WARRIOR TALK NEWS

TSD COMBAT SYSTEMS CQB KALASHNIKOV

This rifle is designed as the CQB Kalashnikov Rifle. We build it to fit the guerrilla rifleman  shooting method taught in our courses without any concessions to ComBloc fashions.

The rifle is chambered in 7.62x39 or 5.45x39 and has a 14" barrel with a permanently affixed AAC Blackout Flash Hider (OAL of 16"). We add the Midwest Industries X-Rail handguard systems to aid in shooting positions as well as allowing the end user to add any mission-essential accessories they might want without excessive weight.

For a stock we add the Vltor stock adapter, and a Magpul CTR stock with an optional .75" cheekpiece. This allows for both adjustable length of pull as well as a proper American cheekweld should you opt for the addition of a 1-5x optic or an ACOG. Bottom line is that if you want to shoot with the accuracy of a rifle, you will need to have a proper stock...something that has been lacking in the AK platform since 1947.

We add the American sized US Palm pistol grip and a tuned Red Star Arms trigger kit. The rifle includes one magazine (either US Palm AK30 in 7.62x39, or 45 round Bulgarian in 5.45x39). The AK system was developed by Mikhail Kalashnikov to answer the needs of modern urban combat, it was adopted by the American Gun Community to answer the needs for the ultimate civilian guerrilla rifle, and it has now been perfected by TSD Combat Systems.

www.tsdcombatsystems.com

www.onesourcetactical.com

 

The Floating Gun

If you’re going to take your point shooting skills as far as the fight needs them to be, you’ve got to have it.

Suarez International Instructor CR Williams

I see it over and over again, and I still do it myself (not as often as I did, but I still do). I see them at classes, on the range practicing, in groups, watching others work, and when working by myself. Once you know what to look for they’re pretty easy to spot. They’re like chronic or recurring illnesses.

Let's call them the 'Welded Hand Syndrome' and the 'Locked-In-Position Syndrome'.

Welded-Hand Syndrome is characterized by an unconscious but nonetheless strong and determined reluctance to release the support hand from the grip of the gun. The shooter beset by WHS acts as if his or her hands have been super-glued and duct-taped to the grip such that they are unable to let go and shoot with one hand despite the position they are in or the angle to the target they are engaging. They will twist and turn and step, bend and flex, and move the wrong way trying to keep their gun on the target, unaware that they are in the grip of the Welded-Hand Syndrome.

Related to and often seen in conjunction with Welded-Hand Syndrome is Locked-In-Position Syndrome. LIPS is characterized by the unthinking drive to keep a pre-set arm and upper-body shooting position under any and all circumstances and no matter where the target is or how they are moving (if they’re moving) whether it is appropriate to the circumstances or not.

WHS and LIPS do occur in isolation but will most often be observed appearing together. Both syndromes have the same three primary causes: A lack of experience or training, a history of training that is totally or almost totally devoted to the proactive gunfight, and the tendency we all have to want to remain ‘squared up’ to something or someone that is trying to kill us.

Diagnosis of either or both conditions involves observation of the shooter in question to answer these questions: Is the position and placement of the gun appropriate to what the shooter needs to be doing with it? Does the shooter appear to be ‘bound up’ or in an awkward position? Is the shooter moving more slowly and awkwardly than they should be or in a different direction than they intend or that is appropriate to the situation? If the answers are ‘No’, ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes’, then WHS or LIPS should be suspected. Further observation is then necessary to confirm the presence and severity of the conditions.

Examples of Welded-Hand Syndrome and Locked-In-Position Syndrome:

Moving from right to left while attempting to keep a two-hand grip and squared torso. I did not deliberately cross-step, it occurred naturally as a result of my conscious desire to keep the same grip and upper-body position. You will see this unconsciously with those suffering from WHS and LIPS. If I had continued out of camera range, I would end up walking backwards.

Here I am moving properly to about 1:00, but because I refuse to release the grip or alter extension I would end up doing two things: putting the gun in range of a still-standing opponent, and curving back into the target instead of properly flanking it like I would prefer to.

