do it is to build it yourself. You can put together a kit, you buy the lower receiver, and the way the law works is to buy that lower receiver in the new marketplace, you have to go and buy that from a federally licensed firearms dealer.

If you're gonna buy it online, if you ever go and you're shopping online, you're gonna buy it. The way that works is your product has to be shipped to you through a federal firearms licensee. So if you've never bought a gun online, you can buy it online, but they don't just ship it right to your house.

You have to set up a relationship with a local FFL, is the acronym for it, a local federal firearms dealer who will run the background check, take the appropriate paperwork, make sure that you pass it if you have waiting periods or things like that you have to deal with.

They're the ones who are responsible for following all the federal regulations. But then once you get that little piece, you can order the other pieces. - Yeah, just to be clear, the purchase price of these things right now might be around $40 to $50. You may have to add shipping on top of that, and then most of these dealers would charge some kind of transfer fee.

It can range from $25 to $30 up to more. So if you find some small guy who's just running his business out of his house, then he's gonna be cheap. So add that into the cost. Of course, if you buy multiple ones, you may get a volume discount. But if you're just gonna buy one, figure by the time it's delivered, you may be closer to $100, but it's still pretty cheap.

- Right. So then in my analysis, you can buy different variations. You could buy, if you knew what you were doing or if you knew what you wanted, you can buy each of the components and then put the gun together yourself. It requires, what did you say, some basic skills?

- Yeah, it's really that's going back to what makes the AR-15 special. For example, the big alternative generally is the AK-47 or AK-74. Those are-- - The difference between those is that the AK-70-- Sorry, the AK-47 fires a larger round, basically almost a 30 caliber round, a 7.62 millimeter round, whereas the AK-74 is the AK design that is comparable to the AR-15 caliber.

What is that, the 5.45? - 4.5, yeah. - Right, 5.45 millimeters. So an AK-74 fires a very small bullet, just like we should note, if you're not familiar with AR-15s. AR-15s generally, and you can get them in different calipers, but an AR-15 fires a very small, relatively small bullet.

You'll hear that referred to, and there's two different sizes of, they're chambered in, either in what's called 5.56 millimeter NATO or .223 inches, and they are almost equivalent. They're not necessarily interchangeable all the time, but they're basically interchangeable. And to that bullet, just for sake of comparison, the actual bullet size of the cartridge, of the round, the actual bullet size that comes out of a standard AR-15 is the same size as a .22 long rifle that you plink in your backyard, but it has a lot more powder behind it.

It comes out at a much higher velocity, but it's-- - And it's also heavier. - Right, and it's heavier. - Longer. - But in terms of the size of the bullet, it's much smaller. Now, you can take the AR-15 gun design and you can chamber it in different calibers.

So there's a big, in the enthusiast community, there's a big push towards something called a 300 blackout, or you can buy an AR-10, which fires a round that is a .308 size bullet. But why was I telling about the bullet size? Just that it's a relatively small gun. So that's the difference between AK-47 and AK-74.

- We'll call it AK for now, but the point I was gonna make is that the AK is a design that was come out of, you know, Soviet industrial world where they're making these things in big factories over there in Yugoslavia or wherever they might be. And it requires some significant machine tools to assemble parts of it.

I think part of it has to be pressed together and stuff like that. Anyway, the AR literally is nothing but hand tools. And you won't find these tools at Home Depot, but they're readily available online. They're relatively affordable. So if you wanted to, depending on how much you want to get the specialized tools to make things easier, but some basic hand tools and maybe a vice to hold everything in place for you, and you can literally assemble the entire thing from a bag of parts to a complete gun ready to fire, you know, right there in your home.

- Right. And so every gun platform has its advantages and disadvantages. Some people love the AK platform, but the AK platform is not modular like the AR is, at least that's my knowledge, right? - There's no mil spec for AK. - So you can buy a high-end AK, you can buy a low-end AK.

- They wish there was. - And people still love them. And you can pick them up out of the dirt and wipe it out and shoot them. That's the whole point of why they're so popular on a global basis. But they don't have the ability of an AR to be customized.

So the big valuable thing I would say about it, one of the reasons why people love the AR platform is it's upgradable and it can be designed for a specific purpose. So upgradable, you can buy a cheap AR-15 as an entry-level, you know, starter firearm. You've got 800 bucks, you buy an inexpensive one and buy some ammo to go with it.

But then over time, if you have more money, you can swap out the trigger for a better trigger, you can swap out the barrel for a better barrel, you can add some gear to the front of it to make it have a red dot or a laser or lights and all the stuff.

And so you can start simple and upgrade from there. And that's really, really powerful because it gives the people the ability to buy one rifle and to improve it over time. The second thing that in my mind makes an AR-15 so powerful is that it can be adjusted to fit your specific needs and goals.

