Quote Originally Posted by shadowspirit View Post
Thanks for the generous post.

Referring to the first bolded part above, maybe 18" or 16" medium profile barrels and medium weight stocks are good for CQB and run and gun shooting.

As for the prices for optics, if one hasn't read about the latest ones, there's some good stuff out there for not a huge amount of money. A new Bushnell seemed to shock one reviewer for what you get for your money. The part that apparently turns off some people with good optics for not a lot of money is they are made in China.
So here is what I've learned over the years I've been shooting.

The guys on the net going "these [insert name of budget optics] are great, they do the same job as [insert name of high end optics] for half the money" have never actually owned any of those high end optics. They guys raving about their Springfield Armory, Rock Island Arsenal, Auto Ordnance $500 1911s have never shot anything better so they have nothing to compare it to so obviously theirs are awesome.

When somebody comes along that says "I've owned Nightforce, Zeiss and Swarovski but they just aren't as good as my Bushnell" then I'll consider listening. Now if Bushnell is all you can afford right now, that is what you are using and a budget scope you have now is better than the wonder scope you hope to buy one day but don't actually have. So keep that in mind when you talk about "got great online reviews", "passed online torture test" or any other similar metric.

Most people here have shot and owned just about everything out there. If an entry level Bushnell did everything a Vortex will do, we'd all be running Bushnells. We spend the money on higher end stuff because we've seen the "budget brands" fail enough times to know we don't want to bet on them.