The last time this author checked, there were more than 50 manufacturers, both international and domestic, making various versions of the black rifle. The quality of these rifles range from excellent to embarrassingly poor. The standard seems to be a "Mil-Spec" rifle. This is quite interesting given the fact that Mil-Spec means the minimum standard for the U.S. govt. The Mil-Spec for the M4 is pretty much unchanged since 1995. The U.S. military M16/M4 has been pretty stagnant as far as improvements due mostly to military bureaucracy. Over these intervening years many companies in this industry have made dramatic improvements to the basic military design, making the best even better. This has been done through newer and improved materials, manufacturing processes, finishes and improving ergonomics of certain components. Any serious fan of the AR-15 is quite opinionated and particular on what they believe is the best. With the overabundance of options out there in barrels, rail systems, stocks, pistol grips, receivers, bolt carrier groups and magazines (just to mention a few), the major manufacturers essentially produce a plain generic M4 type rifle with the basic military furniture. The reason being is that whatever configuration they sell the rifle in, somebody will be unhappy with it and will go ahead and change it anyway. It would make no sense for a manufacturer to add kit to the rifles, which would increase the cost to the customer, when the customer will remove it and replace it with the kit of their choice. Good examples of high end rifles sold like this are the LMT Defender, Colt LE6920 and ArmaLite M15 - just some of the rifles sold in basic condition ready for the purchaser to custom kit to their liking.
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