As I've been intentional over the last year about withdrawing from hobbies to spend more time, money, and mental headspace with my family; I found myself a little flat-footed with this latest spin-up. I sold all my cool-guy, thousands-of-dollars AR setups and reduced to a Glock 19 as my only pistol. I have been disciplined to keep up with dryfire and in my (roughly quarterly) live fire sessions I'm finding no degradation of skills and actually some increases in certain things (mainly SHO and WHO trigger control and reloads).
I wasn't completely "social" rifle barren as I have a pair of 6920's in the safe for my boys when they get older, but I did have just a complete SBR lower sitting with no upper. I also did have a NIB Colt SOCOM barrel and Colt BCG. So, around the beginning of last month when it looked like things were going to get interesting I picked up a stripped upper from BCM and put something together. Not wanting to jump back into debt and still wanting to be fiscally responsible I went with a set of MOE SL handguards and then picked up a used Aimpoint PRO.
I assembled it and then took it out to the range and zeroed it. Next, I ran a set of pistol and rifle standards from member @Kevin B. and cleaned the pistol and passed rifle with a PR. This gave me a lot of confidence in the setup and I feel pretty good about it.
At the same time, I have found myself wishing a little bit for one of my former setups. This has caused me to give some thought to the whole "works for me" mentality.
Yes, the rifle setup I have does work for me. Is it free floated? No. Does it have the $250 Geissele trigger I prefer? No. Does it have a Nightforce NX8 or even a higher-end Aimpoint? No. Is it cost effective while still having a Surefire light, Aimpoint sight, and a good sling. And, I know I can perform with it.
But, where's the baseline? And does it shift with time? There's plenty of "fuddery" that gets passed off under the "works for me" moniker too. Does your POS, out-of-spec, bottom of the barrel AR15 "work for you?" Maybe, but for how long? Or how do you define "work?"
I've got a buddy that loves his Taurus pistols. They "work" for him, which means he probably puts 200 rounds/year through them, if that. I wouldn't recommend using a Taurus to anyone, but do we also all need Staccato P's? Not saying people shouldn't have them, but I guess just verbalizing my thoughts. Is it reasonable to think you're ok with a rifle with an Aimpoint PRO and Magpul handguards or do you need a full-on Hodge, KAC, whatever with the latest greatest LPVO, and NODS or you gonna get kilt in da skreetz. I think we all know the answer there, but at some point you cross over into Taurus-land.