Yeah, they're pretty cool. But they grow on trees. Buy all the .223 you can afford and worry about the rifle later.
There are several versions of the 556. There's the SWAT model with a folding stock, some are optics ready, some are not. They're very cool and a decent price. But you can drop some money getting it set up with optics. A neighbor in VA had one and he had to do some kind of mod. to keep the expended brass from dinging up the part of the upper receiver just aft of the ejection port. I figured I wanted to wait another year or two until all the bugs were worked out of these. They're still relatively new. I did get to shoot a full auto 552 a few years ago. Very badas$ gun.
