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Notes -
Well, it always was capable of that.
The trick about the AR-15 is that it's trivial for anyone with a CNC mill and a couple of aluminum billets to churn out the entire gun. Older designs rely on stamping and welding (or casting and milling), and newer ones require plastic and/or aluminum extruding machinery. Startup costs are correspondingly high- Tommybuilt has to charge over 3 times the amount for a G36 clone as Aero Precision does (who aren't even natively a firearms manufacturer to begin with), and the Aero is lighter and more accurate to boot.
Hence the market for attachments- it's legitimately the only gun that can take anywhere near that kind of modification, and those OEMs need parts other than what they can machine on the router.
Milling or forging the upper is not trivial. No one focuses on that because when the BATFE categorized what part of the AR was a controlled item they were concerned about full-auto uses and so picked the lower since traditional AR full auto configurations have a different fire control + sear pocket and drop-in auto sears were a later innovation. Stamp, bend and weld at scale is cheaper and faster than milling and forging. Especially when you have to mill along more than one axis. The T(G)36 clone costs are a mix of niche product, complex plastic receiver from a small shop and sourcing HK parts for all the rest.
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