A hand guard assembly for a firearm including a barrel. The assembly includes a tubular unitary body mounted to surround a portion of the barrel substantially coaxially and in a transversely spaced relationship. The tubular body includes a plurality of air flow openings formed therethrough and at least one of a top rail formed as a unitary portion of the tubular body and extending rearwardly along an upper portion of a receiver of the firearm, side accessory rails formed as a unitary portion of the tubular body and on opposed sides of the tubular body, and a bottom accessory rail formed as a unitary portion of the tubular body and on a bottom surface of the tubular body. In the preferred method of fabricating the assembly, the body and any include accessory rails are extruded.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is a divisional application of currently U.S. application Ser. No. 11/174,270, filed 29 Jun. 2005, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,363,741 which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/585,746, filed 6 Jul. 2004.