(Full-size versions of all photos available at: http://photobucket.com/FloatingGun)

Effects of these conditions range from being frustrated about your ability to easily get good hits on a target that’s other than directly in front of you to your being killed in a fight because you can’t maneuver properly, move too slowly, are unable to get the gun into line like you need to, or from ineffective use of cover that exposes too much of your body to incoming fire. Given the potential severity of the effects, serious thought should be given as to how to avoid falling victim to these conditions. Fortunately, effective treatments are available and are simple (not always easy, but simple)  to apply.

Treatments are both corrective and preventive and may need to be applied on an ongoing basis.

 Treatments are as follows:

Learning and practicing ambidextrous use of all weapons. (At the least, getting as near to full ambidexterity as is possible.)

Learning and practicing one-handed shooting (of the handgun).

Learning and practicing to be able to shoot accurately with the gun below the eye-line, in other than dead-ahead directions, and held at distances ranging from in contact with your body to full extension.

The aim of the treatments is to develop the ‘Floating Gun’. This is a state in which you will automatically and without much if any conscious thought put the gun at the level you need and extended to the distance required in any direction of the clock face as the situation and the target you are engaging dictate. Sometimes one-handed, sometimes not, sometimes in one hand, sometimes in the other, sometimes held far away and sometimes in contact with your body, high, low, in-between, getting hits where you need them as you move where you need to without binding, bending, or twisting unnaturally. Furthermore, that point, that extension, that position, that direction, can and will change the moment the situation changes and the moment your relationship to the target changes. As you turn, as you change direction, as you change levels or speed or distance, or as the target does, so does your gun. It goes where it needs to be so that it can do what you need it to do.

 

 

 

This is a simple illustration of letting the gun float. Beginning in arm's reach of the target, I displace left as I draw and fire the first shot at waist level with the gun close in. I will continue to fire as I bring the gun up to eye-level to first a close-in two-handed shooting position and then, as I cross the 'T' of the target and then turn to advance along a parallel track, move to a more standard two-hand position. (Because of restrictions necessitated by the camera view range, I maneuvered in a much smaller area than if I were running this as a full-speed drill.)

 

 

 

Another way to answer the same question is to switch hands. Beginning from the same position and with the same initial displacement, I move the gun from right to left and continue the engagement. For complete development, both options should be learned and practiced.

Note that, unlike in the first examples, I was able at all times to move normally and naturally and did not have to cross my feet or become awkwardly 'bound up' to get the hits.

To best develop and keep updated on the use of the Floating Gun concept, therapy under the guidance of a qualified Suarez International instructor is highly recommended. Formal courses of treatment include Point Shooting Gunfight Skills, Close Range Gunfighting, Point Shooting Progressions, Advanced Close Range Gunfighting, and Advanced Point Shooting Progressions. Ongoing practice and training and refresher training is advisable, as without re-emphasis of the concept, Welded-Hand and Locked-In Syndrome will often re-occur. It’s happened to me; don’t let it happen to you.

Don't forget to work on 'floating' the long-gun as well:

 

 

PSP graduates will recognize this as the parallel-track approach to evasion and counterattack. I use a rifle here to illustrate that the concept of 'floating' is not limited to handguns. Long Gun Point Shooting Progressions will teach you more about this and is recommended for those wishing to become more facile in the quick and sure handling of the rifle or shotgun.

(I’ll get a bit more serious now: I believe there are two fundamentals that should not change no matter what you’re doing with the gun, and one fundamental that almost never should but can sometimes. The two things that should not change are your grip (the way you grip, not the tension of the grip), whether one or two-handed, and the way you work the trigger; these should always be consistent. The one fundamental that should almost not change is eye-hand, or eye-weapon, alignment. Even if the gun is below your line of sight, it should as much as possible be aligned with the dominant/shooting-side eye in order to have the best chance of hitting the intended target. As long as these fundamentals are satisfied, then the gun should be allowed to ‘float’ to where it will best get the hits you need.

Being able to float the gun does more for you than just to enable you to make hits from any position in any direction in an emergency, though that would be more than enough to justify the acquisition of the capability. Where employed deliberately, ambidextrous and one-handed facility with the weapon specifically will give you tactical options you will not have otherwise. For all these reasons, having the ability to float the gun is an all but must-have skill to everyone that carries and a definite must-have skill for the serious student of the gunfight.)

