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If you’ve been struggling to try and find components to finish your true-to-form What Would Stoner Do (WWSD) rifle, then there might be a more budget-friendly option for you straight from KE Arms. The Civil Defense Rifle from KE Arms shares a lot of the same design choices but costs about $600 less than the full-blown WWSD rifle as parted out by InRangeTV.
KE Arms @ TFB:
- KE Arms Introduces KP-15 Trap Door Buttplate for Polymer Lowers
- Shorten Your KP-15 Lower with Echo Nine Three Custom
- New KP-15 Polymer Lower Receiver For AR-15 Rifles From KE Arms
KE Arms Introduces the Civil Defense Rifle – A More Budget-Friendly WWSD
The main hangup for a lot of people in finishing their WWSD rifles has been the lack of supply to meet the demand for carbon fiber handguards. Another part in high demand were the mid-length gas pencil profile barrels from Faxon Firearms. It took me well over 4 months just to get my hands on a pencil profile barrel for my own rifle and the 12″ carbon fiber handguards are pretty much unobtanium at this point.
So with a lot of people’s rifles stalling out, Ian and Karl worked together to create the Civil Defense Rifle (CDR) with an eye towards not just budget parts, but also availability. While the KE Arms KP-15 Lowers and ambidextrous controls are still a core part of the rifle, a few other parts were swapped out for more economical ones which include the following:
- Skeletonized aluminum handguard instead of carbon fiber
- Standard recoil system instead of the JP Silent Capture
- KE Arms’ DMR trigger instead of the SLT/Rekluse
- Ambidextrous safety only, instead of fully Ambi controls
- Nitrided bolt and carrier instead of chromed carrier
These parts changes brought down the overall MSRP down from $1699.99 to just $1249.99. Brownells currently has the completed CDR rifles for sale (and they are in stock as of writing) on their website. In essence, the CDR is a less ambidextrous, less luxury-minded WWSD rifle that also weighs a bit more. One of the components I think was really great about the original WWSD design is the JP2 Silent Captured Buffer Assembly. I’m personally a huge fan of these buffer assemblies and have used them on other rifles I’ve put together.
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