So if you have a specific application, most guns are compromises. You're usually compromising something to fit specific needs. But if you want an AR-15 that can do relatively consistent, accurate, medium-distance shooting, it's not a long-range platform, it just doesn't have the ballistic characteristics to shoot effectively at very long ranges.

But if you want one that's accurate at medium-distance ranges, out to a couple hundred, 300 yards, you can put that together, you can build it, you can put a quality barrel, you can put a quality sighting system. But on the other hand, if you want something that is short and small to use as your home defense gun or to use in an application where you need to fit it into a very small package, you, depending on how short you go, you have the ability to do that as well.

So one gun can be changed to meet different applications. Yeah, and speaking of accuracy for a minute, that is one of the wonderful things about the design. And to this day, I'm not sure that there is anybody who has developed a better design that is capable of more accuracy than that platform is capable of.

And a lot of people like to make fun of the AK and say it's a minute of barn or something like that. The AK is not known for its accuracy. The AR, even the military specification for the AR is very generous. They put it in terms of MOA, so a 4 MOA would basically be-- MOA is an acronym that stands for minute of angle.

Right, and what it really means is that 100 yards, your distribution of the various shots might be inside a 4-inch circle. Well, a $500 or less, maybe even entry-level gun, is probably at least half of that. It could very easily, with the right ammunition, be 2 MOA. And then when you start doing various modifications, whatever they may be, there's plenty of people-- well, even factory guns-- that can do under 1 MOA, which means that if you shoot 3 bullets at the same spot on a target, the variance between them is going to be less than an inch.

And that is something inherent to the design that, like I said, there's brand-new designs coming out now that often can't even do that. Right, so explain what makes it so inherently accurate with the way that the mechanism actually works. Well, the technical aspect of it-- I'm not sure I could speak really authoritatively on that, but, you know, part of it is the design, and part of it is the widespread availability of quality components.

So, for example, the biggest factors in accuracy is going to be the barrel, and then after that's going to be the trigger. And so, you know, you can get your $500 gun, and then whenever you decide you want to get a nicer barrel, if you've got the tools to do it, then you can swap that out, and all of a sudden you've made a much more accurate gun.

And frankly, there are-- often they're used as-- they call it varmint guns, and that's things like prairie dogs that they do out west for hunting, where it's a very long distance with a small bullet. And, you know, those guys do some amazing things, but, you know, you get a better trigger and just swap it in there.

Right. Yeah, it's probably too hard to go through the technical characteristics of how the action actually operates in an audio format, but if you're interested, go on YouTube. There's plenty of things available to understand. It has a fundamentally-- just a really neat way that it handles the actual mechanism of cycling the action, which makes it a powerful platform.

In terms of applications, talk about some of the different applications that you've seen people build them for that make it so versatile. Sure, and maybe I could just also put that in the context of needs. And, you know, one thing you have to be aware of if you're getting into this world is that the people who are the most active online and in the dialogues are probably the enthusiasts.

They're not the normal people. And so, you know, us gun nuts can get pretty obsessive about things that you really don't need to care about, and it can be difficult to weed through all that just to find what you need. But, you know, in terms of application, many people simply buy these things for self-defense.

You know, they may have to use a handgun because they can't carry a rifle around them every day, but if they're at home or they're near a vehicle or there's something special going on, the rifle is far superior to a handgun or any self-defense situation. And for that, you really don't need that much.

Yeah, a rifle is superior in a self-defense situation for multiple reasons. I'll give mine and then you add yours. One, it's easier to shoot a rifle accurately than to shoot a handgun accurately, just simply based upon the length of the barrel and the pointing mechanism. You can teach a novice shooter.

I could take a 12-year-old boy or girl and put an AR-15 in their hands, and in a couple of hours of instruction, you can have them reliably hitting rounds accurately because of the fact that it's a rifle versus a handgun. Multiple points of stabilization. Right, right. You have--I'm going to get so technical.

It's just an inherently more stable platform, and it's easier to shoot accurately. Number two, an AR-15 is a really ideal thing for a home defense weapon just because of its standard capacity of the number of rounds that it can carry. A standard capacity magazine for an AR-15 is 30 rounds.

Now, you can buy them that are 20 rounds. If you live in California, you can buy them with 10 rounds. You can buy them with 40 rounds, and you can buy drums that are more, but you can buy a 100-round drum, but it gets so heavy, you can't do it.

But just a standard AR-15 30-round magazine, which in today's market is--you can buy for $10, which is just amazing. Those people who lived through the assault weapons ban from '94 to '04 used to pay through the nose for a pre-ban magazine. But a standard magazine gives you 30 rounds, and so you put an AR-15 with a 30-round capacity in the hands of a basic shooter.

You've put a very effective weapon in the hands of a basic shooter in a situation like a home defense type of scenario. - Yeah, and just to inject a little bit of reality into the political discourse that's going on right now, a lot of people have this perception of the AR-15 incorrectly labeled an assault weapon, but let's just, you know, say it's the same thing.