Take the time, make the effort, get the skill, and learn the Floating Gun. You will not regret it.

You be safe out there. And if you can't be safe, float like a butterfly and hit like the Hammer of Thor.

The Breathing - Trigger Connection

Continuing with the discussions on marksmanship, we have covered issues such as cheekweld and length of pull as primarily ignored by the AK community. Ignorance of them will yield fun bumpfiring at a gravel pit perhaps, but poor marksmanship if true riflery is the goal.

Another important pair of aspects are the issues of breathing and trigger press. One is strictly skill related, the other is skill and gear related.

Breathing is a muscular action, whether voluntary or involuntary. The muscular action of breathing, or of holding the breath in creates movement, which is the bane of a stable shooting platform. Not an issue in run-and-gun CQB, but a crucial consideration for accurate shooting outside CQB.

In sniper school we teach the natural respiratory pause. We breathe normally...maybe taking a deep breath or two, and then allowing the air to expell naturally from the lungs without forcing it. At the point that the lungs feel "empty", you will have between 6 to 10 seconds of oxygenated blood flowing before the breathing must resume. Its during that period of time where, maintaining the visual focus on the sights or reticule, you begin pressing the trigger.

That is the timing. Focus visually on the sights or reticule. Keeping that in place, establish the respiratory pause. And keeping that in place, work the trigger in the alloted and rather long time period.

Trigger work begins with trigger characteristics. Some triggers are horrible. Take the stock M16 three round burst trigger. It is manageable, but horrible to work with. Sadly, soldiers or police officers that are issued such a weapon can do little to improve it. But the civilian that complains about his trigger has a great many options. I find it amazing that those with poor triggers on their AK rifles fail to simply fix them. Even more amazing is that so-called "custom" AK rifles are sold routinely with finger breaking trigger slap (the trigger popping back into position hard after a shot).

The simple answer is to add a Red Star Arms trigger to your rifle. Like most things in life, some will agree and others will bemoan the system in question. But like most things in life, follow the money. Most of the guys advocating staying away from the RSA trigger are gunsmith types that instead want to sell you their trigger job. If the RSA is properly installed (an important matter with all accessories of course) it will never give you any trouble, and provide with a trigger that is exemplary for an assault rifle.

With a proper trigger, and using the first joint of the trigger finger, having established a solid shooting position and respiratory pause, we continue.

Begin pressure on the trigger smoothly and evenly. This fisrt part should be simple but what most people do is all the preceding and then pull hard on thje trigger as if to "get it over with". The result usually is a missed shot. Instead, press smoothly and evenly, without rushing. At some point the pressure will suffice and the shot will break. When that happens, your job is to keep everything as it was prior to the shot breaking. That is...staying in position, keeping the face on the stock, etc., during recoil. Do not allow the shot to disintegrate your shooting platform or focus. That last is called "follow through" and is a part of trigger control and much as the breathing.

Learn to do these things and you will amaze yourself at just how accurate your Kalashnikov rifle can be. Ignore these things, and no matter how many rounds you send downrange, you will never understand the rifle.

Red Star Arms Triggers

TWS Yugo Rifle Top Covers

Midwest Industries X-Rail Handguard System

The "Floating" Support Hand

When we look at the deployment of a rifle, we need to understand that rifle work is not limited to CQB.  The rifle is a weapon that can be used from zero distance to the limit of its intended use, which for the assault rifle is approximately to 300 meters.  Training beyond 100 yards/meters is difficult for a number of reasons.  Most ranges are limited to 100 yards and few people ever get the opportunity to really stretch their rifle's legs farther than that.  As well, few people have the opportunity to shoot in the field on a regular basis.  Thus the focus is CQB, almost to the exclusion of other distance intervals.  I believe this is a mistake,as students thus trained only get a part of the full picture.

In this article we will be discussing a concept that we have taught for many years, and that is the "Floating Support Hand".  Specifically the idea is that the support hand (alternatively called the "reaction hand", the "left hand", or by cave dwellers - the "weak hand") should not be anchored into a given position, but rather float to wherever it needs to go to facilitate the shot.

