DPMS Sweet 16

[Coalminer7]

Looking at buying 1 of these, any opinions good or bad welcome.  local dealer has them for $640.00 in .223, bull barreled.  These will be my first AR.

[targshooter]

There are quite a few seasoned AR shooters that do not favor this brand. I would recommend reading some contributor AR15.com, M4Carbine. net (and others if so inclined) comments on the rifles from DPMS (Panther). DPMS is now owned by Cerberus, which owns Bushmaster, Remington and Marlin; so perhaps there are winds of change. You can buy complete upper assemblies and lower assemblies from various manufacturers and mate them together (push two pins); this will save you over $100 on buying a complete rifle. Go to the Equipment Exchange forum and the Industries forum in AR15.com as well as the Build It Yourself forum. This will give you an idea on how this will save you money and allow you to focus your dollars on the more important components of the rifle as you see it.

[JEV]

I have that rifle. I've had it for a couple years now and it's worked just fine. It's my main rifle I use during the winter for hunting coyote and fox. For only having a 16 inch barrel it is still quite accurate. The only thing I don't like about the 16" is the noise and the muzzle jump. Noise I can deal with, but I may look at having an integral compensator added to help with the muzzle flip in the future.
JEV

[John R.]

The DPMS Sweet 16 is a fine rifle. Some of the people that badmouth DPMS are speaking from outdated experience (15 years ago) or what they read on the net. I've had mine for 2 years and had no problems whatsoever. By the way, that's a pretty good price. I'd say go for it and enjoy.

[Empty Quiver]

I own a DPMS and have been very satisfied with it. The perfect AR has never been built if you don't believe me, check around on the net. Best you can do is
" good enough for who it's for ". Be ready to have trigger improved as stock triggers are uniformly stiff and usually gritty in any AR, get the upgrade before you purchase.

[backstrap]

I would buy any dpms rifle i think they would be a good rifle to have my rifle has a dpms lower and a willson barrel, i have freind that have dpms rifles and like them well,but if i was going to buy a heavey barreled 223 ar, it would have a longer barrel than 16" at least 20 or 24