We're all talking about the same thing. The round itself is actually not that effective against, you know, a human target, which is basically what we're talking about in self-defense. You're shooting a human who legally needs to be shot. It's an unpleasant reality, but it's there. And, you know, I think you talk to any soldier who's used this gun--or, sorry, to be more accurate, this caliber, this cartridge in combat.

They'll tell you that they may have needed to do shooting an enemy soldier multiple times before, you know, they went down. And so a lot of people look at this question of a high-capacity magazine and say, "What do you need all that for?" Well, the truth is that even if you're hitting your target, you probably need to hit them multiple times because, let's be realistic, if you are shooting a gun in self-defense, you need to stop that person immediately.

Otherwise, it's probably not justified. And so you need to immediately stop that person from being the threat that they are presenting. And so that's one of the great things about the AR-15, is that you don't have to reload very quickly. And so you are able to use that weapon effectively to do what you need to do.

And as soon as additional threats are added-- for example, a group of people who are all posing a threat-- you suddenly may run out of bullets very quickly with a 30-round magazine. And that's assuming you're hitting your target, which-- - I should not be assumed. - I actually looked this up, and I was amazed that-- and it's probably not a-- you know, it's a little misleading because they compared the number of bullets purchased-- I mean, technically correct.

Somebody's going to give me a hard time about this. But the number of cartridges purchased by the military to the number of confirmed kills. And it was literally 250,000. - To one. - To one. So I don't know that that's an actual representation of how many rounds a soldier fires per target.

But it was kind of silly. And even police, you know, their hit rates are below 30% generally in the statistics. So, you know, just to put the high-capacity magazine in perspective, it's not what people think it is. And in terms of using this gun for legal purposes, it's actually a very important asset.

- Right, right. And the other benefit of the AR-15 platform, specifically of the relatively small-caliber bullet-- and this is one of the reasons, in my understanding, that the military moved some of their foot soldiers to it-- was unlike a larger .308, which was the previous standard, all the way up through Vietnam, unlike a larger--a larger bullet is heavier.

So you can carry fewer rounds with you. Whereas the smaller cartridge, the .223 caliber, the 5.56 that the AR-15 fires, is smaller, it's lighter, you can carry more rounds. But what it means is I can take a standard AR, put a 30-round magazine in it, it comes--tips the scales at, what, 7 pounds, something like that?

- Yeah, loaded. - 6 to 8 pounds? - 6 to 8. - So I can give that rifle, which doesn't have an-- especially if it doesn't have a very long barrel on it, I can give that rifle to my 115-pound wife, and she is equalized in her ability to have a powerful, useful firearm that she can hold.

She's not gonna hold an M1 Garand. I could put an M1 Garand in her hand and say, "Here are a couple of stripper clips." The M1 Garand was a standard rifle for World War I, World War II, but I could say, "Here are a couple of stripper clips." She can't hold the thing, 'cause empty, it's what?

It's like 12 or 13 pounds empty. - I don't know if it's heavy. - Whereas an AR is light, and it really is effective. So it's really--it's a wonderful platform. It's a miracle of modern technology. - Yeah, so just real quick, to go back to your original question about applications, your basic entry-level rifle is gonna be pretty sufficient for self-defense, but if you do want something shorter, that is possible.

Unfortunately, the price you pay for a shorter barrel is a bigger fireball coming out the end, 'cause there's powder that's not being used to propel that bullet, but it can be done very easily. And again, one thing I forgot to mention was you don't have to swap out barrels.

One of the things that--again, going back to how nice the design is, these things are separated into lowers and uppers, and often what people do is they will have one lower component, and then they will swap out multiple uppers very easily, and you don't have to use any tools.

You just pop a couple pins in and out. And so for whatever your application is, you just pop it out, pop it in, and you've got a completely different gun that doesn't require any tools to set up. It's all--you know, even the optic is mounted and zeroed, and you're ready to go.

So shorter uppers, if you want something more compact, are very easily either purchased or built. And then, of course, if you are using it for something beyond that, where either you're going the longer distance, which, you know, you have to be realistic about self-defense. If somebody's 100 yards away, it's hard to build the case for legal self-defense.

- That's if you're in a war and we're not. There's no legal case you can make for that. - Yeah, so beyond that, it goes primarily into hunting and recreation. And there, it's pretty much whatever you want to do, whether it's a longer barrel to get more range, whether it's a more accurate barrel, or going back to what Joshua was saying about the calibers.

Let's say you do want a bigger caliber for hunting. You can have that set up in a separate upper that you just pop on, and now you're ready with something. It's actually not legal, I believe, in most states, if not all, to shoot deer with this caliber. It's not considered humane.