That position may range from the forward hold popular in competion circles, to the magazine hold popular in the MP5 days.  It all depends on what the target is, how far away it is, what position you are shooting from, and what the angle is.

The Forward Hold

This is from an article that was written by S.I. Instructor Dale Hunter for our Staff - Only Section. 

"With modern assault rifles, gripping the magwell as a default position is selling yourself short in terms of maximum effect on target. Usually the magwell is close to the balance point of the rifle. Ignorant riflemen say this allows quicker handling of the rifle. Physics state otherwise. Try holding a children’s seesaw at the middle/balance point; not very stable. Try moving the front axle of your car to the middle and see how well it rides and steers. We drive with the front wheels as far out aspractical.

Taking the car analogy over to riflery, we should be gripping therifle as far out as practical based on the shooters arms and position the shot is being taken from. This enables better leverage and control over the mass in front of the balance point thus permitting much quicker shot to shot recovery,transitions of targets, and less disruption of the sights while engaging on the move. Gripping the magwell is the same as gripping a vertical fore grip like a joystick and gives the same result of gripping a pistol too low; the mass is sitting on top of the hand discouraging effective control and causing the body to be reactive to the rifle."

Dale is correct about the benefits of this hold, and it is workable both on the move as well as stationary for snap shots.  At a Kalashnikov Force on Force class last year, Dale put in a stellar performance using this full speed, on a dead run against a very capable stationary adversary.  The results were that Dale was untouched while his adversary was peppered.     

While that particular hold has become popular in recent years, it - like many things in the weapons and tactics realm, is not new at all.  Here is an image of Rhodesian soldiers and their FALs.

The Middle Hold

This is the "traditional hold" involving placement mid way between the magazine and the forward end of the handguards.  This is not a "reactive" position as much as one useful for supported positions, or when accuracy at distance is paramount.

The Magazine Hold dates back to the days of the MP5 and is best suited for short SMGs such as the PPS43 and Skorpion as shown below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is also useful in supported positions in order to mainatin the correct elevation while resting the elbows, such as in sitting position.

So do not get stuck to the handguard.  Doing so will retard your development as a rifleman.  Where do you run your support hand?  The correct answer is "It depends on what I am trying to do".

Advanced AR15/M4 Gunfighitng

By Chris Upchurch, Suarez International Staff Instructor

Recently I “assisted” Randy Harris with the Advanced AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting class. I put assisted in quotation marks because I didn’t do all that much. I was mainly the demo dummy and an extra set of eyes during some drills.

This class was part of Red, White and Blue September, a 4 day block of AR focused instruction. It also included the regular AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting on Thursdayand Friday class and the AR15/M4 Armorer class on Friday night. I couldn’t make it out to help with the Thursday-Friday class, but I did show up in time for the Armorer class (if you want to hear about AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting you can read my AAR of the class from last May). I believe this is the first time the advanced version of the AR class has been offered.

Much like with the AR class last May, I came out to this one as part of my quest to become more comfortable with the AR platform. I’m primarily an AK guy, but as an instructor I really need to be able to run both.

The AR I brought is a BCM upper with a 16" lightweight barrel and mid-length gas system on a Palmetto State Armory stripped lower I put together. It’s most unusual feature is probably the fixed Sully Stock, which I really like. It’s very solid and is the same length as my AKs. It’s also fitted with Magpul handguards, a US Palm battlegrip, a Surefire G2 flashlight, and an EOTech on a LaRue mount. I fed it with PMags carried either in a Dale Fricke kydex belt pouch or a Sneakybag. My pistol was my EDC gun: a Glock 17 with the slide worked over by TSD for an RMR in a Seraphim holster.

The rest of the class mostly shot 5.56mm ARs (including a very nice LaRue upper on a Spikes lower). One student had an Armalite AR–10 in .308. Support gear ranged from belt pouches, to a TIB, to a plate carrier (sans plates). There was one 1911, but the rest of the students carried Glocks.

Saturday Morning

Some of the students in the class were holdovers from the Thursday-Friday class, but not all, so after the safety brief Randy started out with some dry work to make sure everyone was on the same page.

