I started with a sport, and found out the melonite barrel is pretty well indestructible and wont wear out near as fast as a chrome lined barrel. If you look under the sticky threads for barrel specs for sport you can read that for yourself. Also it is unbelievable accurate, to the point where S&W are putting it on the other rifles in the series. I put a 4-16 scope on it, you don't have to worry about the front sight because your focal plane is downrange you wont see it. I quickly found out it wasn't enough scope, so I put an 8-32 on it...it wasn't too much scope but it was a 40 objective so limited my field of view for prairie dog hunting. Oh by the way I already had the scopes so that's why I tried them. So I bought a 6-24x50 Bushnell and love it. I then made a lot of changes that weren't really necessary but I had caught the Evil Black Rifle Disease that makes you modify your AR to your hearts content. If I had it to do all over again. I would buy the Sport, by the way after I modified the fool out of my Sport, I used the leftover parts to build another Sport. I find that I can shoot accurately out to 300 yards and am enjoying this rifle more than any other I have in my collection. So figure out what you want and enjoy the fool out of it. Before you start making major changes shoot it, shoot it a lot and then figure out what you want. I free floated my barrel to make it even more accurate at long distances but where I live in Kansas I can shoot long distances. Good Luck!!

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Grover Oathkeeper