So, but you can easily-- - Because it's too small. - Right, right. - It's not big enough. - It's not gonna be a quick kill. It's not gonna be humane to the animal. It's gonna result in a wounded animal that's a very undesirable situation for many reasons. But you can swap in that larger caliber very easily for hunting.

And, you know, again, there are what they call pistol versions, which actually don't have a stock, but have their applications, whether being shorter or getting around-- You know, some states have regulations that are a little more restricted than others, but the pistol variation can help you get around some of that legally and still be able to accomplish what you're trying to do.

- And also, just the ability with the barrels. You can-- Some people, many people will shorten up and buy a short barrel. Some of them, if you go too short, then you have to apply and pay the federal government a $200 tax stamp for the privilege of having your barrel and get it registered.

- Yeah, yeah. The barrel thing primarily comes from the era of gangsters in the '20s and '30s, and they didn't like these gangsters hiding their guns underneath their trench coats, so they thought that they were going to solve that problem with restrictions on the barrels. But one thing I didn't mention in this conversation, in this question, is adding a suppressor, a silencer, it's becoming much more common, and, you know, a lot of people, all they know about that is from the movies, which is, of course, as with most things it does inaccurate, and it really doesn't make it that much quieter.

It doesn't make you able to sneak around and shoot stuff without anybody hearing, but it does protect your hearing as a shooter, and it also, they like to say, it's respectful to your neighbors if you happen to be in a place where you can shoot. But anyway, if you are going to add a suppressor, then that starts to make the weapon much longer, so then you may go to a shorter barrel just to compensate for that, and that's where something like what Joshua mentioned about the .300 Blackout, that was designed for that.

So once you dig into it, you may find yourself, you know, going a little deeper into it and finding out some of the pretty neat stuff that can be done with the alternatives to the original setup. - So let's get to practical advice, because obviously I want to give you practical advice.

I don't want to just, you can become an enthusiast and do all that if you're interested, but the practical advice is, number one, go and get one. It's hard for me to imagine it being a bad financial decision to buy an AR-15. They are very much demonized. They're very much, many people would like to legislate them.

If they did legislate them, then the value would go up. An AR-15 that's not destroyed, not overused, has a very high value in the secondary market. If you ever need to sell it, you can sell it very, very quickly. And if you need to upgrade it, it can be a good decision.

So can you imagine a scenario in which you wind up financially poor with an AR? - Yeah, most people who own these things have no intention of ever selling them. But no, I just, I mean, they're so cheap today that there's just absolutely no way that, you know, maybe with 3D printing someday, that they'll get the production costs so low that it'll go down by $10.

But that's not what we're talking about. And it's much more likely, if you survey the political landscape, it's much more likely that there's gonna be more restrictions in the future than less. And even if there are less, it's not really gonna change the value. And so in many ways, you can look at this as simply future-proofing yourself.

And that is the beauty of this thing where you can just buy that lower receiver. You may not wanna shoot right now. You may not wanna get into guns. You may not wanna do anything except not have to worry about such things in the future. In which case, you can go buy these lower receivers.

You can put them wherever you want. You frankly don't even have to lock 'em up in a safe. No kid is gonna do any, get in trouble with them. There's no way to shoot a bullet out of an AR-15 lower receiver. It's just a piece of metal, and that's it.

So you may just wanna go buy some of these and stick 'em in a box in a closet, forget about them for the rest of your life. But if you, you know, are worried at all about the future trajectory of the political elements and the legislation and everything else, you may very well be happy in the future that you have that, or you may be very happy that you can pass it on to your children.

And frankly, like I said, this is aluminum. You know, you don't even have to worry about it rusting. So if all you did was stick these things in a box and pass it on to your children's children, it would still be just as usable, you know, 100 years from now.

And you don't even have to worry about the prospect of having to do it yourself. There are plenty of people you could find who for a small fee would be happy to build it on there for you. - Right. And once you own that, and especially, that's why I talk about the value in the secondary market, the ability to make a private party sale, a private sale of a firearm between individuals, and of course this is frequently debated in the political sphere under the so-called gun show loophole.

There is no gun show loophole. There is the ability for any private individual to sell their property to another private individual. - Subject to state regulation. Some states are more strict than that on that. - Right. So, the point is that once you have something, you can sell it in the private market.

And if you ever have the opportunity to buy a gun in the private market versus having to complete all of the federal paperwork, always choose the private market because it brings you additional protection. It's a more valuable thing to you. Now, the law is very clear that the federal government is not allowed to build and maintain registries and databases.

However, I think most of us have a healthy distrust of even any direction in that area, and especially many gun owners have a healthy distrust. So, if you have them and you own them, and if you buy them in the private market, then there is no record of your ownership in the federal lists of paperwork.

You can explore the details of how that works. It's a fascinating system. I appreciate the protections that have been put in place, but to the point, by owning those lowers, you are protecting yourself in many ways. Now, that doesn't mean that legislation cannot change. For example, California has all of these restrictions at present on what you're technically legally allowed to own.