We started with the standing position, mounting the gun from different ready positions and practicing reloads. Then Randy had folks switch over to the left shoulder (everyone in the class normally shot right-handed) and mount and reload the gun over there. Suarez International is big on ambidexterous shooting and Randy always emphasizes it right from the start in his rifle classes. As usual, this is where things start getting interesting for people who don’t have mags accessible to both hands.

We moved on to the kneeling position and worked reloads from both sides. It’s not enough to be able to shoot from various positions, you need to be able to run the gun from these positions as well. Rounding out the position shooting, we did some work in prone. Randy also went over Spetsnaz prone and had the students try it out.

Next up Randy had the students work on addressing targets in any direction. Kneeling and particularly prone limit your mobility and in real life you are not guaranteed that threats will only come from “downrange”. You need to be able to adapt the position to shoot in any direction in case someone pops out from beside or behind you. From kneeling this is mostly a matter of switching shoulders and twisting your torso, or perhaps dropping one knee and raising the other as you pivot. From prone you may have to roll over on your back and shoot from supine.

To further emphasize ambidexterity, Randy had us do the slalom drill. The students line up with 2–3 yards between each person slaloms through the line, treating each student as a corner to be pied, switching shoulders as they go.

Randy talked about some non-traditional sighting measures: the “Caveman EOTech” and shooting over the top of your optic. In the caveman EOTech you use the front sight tower, rather than the sight itself, as an aiming tool. At close ranges you can look over the rear sight and superimpose the front sight tower on the target and make good hits without taking the time to line up the sights. The equivalent for folks with optics is to look over the top of your optical sight and use the sight itself as a reference point just below your line of sight. He had the students try these out using a handy post.

These really come into play once you start moving. Randy went through the standard S.I. get off the X lecture, talking about why we need to move, and why we like to move to the forward oblique angles.

Finally, Randy had the students practice one-handed reloads. Rifles are fundamentally two-handed tools, but we need to be able to run them one handed in the event we get shot in the arm.

With this, we broke for lunch at a local Subway.

Saturday Afternoon

After lunch we moved out to the range and started by making sure everyone was sighted in. Those who had been in the Thursday-Friday class were pretty well dialed in, but the new students needed some work. I thought my EOTech was pretty well dialed in, but I popped off a few rounds at one of the targets’ heads to make sure.

After getting everyone’s sights dialed in we promptly moved up to a range where the sights were irrelevant. We did some snap shooting using the Caveman EOTech/aiming over the optic methods. Getting used to aiming over the optic took some work for some folks, but after a little while everyone was getting good hits.

We moved back to 25 yards and did some work from both standing and kneeling, then moved back to 50 and shot standing, kneeling and prone. Once everyone was comfortable in the three positions Randy had us moving between them, shooting a pair from standing followed by a pair from kneeling, or starting kneeling and going to prone. Eventually we worked up to shooting two from standing, two from kneeling, two from prone, doing a proactive reload, then shooting two from prone, two from kneeling and two from standing.

During these drills my EOTech started flaking out. It turned itself off several times and I had to turn it back on between drills. During the standing, kneeling, prone, reload, prone, kneeling, standing drill it started off fine but the dot disappeared during the reload. These problems did serve to reinforce my decision to used fixed back-up iron sights rather than flip up. I have them set up for a lower 1/3 co-witness so all I have to do when the dot isn’t there is drop my head about half an inch. The transition is very quick, much quicker than flipping up sights or using a QD mount. By this point, however, I had enough of the flaky optic and between drills I made use of the QD mount and took it off the rifle entirely.

Back up at 7 yards, we did some failure to stop drills, shooting the body than switching to the head. At this range the body is an easy shot with Caveman EOTech or shooting over the optic, but you need more precision for the headshot, so this drill also tested the ability to switch between sighting methods. During these drills I realized just how long it had been since I’d done much shooting with iron sights that have a rear aperture. I’m much more used to AK or pistol style sights with a rear notch. It took a bit of time to reaccustom myself to the aperture sights.

We worked on ambidextrous shooting, firing from the right shoulder, doing a partial transition (moving the buttstock to the other shoulder but keeping the hands in position) and firing. Then doing full transition (switching hands) and shooting, doing a partial transition back to the other shoulder and firing, then completing the full transition and firing the last shot. We worked this back and forth several times.

