The Ebil Black Rifle

This is the gun that (re)started it all, the Ebil Black Rifle.  Show it to anyone who's remotely anti-gun, and they'll scream "Assault Rifle!  Ban it!  Nobody needs a gun like that!"  Overlooking the fact that to be classified as an assault rifle, a gun must have full auto capabilities which NO commercially available guns have(even the evil black ones the media loves to hate), it's about ans far from an "assault rifle" as you can get.  In reality, though it looks like an AR-15, it's a Mossberg 715T, which is just their 702 Plinkster .22 in an evil black plastic shell.  Being just a .22, it's about as far from evil as you can get with a real gun(hence the cutesy "Ebil" moniker).

I'd been looking for something like this for awhile.  I saw this one on a Black Friday sale, and decided it was time to take the plunge.  Current .22 shortage not withstanding, .22s are fun to plink with, and this particular one is neat looking.  They make a couple different styles, this is the A2 carry handle style(for obvious reasons).  The one thing that really bugged me about it is the forearm.  It's just way too long and makes the gun look front heavy.  The front rails were kind of sharp too, and didn't feel nice in the hand.  First things first, I bought some standard length rail covers.  Using the covers as a guide, I whacked some of of the middle of the hand guard, it ended up being around 4".

After epoxying everything back together, I trimmed, redrilled, and reinstalled the removable side rails, then put everything back together.  Just that change really helped the proportions of the rifle, and makes it look a bit less ungainly.