You are a felon. You are a convicted felon, but you could be charged if you own a standard capacity magazine in the state of California. There's this whole recent debacle with this new law. I won't go into California. But the reality is that in California, in Colorado, in New York, in Connecticut, nobody turns them in when they change the law.

I read a story, was it Connecticut, where they were doing research on registries, and they found that 62% of police officers in the state had unregistered guns, even after they were supposed to all register. So there is widespread civil disobedience among gun owners in the United States of America, and it's fantastic to see, especially to see multiple police sheriffs are suing their state governments for the overreach, and I'm getting into a ditch.

At this point, there are still plenty of law enforcement people who say they would not enforce certain restrictions, but... Exactly. Times can change. So you could buy a lower. You can also just go and buy a completed gun, and that's what you probably should do if you are a new gun owner, in my opinion.

Just go and buy a completed gun. Now, there is a kind of a halfway point. You could buy a completed upper and a completed lower, and you could do that as well, and that's probably one of your best deals in the current market. Right. I checked the prices today, and the lowers are still available for $40 to $50, and again, if you actually have zero interest in actually having a working gun or shooting it or having to lock it up somehow, then that may be the easiest solution.

And that's probably the best investment opportunity. Right. Sure. If you wanted it from the investment perspective, because that lower is so valuable, especially if there were legal changes. Sure. Exactly. So going beyond that, if you want to actually have a functional firearm, then there's the separating the lower and the upper, like I mentioned before.

The lower can be a little bit--has a lot more pieces and parts. I actually haven't done it myself yet. I've just watched the videos on how to do it. They're all over YouTube. If you're curious about that, it's very easy to find, and you can watch the--you know, basically, somebody knows what they're doing, can be done with it in 20 minutes or less.

So, you know, they can make a video, a pretty short video, showing you how it's done and get a sense of it. The upper actually has much less assembly involved, maybe in terms of tools, maybe a little more. But the point is that you can do everything from nothing but parts.

You can get an assembled upper and do the lower yourself, or you can do the lower yourself and buy the other way, or you can just buy a fully assembled lower and a fully assembled upper. And that can be the easiest solution while keeping the cost low. You're not really putting a name brand on there.

You know, there are companies that have established a brand. I mean, the market in terms of gun manufacturing themselves is very clogged right now. The market just exploded after the ban expired, and I'm sure there are hundreds of AR-15 manufacturers to the point where they're going out of business right now because of the softening of the market after Trump was elected.

So you may find a deal on a name brand thing, but they're still going to be more expensive. I think the entry level, for example, you walk into a gun store, Smith & Wesson, you'll probably find those $500 or so, and those are pretty acceptable quality. Let me just say one thing, though, on this, because we talked a lot about building yourself and everything else.

Again, going back to application, if it's a-- and the obsessive nature of the conversation. If you are a soldier or a police officer or anything else where there are critical applications, and there can't be any question about the reliability of your gun, whether it's going to do what you need it to do, usually the easy button is to go to a respected manufacturer and manufacturers may offer warranties and all that stuff.

There's all the support that a manufacturer can give. If you are a hard user, for example, the enthusiasts, there are plenty of enthusiasts that will run through thousands of rounds in their guns in a month. And if you're a hard user, these are mechanical devices, and they can wear out, and there is a mil spec, and so if a company is trying to sell you a more expensive gun, they're going to tell you about how they're going beyond the military specification to make it better.

So if that's your world, you probably don't need my advice, but you may spend more money for a name-brand product or there are improvements to design for things like-- there are variations, for example, one of the common ones is piston design that you'll see that label, and that's basically lets it run longer without being cleaned reliably and stuff like that.

If that's what you're doing, you'll probably figure this all out pretty quick. But if you're just a normal person who doesn't go shooting a lot, maybe you take it to the range to get familiar with it, have a little fun every once in a while, but that's it, I would say an entry-level gun is probably going to be sufficient as long as you verify that it works well.

There are guns you can buy for the cheapest price possible and then they just don't work right. That does happen. But if you think about something that even you are going to rely on for self-defense, what do you need it to do? You don't need it to work for hundreds of rounds, you don't need it to run a thousand rounds without a single malfunction.

You need it probably to shoot five bullets or so, or maybe ten, or maybe a full 30-round magazine. As long as you're confident to do that, you're going to be okay and you're never going to have a problem. Well, you know, personal opinion, opinions vary on this, but personal opinion, if you test it, let's say 500 rounds without problems, you probably achieve what you need to achieve.

So, if you walk into, for example, if you walk into a gun store and you start letting them chat you up, they may want to tell you all about the superior aspects of a certain gun that costs two or three hundred more than the one next to it, and they may tell you all about a cold hammer-forged barrel, or whatever.

