DPMS .22 LR AR-15 Upper
Lewis Creek Shooting School 07.12.12
Sometimes, when you’re wrong, it’s easy to simply stick to your guns and not change your mind. Or, you could do as I have and wait a few years until no one remembers. There was a time about twenty years ago when I ranted and raved about striker fired pistols and AR-15s. I simply say no real use for either and told everybody I knew. Now, I think enough time has passed that I can safely say what I need to. In fact, I’d look like an idiot if I continued my rant. I now own multiple striker fired pistols and like them. I now have almost as many AR-15s as I do bolt action rifles.
AR-15 work as combat rifles as they were designed, but they also make better target rifles than the M14s I spent my shooting career with. I could have never imagined a modified M14 or M1A winning the National High Power Championship but an AR-15 in Carl Bernoski’s capable hands won last year, only dropping seven points in the process. The AR-15 platform is the most successful design since the 1911 and deservedly so.
In recent times, there have been multiple AR-15s chambered in .22 rimfire to allow low priced training and fun. I recently tested the most versatile and desirable one so far, the DPMS. Sold at this time as an upper only, DPMS ads proclaim, “A $30 day on the range is just two pins away,” and they are right.
It comes with a forged 7075-T6 A3 upper, a flat-top Picatinny rail for mounting optics, a 16″ chrome moly M4 contour barrel, a functional ejection port door, A2 front sight assembly with bayonet lug, A2 flash hider, charging handle and one 10 round Black Dog magazine.
Black Dog magazines offer several magazine capacity choices. At $419, it’s a substantial package that feels like the real thing. The upper’s bolt is held back by the magazine on the last shot and upon removal of the magazine, it closes. The operator can lock it back in a partially open position by using the bolt stop on the left side of the receiver but it doesn’t stop far enough back to strip off a round when a new magazine is inserted and the release is dropped. The operator must cycle the charging handle to load.
With Federal Gold Medal ammunition, the DPMS produced ten shot groups just over an inch at 50 yards, almost half the size of most AR rimfire clones I’ve tested. Group sizes with the white box Remington were consistently under two inches. The DPMS ran flawlessly with every ammunition I loaded in it at a recent event where several AR clones were available. While you have to already own an AR-15 lower to take advantage of this gun, it is truly a great practice and plinking addition for an AR owner.
Dick Jones is an award winning outdoor writer and a member of the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association Board of Directors. He writes for four North Carolina Newspapers as well as regional and national magazines. He’s hunted and fished most of his life but shooting has been his passion. He’s a former High Master, Distinguished Rifleman, and AAA class pistol shooter. He holds four Dogs of War Medals for Team Marksmanship as shooter, captain and coach. He ran the North Carolina High Power Rifle Team for six years and the junior team two years after that. Within the last year, he’s competed in shotgun, rifle and pistol events including the National Defense Match and the Bianchi Cup. He’ll be shooting the Bianchi, the NDM, the National High Power Rifle Championship, The Rock Castle AR15.com Three Gun Championship and an undetermined sniper match this shooting season.
He lives in High Point, North Carolina with his wife Cherie who’s also an outdoor writer and the 2006 and 2011 Northeast Side by Side Women’s Shotgun Champion. Both Dick and Cherie are NRA pistol, rifle, and shotgun instructors and own Lewis Creek Shooting School.
