Yep. Or you have a perfect multicam paint job on your AR but wear a blaze orange vest in the sticks.
Lots of truth in the above.
I will be sure to throw up pics of my SR-25 after I paint it, just to see how many people lament it.
I paint mine to help keep them a tad cooler here in the desert. I have camo patterned it in the past but just did brown/tanish this last time. It was easy enough to remove and repaint. Maby next time I will do OD green or similar.
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I’ve gone cerakote on a couple. But paint - no matter how well-intended - always looks amateurish.
I mean, maybe Ryan Evans (Counting Cars) could do one up in orange metalflake, with some handrubbed silver pinstripes, and some awesome candy apple flames… but, WHY?!
I see no reason not to paint my rifles, though I haven’t done it yet. I’ll probably paint most all of them (the NZ LMT clone may be an exception) according to the Book of Pat.
I painted my first AR and thankfully had a friend talk sense into me because I almost went “binge-painting”. I wanted to paint every AR I owned and aßt that time I had built about 12. Now I have a few that I’ve painted and I like them. They have my own personal touch. I have a few I’ve had cerakoted those are nice too.
I don’t really buy the resale part because I don’t build an AR thinking of “how much can I get for it.” Or “how much can I get for these parts?”
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That wretched ACU camo pattern? Amateurish.
An AR painted to blend in with the terrain in your AO? Smart.
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I’m always amazed how black attracts and retains heat energy, i.e. electromagnetic radiation. FDE, CB, etc. not only reduces this effect but also dampens the sheen that black produces when under NV.
People who don’t realize that black can get really hot in the sun spend too much time sitting at a covered bench shooting from the shade.
Or they’ve never owned a black automobile.
Never again!
And black just plain sticks out in the woods. Now, I have not painted my AR’s (still on the fence there) but have painted my hunting rifles.
Blend in with terrain, eh?

Maybe Ryan Evans SHOULD paint my rifle! :eek:
I remember grabbing a black anodized aluminum tent frame lying on the ground in Iraq about the middle of July. I could hear the sizzle as the sweat on my hand boiled off.
Andy
Oh come now you know you’ve always wanted a glossy black and hot pink AR… [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]
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Rattle can is a cheap and functional fix if you need to blend in. I like the Rustoleum Camoflage products.
More factory guns and parts are coming in FDE, but with some upcharge. It’s a decent base/starter color.
I’d like to see more rifles in a lighter tone of gray, which works well on its own and is easy to accent if you need to blend.
Based on the trend in gear like chest rigs and war belts, grey is the new “urban FDE”.
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And yet even if they want to paint their weapon a lighter color they are happy to install metal rails and handguards that get hot enough to make the shooter need gloves.
I don’t buy the heat argument.
It’s just wanting to make your weapon look badass compared to the sea of plain black AR’s.
The two reasons I never would paint a rifle are 1) I’m a civilian and very self conscience looking to “tactical” or .mil. 2) paint jobs only look right if everything is painted…including optics. I can’t bring myself to paint an expensive optic that I may want to sell. And bonus #3, I happen to like how black rifles look.
The only guns I painted were toy m4s I got my kids for their Halloween costume. I left some of the orange on the muzzle to keep them out of trouble.

I’ll concede that if you know an extreme ELE SHTF situation is coming (think the movie “The Road” for reference), then, yes, rattle can the damn thing. But most of us will never face a level of survival worse than having to wait in line at McDonalds. There is literally no reason for the average person to camo their AR with amateurish hand spray painting.