Well, it is better quality, but you may not care. That may not be relevant to your use. So, don't get too caught up in that, don't let them talk you into all this business of quality. A mil-spec AR-15 is a mil-spec AR-15. It's everything that you need it to be for basic use, especially for recreational use.

And you may find after you get the cheap one, you may figure out a lot better what you want to spend more money on later. But don't let anybody talk you into buying the expensive stuff, especially if it's your first gun or your first rifle. So, all that being said, you know, prices today, you can get a fully assembled lower around 150, you can get a fully assembled upper around 300, or even less if it's on sale, and basically, you know, the lower goes to your dealer, pay a fee to transfer that, the upper comes to you in the mail, you put those together and you've got yourself a fully assembled gun under 500, I'd say.

So, here's my issue with gun people. It's so easy for gun people to get interested in all those details. "Oh, I've got this trigger, I've got this chrome moly blah blah blah barrel." If you've got a budget of $1,000, instead of doing what most people do, which is spend $950 on the gun, and then they have $50 of ammo to go to the range one time, spend $500 on the gun, spend $200 on magazines, buy 20 magazines for the thing, because if you ever had to use the gun--we're not talking home defense, here I'm just talking about the fact of having a rifle-- if you ever had to go to war, which I pray you never do, and I pray I never do, I'd rather have 20 magazines than two.

The magazines are the weak link, if you don't have those, or if they break. The gun is probably not going to break, you can buy a part set. But the big thing is buy ammo, and buy training, and buy range time. Those are the things that people miss. They don't buy ammo, they don't buy training, and they don't buy range time.

And because of that, they aren't effective with their weapons. Right, and that's really--the one thing I haven't mentioned at all is accessories, but they are pretty essential, and there's a big difference between people who buy guns just because they want to buy them, and people who actually buy them because they want to use them for whatever use.

If you're going to use a gun, you're going to need some accessories on there, at least minimum sights, most likely you're going to want some kind of red dot, which vary greatly in price, I mean, maybe $50 up to $600 or whatever. A red dot is a sighting mechanism that puts a hologram of a red dot on your target, and it's special because it provides fast target acquisition, allows you to bring the rifle up and quickly understand where it's aiming, and it's easy to see.

So it's a very effective way for you to quickly get the rifle on target much faster than iron sights, the traditional iron sights. Right, it's a much more useful thing. I mean, basically it's to the point where a lot of people don't even bother putting the regular old sights on the rifle anymore because they never use them.

Including, by the way, military special ops guys. A lot of those guys don't even bother because their optics are so reliable. Even as backups? Yeah, they never use them, they don't even care. But anyway, you could easily, without even buying high-end accessories, you could easily spend as much on accessories as you spend on the rifle itself.

And that's not even getting to what Josh was talking about, which is a very important point. Oh, one more mention on the accessories. The sights, you probably eventually would want some kind of optic, some kind of sling, and then if you want to be able to use this thing more than 12 hours out of each day, you need some kind of flashlight on there.

Very quickly it adds up. And that's all before you get into the very important element of training, which a weekend class is going to cost you probably at least $200 to $300, but it's very important, very essential. And ammunition can get expensive. Right now--I didn't check today, but let's just say in the vicinity of $20-something to $0.30 a round, maybe to $40 maybe.

More than that. Sorry, that's old prices. I'm thinking 9mm. A thousand-round box of 5.56 is not cheap. Right, you're looking around $0.50 a round, and you can run through some money very quickly just doing some basic training. So personally, my perspective is I'm very passionate about the high-quality stuff, but if you're getting practical, your money is much better spent on things like decent accessories, training, practice, than on a more expensive gun.

So a thousand-round bulk purchase of ammo if you buy just online and you're not going to a local gun store, probably under $350, but $300 to $350 for a thousand rounds of 5.56. So that's not cheap, but you can blow through some money because you go to a class, a good weekend class, they usually tell you to bring a thousand rounds.

Yeah, you're at least going to use 500. Right, so ammo adds up. But the whole point of having the gun, if you're not just doing it as an investment--and again, that's where different things-- but the whole point is to be able to effectively use it. As the old saying goes, "I have a lot more fear of a man with one gun who knows how to use it than a man with a closet full that doesn't know how to shoot." And again, going back to the distinction, there are a lot of people who just buy these things either because they want to protect themselves in the future or just because they think it's cool.

But if you open up most gun safes, very few of the guns inside are actually ready to use. And there's nothing wrong with that. You're welcome to collect guns, but just don't fool yourself by thinking that once you buy the gun, you're done. You're just getting started. It doesn't make you invincible.

That's the whole point which bugs me. People say, "Oh, the person has an AR-15." Watching the news over the last week, somehow I've seen advance on cable news that because an AR-15 is a rifle and advances and sends a round downrange at a higher velocity than a handgun, that a police officer with a handgun is somehow unable to go up against an AR-15.

