| Image | Product | Price |
|---|---|---|
 | Check Price |
A few years ago, Palmetto State Armory purchased rights to the DPMS name.
DPMS Panther Arms was a respected maker with a good reputation. There were reports of times when quality slipped. I have not personally tested a poor DPMS rifle. DPMS AR-15 rifles were a fixture in American shops for decades.
Defense Procurements Manufacturing Services produced a wide range of military gear. The rifles were once part of Freedom Group and are now owned by PSA. So, will PSA push the brand and offer other variations? Time will tell. PSA offers a wide range of rifles and pistols and is a huge supporter of our gun rights.
PSA offers affordable rifles, often offering combinations of an AR and a 9mm pistol at fair prices. They also offer good quality, higher-end rifles. You get what you pay for, and you may purchase an entry-level rifle or a far more capable rifle. The PSA PA-15 is currently available for $399.95. Upgrades with sights are priced at $499.95 and above.
In my experience, PSA offers a wide range of rifles, and while the entry-level rifles are usually the same- no sights, a base forend- others may be offered with different combinations, such as good sights and an MLOK forend.
The DPMS rifles are similar to the entry-level PA-15. The DPMS line would seem to mimic the original DPMS Oracle rifle. The rifle illustrated features basic sights and forend and a standard AR adjustable butt stock. The finish is credible, and the bolt carrier keys are properly staked, the first thing I check in an economy rifle.
The rifle demonstrates attention to detail in its assembly, which is all we can ask for. The trigger action is consistent but not light and crisp. It is a typical entry-level AR-15, weighing in at 7.5 pounds. The rifle was thoroughly checked in the workroom, and several PMAGs were loaded for range practice.
The load used in the initial evaluation was the Black Hills Ammunition 55-grain FMJ. Firing was undertaken at 25 yards. The rifle sailed through 100 rounds without any type of malfunction. The rifle runs well- it is difficult to mess up an AR 15- and function is good. Groups were tight as expected at this modest range. I was able to fire a magazine at 50 yards, connecting with various dirt clods and range debris.
For casual shooters and home defense, the entry-level PSA and DPMS rifles are useful as issued.
As the AR-15 is made to be upgraded, I took a couple of steps to improve the DPMS rifle. I added a Timney RED AR trigger.
This trigger, like all Timney triggers, is well-made and finished. The fit of the components is simply excellent. A stretch to fit a trigger upgrade to an affordable rifle? Not at all. Improvement in function is always worthwhile. The Timney trigger, like all modern-type triggers, is easily installed. A few pins pressed out, and there you go.
Once installed, I checked the action. The break is consistent at 3.5 pounds and clean. I took the rifle to the range again and fired at a distance of 25 yards. Speed was much better. Both a crisp trigger press and rapid reset added up to better shooting. Combat groups were excellent. The trigger was one part of the upgrade.
Next, I mounted a Riton ARD red dot sight. The Series 1 TACTIX ARD is affordable, priced under $200, yet it offers good functionality. The ARD was sighted in handily, set to fire low at 25 yards. I anticipated testing the rifle at 50 yards and would make minor adjustments later.
On the Range
I liked the setup, but continued to test the rifle with my favorite loads. I looked at Black Hills Ammunition’s line and tested several in the DPMS rifle. One was the 36-grain Varmint Grenade.
Despite a short bearing surface, this load is usually accurate enough for long-range varmint shooting in the right rifle. Recoil impulse isn’t always enough for an AR carbine especially in a dirty rifle with some types of lightweight projectiles. Black Hills has put together an exception. The DPMS rifle sailed through a half magazine without any problem. A 3500 fps load gets to the 100-yard berm quickly!
My all-time favorite Black Hills Ammunition load for accuracy work is the 52-grain Match.
From a 50-yard benchrest with the dot turned down to the lowest setting, this 3000 fps load put three shots into just less than two inches. At a long 100 yards, I was able to maintain a three-inch group. I was acclimating to the trigger and getting better results. With the red dot and from a rock-solid firing position over a shooting rest, I counted this a good performance.
I also tested the Barnes 50-grain TSX load from Black Hills Ammunition. At just under 3,000 fps, this load delivered good accuracy, on par with the 52-grain MATCH load, which is 0.1 inch larger.
My favorite service and defense load in the AR has been the Black Hills Ammunition 60-grain JSP for many years. This load achieved a velocity of 2,900 fps.
