Is my S&W MP 15 a S&W?
 

I recently bought a S&W MP 15 (MOE) and really like the gun. I heard that Stag made the early MP15's for S&W and was wondering if anyone knows if they were marked differently. Basically I'm wondering if I have a Stag or S&W. It's a great gun regardless of the manufacturer but if I should ever get another one it would be a good haggling point if I could say, "Oh yeah, this is made by Stag" or "This is made by S&W" if I ever decide to sell mine.
There's also two local dealers with pretty good holiday sales on S&W MP15's and I wonder if they are selling older models made by Stag.

Re: Is my S&W MP 15 a S&W?
 

you could prolly google it - find out the serial number range they ran ....

Re: Is my S&W MP 15 a S&W?
 

As far as I know what you have is a Stag manufactured rifle. It's kind of like the S&W 3000 police shotguns from years ago, they carried the Smith name but were manufactured by Howa.

BTW Stag is considered a reputable AR manufacturer.

Re: Is my S&W MP 15 a S&W?
 

I've read a few reviews of the rifle that strongly indicated S&W was very closely controlling design and production of these with a focus on reliability.

Re: Is my S&W MP 15 a S&W?
 

Stag makes most ARs according to a Freind of mine. I do not know if its true.

E-A

Re: Is my S&W MP 15 a S&W?
 

I'm in kind of a lazy mood right now.:wavey: I kind of hoped to have the answer delivered to me on a silver platter without any real effort on my part.

Re: Is my S&W MP 15 a S&W?
 

From what I remember, STAG used to do all the tooling AND assembly for the S&W.

Supposedly, S&W now does the assembly and final checks, but Stag still makes the parts. (could be wrong)

You will have to do some serial checking to determine. If you have a question, shoot the guys at stag an email. They have been VERY helpful to me even for banal questions (steel or brass case?).




BTW> I love my stag 6L and 2TL.

Re: Is my S&W MP 15 a S&W?
 

Ok, here is how it works with AR rifles:

The lower and upper recievers are made from forgings. There are only about 4 or 5 companies that actually make the forgings for everybody. Somewhere on the reciever is usually a little mark (called a forge mark) that will tell you who made the raw forging. This is a raised marking like a square, keyhole, Bird head etc.

After that the forging is sent to a firearms manufacturer. The manufacturer will machine the forging to the final dimentions. Many manufacturers also will do the machining for smaller companies. Note if company A makes recievers for company B, that does not mean they are the same, they will be machined to company B's specs.

I guarantee that S&W does not make AR-15 forgings. They probably get the forgings from CMT (Stag's parent company), LMT, or Cardinal Forge. If they are using CMT forgings it is reasonable that they would have Stag (CMT's commercial arm) do the machining as well.

Tell me what the forge marking looks like and we can source the forging easily enough.

Re: Is my S&W MP 15 a S&W?
 

They are in fact CMT manufacture parts. S&W performs the final assembly and finish.

CMT is a highly regarded manufacturer. Stag is a more common name and that is why many say that the S&W parts are manufactured by stag, while CMT is who manufactures both stag and S&W receivers etc.