It just boggles the mind that these people are allowed to talk in public on this subject that they don't know about. An AR-15, there are a lot of ways to mess the thing up if you don't know how to use it. You can have malfunctions, and I'm trying to keep this simple and avoid politics.

It's a touchy week for us. Basic accessories are, as you said, you got to make sure that you budget for sights. You can get cheap $20 strap-on, screw-on iron sights, and the gun may come with it. But you want to budget for a sighting mechanism. You want to budget for a sling.

I think you want to budget for accessories because when you're out actually shooting it, most people, you go out on Sunday afternoon, you take it and load up a few magazines of ammo, put them on the table, you hand the gun around, let everyone shoot a couple of magazines, and that's about it.

But if you're really going to use it, you need to plan for having the accessories that are going to be useful. So budget for the accessories, as always, and learn to shoot effectively. What did I miss? You have a good starter? Trying to keep it practical. That's it. We could talk the political angle all day.

Now, go to YouTube. And that's the other thing that's just wonderful about YouTube is there is so much great training available on YouTube. There are qualified firearms trainers right now that put out information on YouTube, put out basically whole classes. If you want to learn how to build one, go to YouTube.

You can run the video, and you can put the pieces together at your kitchen table. If you want to learn the techniques of shooting, if you want to have reviews, just go to YouTube. YouTube has been a wonderful source of information to allow enthusiasts to reach a wide audience with their specialized information.

Yeah, and so just to come back to where we started in summary, the AR-15 may not be the best rifle today in whatever criteria you're looking at, but it is probably the one that everybody should own before they buy any others. And this debate rages across the Internet, forums, it just--it never ends.

And manufacturers are constantly coming out with new designs and basically everything is about-- the constant theme is how do we take the best elements of the AK and the AR and put them together in one gun? And there are some very well-done attempts at that. And frankly, I'd like to buy them all.

But, you know, if you're going to be practical and you don't have a lot of money, don't get distracted by all that stuff. Focus on the basics and then be very careful because the bug may bite you, and when it bites you, it never lets go. So, you know, this hobby can become a money pit very easily.

But, you know, we could talk a lot about what's better out there, but that's not the point. The point is what should you get, and if you put it all together, add it all up, if nothing else, if nothing else, the fact that it is such a widespread ownership, you know, millions and millions that are owned, the industry to support it is so big, the compatibility, interchangeability of the parts is just so universal that, you know, there is probably no other place to start.

And then once you start there, then you look at your specific desires or needs and decide what fits those. But it doesn't get any easier than this one, if you ask me. Yeah. If you are wondering why the AR-15 is so popular, it's not because people who want to own an AR...

It's not because AR-15 owners want to have blood on their hands and worship at the altar of thinking they're Rambo killing innocent people. Yeah, pretending to be soldiers. It's stupid. Of course there are idiots out there who probably do want war. There are idiots out there that want the world to fall apart so they can strap on their plate carrier and their mag pouches and go to war.

Of course there are. There are always idiots. When you have millions of people living together, you always have a small fraction that are idiots. But the millions and millions of people that own an AR do it for the same reason that millions and millions of people own a Toyota Camry or a Toyota Tacoma or a Chevy pickup truck, that there is a usefulness with it, with the ubiquity, with the practicability, with the fact that one firearm can do so many things decently.

The AR is not the best in the world at any one thing. I can't think of any one actual shooting application in which the AR-15 is the ultimate tool, other than the fact that it could be modified and adjusted to fit different applications. If you want to shoot long distance, a $300 hunting rifle can get you out to 700 yards, where an AR-15 can never get you to.

It can get you there, but it's not easy. You think you can get an AR to 700 yards? Oh yeah, they do it all the time. You can get them to 1,000 yards, no problem. But you've got to know what you're doing. What's the terminal velocity of the bullet?

Not much. It bounces off your cheek. Moving pretty slow. Okay. So forgive me, but the point is that if you want to do long-range shooting, you can get better guns to do long-range shooting. If you want to kill somebody more effectively, you get a bigger gun. Yeah, get a shotgun at close range.

Nothing beats that. You will kill somebody with a shotgun with double-op buck at close range, or a .308 that'll go through somebody. If you want a gun that's easier to shoot, that's cheaper, there are options that fill all those things better than an AR, but there's nothing that does pretty good at just about all those things better than an AR, and that's why it's so popular.

Yep. I'll admit that when I first got into this, I was interested in everything but ARs. I thought that was old news, and then I completely turned around. So you keep talking about technology. Last question for you. You keep talking about technology. What is the future? The military is very conflicted on that.

There's a lot of stops and starts in their efforts to find the next generation of weapons, and there's talk about things like caseless ammunition. There's things like that, but honestly there's nothing on the horizon that's really obviously going to replace this stuff. So what they keep coming back to is just modifications, but it's the same basic concept.