The 69-grain Sierra MatchKing is probably the most accurate combination from Black Hills Ammunition, but you need a more accurate rifle with a longer barrel and better optics to demonstrate this accuracy. At 2650 fps, the MatchKing offers excellent reliability.
The 77-grain OTM from Black Hills Ammunition has secured military contracts and proven effective during the War on Terror. I fired a single group and was rewarded with a 1.8-inch spread at 100 yards.
My 20-inch barrel rifle, equipped with a fairly expensive tactical scope, will sometimes produce a .5-inch group and consistently achieve an .8-inch group with this load. The DPMS is accurate enough for a 16-inch barrel carbine.
Final Thoughts
The DPMS rifle is more than accurate enough for most uses, including hunting deer-sized game out to 150 yards, and at personal defense ranges, it will put all the bullets in the same hole.
The rifle never failed to feed, chamber, fire, or eject. My round count is 320 rounds in this rifle, not a huge pile of brass, but a helpful test.
The DPMS name lives on, and the new rifles are nothing to be ashamed of.
Where To Buy
Well they certainly are low enough in price.
I’ve been thinking of jumping into the AR fad.
Only 5.56 I own is a Mini14.
Fast is a .55gr bullet out of a .243, I think the bullet gets there before I pull the trigger.
Decent quality builds at lower price points is required to continue brining people into the 2A community and will be for the foreseeable future.
That should be obvious.
Nothing wrong with the higher end stuff but if we price the younger people out we’ll have a huge problem down the road. We already basically did that for over a decade with having kids, which is about to start to bite us now.
Over 2 decades if you count the generational warfare talking point of boomers not retiring and insisting on paying lower entry level wages then they got. With that said generational warfare in this case is very effective in that it is demonstrably true just not entirely for the reasons advertised.
It is interesting to observe how the Cantillon Effect works, especially when 98% of the public has no idea what’s going on.
It provides so, so many angles to go after people on which makes it a very effective jumping off point for encircling them in ways they don’t understand until it’s too late.
Like all rug-pulls, slowly at first building up to that all-at-once moment.
On the plus side, the effects of our own little “one child policy” provide a window of opportunity to strike back, provided we can have an actual adult discussion about what is and what is not “inflation”.
You mean like college tuition re not inflation just expansion? Also term for the day to read up on and see if I know about it by other names.
I was thinking more along the lines of how people use the term inflation very loosely, quite frankly they mostly use it for any price increase that they don’t like.
Some define it, when convenient, to be caused only by monetary policy (ie money printing/currency debasement).
Other people include normal fluctuations in price, supply/demand or outside cost factors. Which is to say “If price goes up, that’s inflation”. Which is interesting because if prices come down they don’t call that “deflation”.
So, you have to ask if tariffs are “inflationary”, what about reshoring costs?
Gotcha, yeah I was thinking more longer term scams of information vs current events. My parents were able to do a year of college from money earned over a part time summer job. The same job might have covered a semester if it is an in state school now and we don’t include on campus housing. There was inflation sure but also a devaluing of the wages paid to the entry level worker and a massive expansion of college costs that outstripped inflation by double digit percentages for decades. Not that student loans being handed out irresponsibly had anything to do with the issue. With that said inflation is often misused to hide other scams.
Oh…. that little can of worms. *sigh*
And the Cantillon Effect is so much wider spread than this little sandbox too…
Alright, you asked for it.
So, this is an area I actually know a bit about having two parents who were professors in chemistry for a long time and being on that path in molecular bio myself because of the reasons I tend to discuss here quite a lot. I’ve been planning a species of revenge for a long time, but that’s kind of a tangent into putting things in place to spring a trap later which gets a bit too far into the weeds for the purposes of this post.
The cost of college:
My dad actually kept a chart of this running from 1965 to 2003 before he got bored with it and stopped. Inflation via various metrics vs various college tuitions vs their endowments all color coded. Kinda what you might expect if you’ve met instrumentation chemists before. Also a little telling about his personality because his personal favorite benchmark was the price of a new Ford Mustang.
Yes, college tuition outpaces inflation and has since the 1960’s, but you knew that.
The major driver at this point in time is that the .gov/DOE offers tuition increases annually on a “inflation plus” model. In essence they offer official inflation plus a fixed percentage, ~1.5% IIRC. So, if inflation is 5% this year, next year they up the offering to the university/college by 6.5%. The former dean of The Ohio State University explained this in great detail to Fox News Business 12 or 15 years ago.
