I doubt the validity of this report. The S&W AR is a quality weapon. The bullets “breaking apart”? Yah, sure. If the AR would not fit in the duffle bag with a 30 rd. mag what would prevent him from carrying it with the mag detached and inserting it after it was removed from said duffle. Takes about 2 seconds. Then he talks about “magazine clips”.
There is a S&W M&P15 ‘Sport’ model that’s built to be a $499 Walmart special. It’s not that great - add to that any mods he may have ineptly made to it and it’s plausible.
I wasn't buying it either but apparently he actually did only use 10 round magazines and jammed his weapon trying to reload it. Several sources report this.
So is the AR-10. But successful use of a weapon requires a proper functioning (we might call it "well-regulated") weapon system.
If you bring together an AR type rifle, a telescopic sight, a normal capacity magazine (like 30 rounds), and some ammunition, then you may or may not find that the system works as desired.
The reason I mention the AR-10 is that I know a guy (you know, the one that had a boating accident) who bought an AR-10 and found that it would jam frequently.
The problem was typically a failure to eject properly. I had to ... That is, he had to compare it to a working AR-15 in order to figure out what the problem was.
As I recall, he found that an AR-15 would eject an unfired round with something like three-quarters of an inch of excess bolt travel. Measurements on the AR-10 indicated only about a quarter of an inch of excess clearance. Though that seemed like enough, in fact, it wasn't enough to operate reliably.
The mechanism that dictates how far back the bolt travels during ejection is the combination of the length of the buffer tube and the length of the buffer. Oddly, these two dimensions seemed to be identical on both rifles.
The problem is, the cartridge that the AR-10 fires is LONGER than the AR-15 cartridge. The chamber has to be longer in an AR-10. The ejection port is longer. AND the bolt has to move back farther. With the same buffer tube length and the same buffer length, the bolt CAN'T move back farther.
With this information I called the manufacturer and told them, "I think you assembled my rifle incorrectly and installed an AR-15 buffer instead of an AR-10 buffer and it won't cycle correctly."
The said, "Oh. Sorry about that. We'll mail the right part out today".
I'm sure that the S&W AR is a quality product. But if the shooter never proved that the entire system he was relying on would work, then it would be no surprise if it didn't.