meh. Not at that price point.
trying to compete with the Remington r-15 maybe??
It's spendy because it's a gas piston rifle.
I don't see the point... unless you're going to fire FA a lot and/or go long periods without cleaning, a piston is a waste.
Lol @ "Ruger's legendary rugged reliability". There's a reason everybody I shoot with calls Mini 14s "Jam-O-Matics".
I shot in quite a few "tactical" shoots in CA. Every single time someone brought a Mini-14 out, it would have at least one failure, and these were only 100 round matches.
They seemed to find interesting ways not to work... One guy gave up on his Mini and started bringing his Garand for a while.