I rather doubt I need to explain what happens when you get on the wrong side of the compound interest formula, especially if it’s being placed on top of [at best] simple interest that fluctuates or, more realistically, another compound interest formula. Ouch.
No college will take less than the offering because that’s leaving money on the table and basically no one does that ever under any circumstances so it’s not shocking universities don’t like to do it either. The effect is, at best, a compound interest formula on top of inflation.
The undercounting of inflation in official numbers ensures that the universities tend take every penny even if pressured not to raise tuition by the max. This is why they crow so much when they leave 0.5% on the table once a decade.
That’s why, for example, my mom got an Ivy League education (when that was worth a shit) and came out with a PhD and $~700 in total debt while today a state school’s tuition is often 10x that amount per semester for undergrad. Yeah, you can work but you’re not going to make near enough per year to pay off a goodly chunk of that $14k/year just for tuition which is before room, board, books etc. Especially with part time work under the ACA but, again, a tangent.
But then, mom was done with school before we went off the gold standard. Which reminds me, let’s not forget that they’re also drastically undercounting official inflation and have been for decades at this point which means that the university’s tuition is actually pretty cheap compared to how you’re getting eaten alive on the inputs to this like food, gas, utilities etc.
The combination is pure murder. Especially when you get to that bit about paying it back with dollars that buy less and less. There’s that Cantillon Effect. You’re not close to the money printer so you don’t get a benefit from it. You buy everything with devalued dollars all the time. So yes, you kinda rip the system off on the loan (and they print yet more to cover the loss while you pick up the interest to the loan servicer, lulz!) but you also pay more and more for everything else. The more you drown, the faster you drown unless you possess assets that at least keep pace with this, which virtually no one who’s a recent grad does.
Anywho, this is compounded by the way loans are now disbursed as compared to days of yore. Today, .gov block grants the money to the university which then divvies it up to students. In effect, a university gets a giant pile of money and the authority to pay that money to itself. This is hardly a recipe for honest accounting and I assure you, there’s fuckery afoot at several levels which are too detailed for this post, which I’m trying to keep <27 pages. Yet we wonder why no one knows how this works and the kids just take the loans… well maybe it's because the people pocketing the money are the ones you're trusting to teach them this stuff?
It's also now the case that the university system has been the victim of a complete lack of public oversight for so long that we now have 4-6:1 admins:professors. And yes, I do say "victim" of a "lack of oversight" for a reason, which I'll come back to. You see the same sort of thing in hospitals post ACA but… damn these tangents.
This has become a feeding trough for what I refer to as the "unimpressive class". Tons of people who got a C- average in nonsense degrees go into "administration" and end up admins at large universities, big companies etc. It's a work program for people who are, well, unimpressive.
You can see this clearly with DEI departments which were huge (and grew exponentially) for over a decade. You can see an even more crystalized version of this if you look a bit at Harvard University vs. Harvard Corp, of which the University is about 4% of yearly expenditure. The rest is at untaxed money making machine rather resembling Private Equity that's paying out 4% to maintain a tax free status via the university while using the $50+ billion endowment as an capital pool for investment. As such, the Corp doesn't actually GAF what the University does because the University is naught but a tax dodge from the point of view of the people actually in charge.
Which, totally off topic actually, is a nice investment opportunity for regular people because you can make a charitable donation to Harvard and in return they'll give you a set of annuity options to choose from, all of which pay rather handsomely. This is part of how they manage to do that, because the annuity pool isn't taxed. This is, so far as I'm aware, without becoming someone like Larry Fink about as close to the money printer as you can get.
Now, basically what the admins do is pure entryism and gatekeeping (I wonder why I talk about those so much…). They get rid of tenured professors in "unfriendly subjects" (the hard sciences, mostly) via attrition and replace them with newly minted PhD's or PostDocs who, quite literally, cannot enter the tenure track because it no longer exists at the lower level.
They hire the noobs as a "instructors" (or play word games with assistant vs associate professor, a term that varied from institution to institution in the past, so it's easily gameable). These people have zero job security and basically get paid crap. Often <$20K/year. Literally less than McD's in many cases. Which is why they often teach at two different institutions, like a State school and a community college in the area, for example.
If the instructors manage to do this for X years, often three, they then have the potential to be accepted as an associate/assistant professor on the lowest rung of the tenure track. This potential is denied by design. They can never enter the tenure track. It exists on paper only.
