I will preface this post by saying I have had my Colt AR6951 since about August or so of 2022. The carbine has a manufacture date of June 2022. During it’s time in my collection, I have not looked at it in detail. I recently put it on the wall next to my workbench as I was using it for some research. Saturday night I noticed the light reflecting off of the right side of the upper receiver in a strange way. Upon closer inspection, I saw three details that I did not expect to see.

The first detail, and the easiest to readily see was the Colt Department of Defense CAGE code. This is seen on 5.56mm upper receivers but would not typically be seen on commercial 9mm carbines. The next two things that I saw really surprised me. I could see ‘flat’ spots milled on the upper receiver where the brass deflector and forward assist housing would normally be. See my video below for additional detail.

Apparently, at some point, Colt milled off the brass deflector and forward assist housing to use the upper receiver in 9mm carbine production. After discussions with some other people, I have identified about 7 other AR6951 carbines with similar upper receivers owned by members of my various social media pages.

Your average commercial customer would probably be angry seeing something like this in a $1000.00 carbine. The upper receiver details do not bother me at all. It makes an average carbine a little more interesting and incidentally gives you a little bit of insight into a company’s effort to save some money and use its available resources more efficiently.

Thanks for stopping by…see you next time.