Re: Magpul Masada vs ACR?
Without taking too broad a brush here (I'm aware of the minute details between the platforms and moderately familiar with how the whole story went down) the short answer is IIRC:
Magpul design. Gave a bunch of people boners. Magpul made a business decision and made a deal with Bushmaster's parent company, for perhaps, many valid business reasons (no judgement, I understand business). Bushmaster did what they do with their modern interpretations of 5.56 rifles and took some of the desired features out of it in search of their idea of the perfect product.... to sell. Magpul wisely stays silent about it and the storm blows over. Under the Remington name the original design (or close to it) version becomes available to certain groups.
I think that's at least close. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Some of the differences were barrel twist 1:7 to 1:9 etc.
People use the word milspec a lot without, I feel, understanding the nature of the underlying issue. Milspec is the minimum acceptable feature set etc. in order to fulfill a specific role. If you consider the military's reputation for not always picking the best and sometimes close to the worst of things, in my opinion, one should look milspec as "I don't EVER want to go below that feature set etc. in a hard use gun".
Notice I say hard use. If you're putting 500 rounds down the tube a year, buy whatever is cheapest that won't blow up. The only issue with that mindset is the price gap between something considered below milspec and milspec rifles is negligible anymore. So for the same or very close amount of money... it would seem to make sense, to me, to purchase the military minimum specification set rifle.
Since this is a quasi bushmaster thread, I can specifically speak to seeing things such as a larger diameter gas tube designed to eat shit ammo. This isn't a particularly bad thing by itself but it can increase wear on the weapon. Couple the increased gas pressure with an improperly or non staked gas key, which is common on modern bushmasters, and you COULD have a recipe for a problem that would less likely be present in a proper situated weapon.
This is a narrow example, to be sure, but just a little clarification on the drama related to 5.56 AR pattern platforms and the Masada/ACR issue.
Open to being wrong is someone can document it. Learning is a hobby of mine.