The result is that the tenured professors making $80k+/year retire and are replaced by a <$20K/year "instructor". Repeat this a few times and you've got $100K+ freed up to hire another administrator! Which, it might not surprise you, is exactly what they do with a preference for new admins who are ideologically aligned with the current ones. It's a nice little self-reinforcing system.
This not only allows the admins to outnumber the professors and outpace them in any growth that might occur it also reduces the number of tenured professors who, being tenured, can't be fired for criticizing the administration and replaces them with people who have no job security and will never speak out. The result is that the admins nearly never face any actual pushback from the faculty on much of anything.
This can be augmented by selectively allowing tenure track for the *right* people, almost always outside science departments because this allows an even greater impact on the institution with regards to the faculty governance which already leaned towards the "soft sciences" because the hard science people were busy doing actual work in, like, a lab. They were also busy getting the university those grants, which the university graciously takes a mere 40-60% off the top of.
Now, you might be thinking that public universities and other private institutions can't be running the same scam as Harvard is. You'd be right. However, what they were doing was tapping all that sweet, sweet DEI money at rates well below what anyone else can get because that's how DEI works. You do the thing, you get a special ESG score which allows loans from a pool of DEI money that's separate from classic loans with their normal scores. This also greases the fiscal skids with companies that might want a partnership for engineering or bioscience or whatever. Companies can increase their ESG score off your DEI score or vice versa. All the backs get scratched and a new stream of capital opens up.
DEI has always been how they bought off private companies that were resistant, this is part of how.
OK, whew…. can this be fixed?
Yup, that's why I referred to the institutions as a "victim" earlier (Harvard and the like obviously excluded since they're running a tax dodge on what amounts to a giant PE firm fronted by a tax exempt organization). It's called the "Board of Regents" at many institutions. How exactly it's members come to be members, and for how long, varies but it's usually a mix of voting and appointment by the governor, often in a 50/50 mix.
This group can, mostly, hire and fire admins basically at will. (!)
That means you get to vote on a bunch of them in most cases and lobby the governor for/against on the rest. The Right, mostly, does neither and then complains about the outcome. Even where they do vote, they don't lobby the guv on who should be considered for the other seats, which means that only the Left is doing that lobbying entirely unopposed. Who do you think wins that fight?
This might seem esoteric but it does matter. If you consider the last election in 2024, R's won 2/3 seats up for grabs on the University of Colorado: Boulder board. They lost the third because the D ran unopposed. Look at where this occurred and you'll rapidly find out that "very blue areas" voted Red on this particular issue. Strange, eh? It's almost like even the default Dems are sick of this.
Oh, and this happened organically. There was no Right leaning push to take those seats. None. It was entirely ignored. Yet, the Lefties lost 2/3rds of the seats they tried for and only picked up the one they couldn't possibly lose.
Keep in mind, this is the University of Colorado Boulder FFS. These things can, in fact, be turned around but you need to understand how they work and how you might intervene in the system. Once you do that you realize that much of the Left’s power comes from everyone else’s ignorance and/or laziness.
Which is why the Conservative approach of “just burn down the university system” irks me a bit. That system does a lot of good things and it could be the crown jewel in a more society wide defense against the Left based on rationality. But it can’t be the best castle, or even a castle at all, if we burn it to the ground and sow salt for 20 miles in all directions.
What’s better than destroying a machine gun nest? Capturing it with very few or zero casualties and then turning it on it’s former owners to great effect. I’m not sure why this isn’t more appealing to… well, pretty much everyone.
And the thing is that we don’t have to spread ourselves thin doing this because Game Theory actually does reflect reality shockingly well. If we pick a few state institutions which we can affect, which also have very good programs in certain areas that are useful and then target those for takeover we can take them over and run them like it’s, oh I dunno, 1980 and they will rapidly outcompete the other schools. This will force a change in the entire system because 0 and 1 are both special numbers in this arena. >1 is even better.
Which is, essentially, saying that we know that the “long march through the institutions” worked so we can steal a page from the ChiComs and simply copy that “long march” playbook and run it much faster and more cheaply because we have zero need for R&D or stealth since the public’s already on our side by default.
Oh, shit, look at that. In the past six months some rando guy with a toxic name on a gun website has posted the basic blueprint for taking back education from the Left for both K-12 and post-secondary education. Something no Righty has ever done in even a basic sketch, never mind moderate detail. Maybe that guy actually has a detailed sketch too. Who knows?
It’s almost like that guy pays attention long enough to have some basic idea of WTF is going on and then logic-ed his way through how to deal with it. Which is, somewhat shockingly, something ridiculously rare in the modern world.
