Good rifle. Buy one with confidence. I also like the comments about buying add-ons. If you want that stuff more times than not buying a rifle already so equipped is a better bargain.
I'm in the AR minimalist camp. Less is more. IMO the Ruger AR556, S&W M&P Sport II and several other 'entry' level ARs are outstanding rifles right out of the box. They don't need a thing and most of the crap people do to them is superfluous. I am not opposed to anyone spending their money on their rifle as they see fit. It's none of my business, but most of it is cosmetic. If you really want to improve the rifle you going to have to change the barrel, free float it and focus on ammo selection. Hand guards, rails, stocks, triggers, optics, flashlights, etc don't improve the rifle's performance in any way.
It seems that a lot of folks don't even shoot their rifles much (if at all) before they start spending large chunks of cash on triggers, hand guards, pistol grips, rails, etc. For example, MagPul furniture. I like their products and if I were building an AR I'd buy their gear but in reality are their pistol grips really any different than the OEM one the rifle came with? Seriously? Are you telling me that you can only effectively shoot your rifle with one specific pistol grip? Like I said, I'm not even remotely opposed to modifications and I certainly wouldn't tell others how to spend their hard earned money. I'm just suggesting that maybe, just maybe, we ought to actually shoot the rifles a while before we start throwing money at them. I suspect most of us will like them pretty much as they come from the factory once we get to know them a little bit.
YMMV
