Feature creep can be a good thing or a bad thing. Never content to leave well enough alone, we are always looking to make things better—that’s the good part. The bad part comes when you start adding features that at first seem like useful improvements, but when taken all together, they can actually make things worse. Basically, the sum of the parts equals less than the whole.
Del-Ton, Inc. takes us back to basics and the concept of “simpler is better” with its Light Weight 16-inch AR. This semi-auto, direct gas impingement 5.56mm NATO rifle deletes the M4 profile barrel, takes out the quad-rail forend and excludes any fancy ambidextrous controls, charging handles, stocks, etc. If that sounds dull, then you haven’t spent much time lugging a rifle around. The Del-Ton Light Weight tips the scales at less than 6 pounds.
“What’s a few extra ounces here and there?” That is the battle cry of the armchair warrior. I will certainly be the first to admit that I love adding more and more cool-looking, useful features to my guns. I will happily add heavy barrels, lights, lasers, bipods, vertical fore-grips, different stocks, optics and more. But each of these adds more weight—to the point where it is getting harder to find an AR that weighs less than 8 or 9 pounds, or more. I know the temptation is there, but resist. Take the ground-level view of the average grunt or Jarhead and load up only what you need for your mission. Some might suggest that you just need to hit the gym so you can handle all the extra weight of stuff you might need, but in reality, each extra ounce drains a disproportionate amount of energy from everyone eventually.