In the civilian world, I don't see anything else. Again, if your intention is to have a gun that does certain things better, there are options out there. Unfortunately, they cost a lot of money. All the guns that I want to buy are over $2,000. I was going to say, for me, the bullpup, all of the cool new bullpup designs.

Yeah. My current obsession-- Explain what a bullpup is. A bullpup is quickly-- it takes the action of the gun, where it actually loads and ejects the rounds. The chamber. Okay. Yeah, it takes the chamber, and it moves it from in front of the grip to behind the grip. So essentially what that means is that for the same barrel length, it cuts about 10 inches off the overall length of the weapon.

Makes it more compact, moves the weight back, makes it easier to hold up on your shoulder. Just frankly better in many ways in terms of using the gun. Unfortunately, because of the smaller market and maybe other factors in the manufacturing process, it's still pretty expensive. I'm not sure if you can get much below-- I don't know, definitely over $1,000, and some of the nicer ones are closer to $2,000.

But that may be the future. Next generation is more emphasis on that because there are a lot of benefits when you're talking about tactical applications. But I don't see groundbreaking technology. Perhaps in the manufacturing process, there'll be some improvements. But I don't see it yet. Well, hopefully we've given you just something-- it's hard to go wrong in the AR marketplace, especially if you go purchase from a known quantity or a known manufacturer.

You can--just about any brand that you recognize, you're going to be fine. And it is a really, really valuable platform. One quick thing on the pricing, because I probably didn't make it clear. You can buy an entry-level complete rifle for probably $500, maybe a little less, a little more.

But if you want something with a little bit better features, then you can get the same price with better features by assembling the uppers and lowers. One of the common websites-- did we mention the website? Sure. All right, Palmetto State Armory is the big player in that game. And you can go to their website, and you can get any variation you want.

But they often have daily sales on these assembled uppers and assembled lowers. You don't have to buy them at the same time. You can wait for the deal on the one you want. But what you'll find very quickly is that the cheapest assembled guns, they generally limit your ability to accessorize.

So the big thing, for example, is the handguard. You get these cheap plastic handguards, the brown things that look like they're still in Vietnam. And you can't really mount anything on those very easily, whereas an upgraded handguard, if you do it yourself, it'll cost some money. But when you get it assembled from PSA, it's about the same price.

Other elements, like the stock, a nicer stock, or-- that's probably the big ones, the handguard and the stock-- or even the barrel quality. Actually, I like the idea of stainless steel barrels, so I don't have to worry too much about rust. You may get a better barrel for the same price.

So I'm not sure how you can get below that $450 to $500 mark with a complete rifle, but without building it yourself. And you probably don't want to save that much, but you can get more for your money by going that route, you know, separate the upper from the lower.

So that's my recommendation. Check out Palmer's Armor. And the biggest thing I would say, if you're not familiar with it, just ask around. Find a buddy who has one and go shoot it. And get over the fear of it, and then ask them for advice. Go to a gun show.

If you go to a gun show, go to a gun shop. Go to a local gun shop. That's what they're there for, is to help you with those decisions. You're not going to be Rambo. You're going to be owning a quality and useful, very versatile rifle, which, hey, as an American, you should.

Thank you for listening. You've honored me with your time and attention, and I'm grateful for that. And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and strategies and tactics and techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals. Before you go, three simple requests.

One, if there's an idea that's been helpful to you in today's show, make a plan to take action on it. Listening does lead to learning, but learning, in and of itself, doesn't automatically lead to a life change. It's action that leads to a life change. So take action. Two, take something that was helpful to you in today's show and share it with somebody that you care about.

I'm depending on you to be a co-laborer with me in helping me to propagate the message that I'm seeking to share. That helps the person that you are engaging with, and it also helps you because teaching others is one of the most effective ways for you to learn and for you to cement your learning.

Three, if there's an idea that's been specifically helpful to you and if you're gaining financial benefit from Radical Personal Finance, I'd be grateful if you'd consider paying me for this work voluntarily. Come by radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and you can sign up there to support the show. At whatever level you feel is right for you.

This is a voluntary support. That's my Patreon page. You can support me with a dollar a month, five dollars a month, ten dollars a month, any number that seems right to you. But if you're gaining financial benefit from this show and if it's achieving financial results in your life, I'd be grateful for your financial support at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best in premium seating at stadiums, arenas and amphitheaters nationwide. With Sweet Hop's 100% ticket guarantee, no hidden fees and the personal high-level service you expect with a premium purchase, you can relax knowing you'll receive the luxury experience you deserve. Visit sweethop.com today to book your premium tickets to your favorite teams, artists and all the must-see live events to Sweet Hop Around LA.

S-U-I-T-E-H-O-P dot com. It's more than just a ticket.