Ok I knew universities were admin heavy but the how/why is a bit unsettling if somewhat expected given the results. I tend to do mostly admin tasks with a bit of data analysis and project management as needed. In short a lot of bullshit that done right can make actual tasks easier with the union rules and state processes kept happy. There is next to no reason I need more than one subordinate to learn the process and fill in when I am out but somehow I end up with 3 or more. I know the guy who used to have my spot was into gatekeeping and bits of petty tyranny but he got promoted to a broom closet to stare at the wall and here I am because I just like making things work (what can I say I like challenging puzzles and NY keeps me busy especially when grants get pulled). While I don’t see as much admin to functional employees ratio as higher education it only takes one asshole to turbofuck an entire set of processes and that is when most of the others involved are competent and trying to improve the mess. What happens when it is mostly assholes and in far greater numbers was a question I asked myself and you just detailed in depressing detail. With that said and different topic yes to some extent bring back the gold standard and start keeping wealth in the country.
The nice thing about this system is that in the cases of which I’m aware the admins are easy to fire if you control the board.
This is one area where the admins don’t have union protection, nor do they have tenure. They’re essentially “at will” employees who just haven’t drawn the *right* kind of attention to get canned.
In the states in which I’m aware of how this works (which is not all of them, I don’t have that kind of time), if you control the board, you control the administration. If you control the administration, you control the institution.
And again, you need not go after all of them. Selective targeting will have the desired effect because it will create schools that don’t engage in the bullshit and those schools will draw in students at a higher rate. Once that competitive advantage is established, it’s only a matter of time and the system will accelerate towards a new equilibrium that is far more reasonable.
As much as the TV might suggest otherwise, 18-25 year olds are shockingly rational about trying to set themselves up for future success. They also know the fuckery that’s afoot, I know, I deal with trying to fix it basically daily when they seek me out for exactly that purpose.
You’ll never get 100% of what you want, but you can get 80% pretty easily just based on the Pareto Principle. At that point we can reassess how much of the remaining 20% is worth the effort.
To give you an idea of how bad things actually are and how aware of this the kids are:
I regularly get kids who have to do a chi-squared analysis in genetics except that they don’t understand how to do it because they don’t know about y = mx+b.
Understand here, it’s not that they don’t remember how to use the equation for a line or something. They’ve literally never heard of it because no one ever even presented it as a thing in K-12. At present count I have found kids from 23 states, including “deep Red” states that have this issue. It is invariable in regards to the fact that they’ve never even heard the term “y = mx+b”.
I find the same thing in basic chemistry (101/102) and its connections to molecular bio. I can’t count the number of kids who can’t do sigfigs because no one ever taught them.
I ask, “Didn’t you take AP Chem in high school?” to which they reply “Yes, but we didn’t do sigfigs because the teacher didn’t know how to do them”.
WTAF?! How are schools hiring “chem teachers” who can’t do basic chemistry math that’s like week two of introductory high school chemistry? (Because the schools don’t care, obviously. The fix there is the school board.)
I tell them “Well, I know exactly what score you got on the AP exam” (A 1 out of 5) and they tend to get pretty sheepish right there. I then tell them “That’s not your fault, you were set up to fail. Let’s fix that”.
The thing is that these kids know that they don’t know this stuff and they seek out people to teach it to them. They’re not stupid and they are decidedly not pleased about this situation.
The hilarious thing, to me at least, is that they are not in the least bit surprised that the person tutoring them in this got suspended from high school 14 times. I wonder why that doesn’t surprise them?
Pretty sure it is only the teachers that require sex offender status to fire here so that is an avenue of attack to explore. You are right that the kids are generally ok(males especially) just need to be shown what they were denied but admittedly I would need to review a lot of the basics to explain them as we haven’t gotten that far with homeschooling quite yet. As for getting control of the board………. well that would be somewhat tricky as large family nepotism is at play (big fish small pond as well) but if a lot of bad deficiency can be shown especially with how much money they already waste there is a chance of removal but replacement would be an issue unless I can find a sock puppet to make the meetings………. Well stuff to roll over and evaluate options on.
Homeschooling is something I advocate for where people can afford it. Unfortunately, most can’t which is why I focus on K-12 and don’t advocate for homeschooling as THE solution the way many others do.
Your kids being well educated doesn’t matter much if the bulk are not and society comes down around your kids’ ears.
As for going after a school board:
RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”
Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)
Very informative and well written! Thank you!