Personally, I don’t think this had to do with their usability so much as it was marketing tactics by gun companies “convincing” the public that they needed one. And, as I mentioned earlier, heavy-barreled models gained popularity during the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. In 1964, Colt started producing heavy-barreled models for use as light machine guns. And that gets me to the topic today.Įven though the original M-16A1 had a lightweight barrel, it wasn’t the only variant of AR-15 available at the time. The A2 program increased the weight of the whole rifle approximately 7.8 lbs, and had another effect of shifting the balance of the rifle quite a bit more forward. The end result of the A2’s efforts to fix the “problem” was thickening the muzzle end of the barrel forward of the gas block and bayonet lug. When the product improvement program got started, one of the tasks was to “fix” the bent barrel problem. Nobody thought anything of it until some armorers kept getting reports of bent barrels. The M-16 sported a lightweight “pencil” barrel when it first came onto the scene, though it was called the “standard” profile at the time. It’s important to note that there’s a very important missing element there. By 2010 and still today, the trend is to make everything as light as possible. For a long time, during the ’94 assault weapons ban, everyone jumped on the heavy barrel (HBAR) bandwagon. Without worry of pro’s and con’s, or whether it fits their requirements. The majority of enthusiasts always rush on to the next popular “thing” as soon as it hits the market.
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