Next, we started moving and shooting. First we did the pacing drill, where you walk left and right in front of the target, switching shoulders as appropriate. After everyone had this down, we started getting off the X to the right (3-o’clock).

During some of these drills several times i managed to knock the safety of my rifle on as I swapped my hands during the shoulder transfer. I’m not used to having a safety over there on my AK. I guess I need to do some weapon-specific shoulder transfer practice.

During these drills, the student with the AR–10 suffered a badly stuck case. Initially the extractor slipped off the rim, so he tried to knock if out with another student’s range rod. He didn’t get it out, but in the process he got the extractor back over the case rim, so we were able to bang the stock on the ground and mortar it out.

We went back to getting off the X, to the left this time. Then Randy demonstrated the Pekiti takeoff footwork for getting off the X faster. We practiced this dry quite a bit, then went live with it to both the right and left. Randy also added in an after action drill, checking to see if the guy you just shot is really down, if he has friends (including looking behind you) if you need to reload, and if you have any injuries.

As we did this, the AR–10 suffered another problem: the hammer began sticking back and refused to drop after the first shot. After opening the gun up we figured out that it was hanging up on the disconnector hook, rather than dropping onto the sear when the trigger was reset. At this point the Armalite had suffered extraction problems during the Thursday-Friday class (bad enough that the student borrowed one of Randy’s rifles), the stuck case, and now this trigger group problem. The student just decided to give up on the AR–10 for this class and borrowed Randy’s rifle again.

We wrapped everything up and headed out. Most of the class headed down to a nice steakhouse in Fort Payne for dinner. There was good food, great fellowship, and lots of interesting discussion.

After dinner, I did something rather uncharacteristic of me: I cleaned a gun during a class. With Glocks and AKs I’ve never bothered, but I hadn’t really given this rifle a thorough cleaning since before the Long Gun Point Shooting Progressions last May. Since then it had probably had 800 rounds of Wolf through it. I’d wiped the internals off a bit with a rag on a few occasions (including during the Armorer class on Friday) but never gotten out the solvent and really scrubbed the thing. Clearly the AR does not have to be white-glove clean to run. However, I did have one non-operator induced malfunction during the day when the bolt hung up on the top round of the magazine, so I figured scrubbing it might slicking everything up a bit.

Sunday

We started out the day with some malfunction clearance. Everyone laid their rifles out on the ground pointing downrange and Randy and I set up various malfunctions: empty chamber, unseated magazine, failure to eject (aka: a stovepipe), failure to extract (aka: a double feed) and a spent case stuck between the charging handle and the bolt. The students had to pick up each rifle and fire it twice, clearing the malfunction in the process. The first three can be cleared fairly easily with a tap-rack. The failure to eject requires getting the magazine out, then reloading. The case stuck in the charging handle requires locking the bolt back and briskly closing the charging handle. It’s also a demonstration of why we don’t necessarily want to tap-rack every malfunction on an AR like we do with a pistol, since racking a weapon in this condition will just wedge the case in further. If you get a click but no bang, tap rack. If you just get a mushy trigger, rip the mag out and see what you’ve got.

Next up was transitions to pistol. If you’re carrying a pistol and are within effective pistol range (varies depending on how good a shooter you are) going to pistol is going to be faster than reloading and empty gun or fixing many malfunctions. Most of the guys in the class were running two point slings, but one was running a single point. For the two-point sling guys I demoed the standard S.I. over the head transition and the students practiced it dry until they had it down.

We loaded up a mags with two rounds and practiced shooting the rifle dry then transitioning. It’s very important to actually shoot the rifle dry for two reasons: first, it gives you the stimulus (the rifle not working) that we want you to react to with a transition. Second, it means we don’t have to apply the safety before transitioning. The safety on an AR will not engage when the hammer is forward. Where is the hammer going to be if your gun malfunctions? In a majority of cases its going to be forward. I don’t want anyone out there in a real gunfight standing there trying to engage a safety that’s not going to go on when they should be transitioning to pistol. Finally, in the even the student fails to engage the safety on a hot weapon before transitioning, there’s a chance some bit of gear is going to get inside the trigger guard and the gun will go off. One of our competitors recently had a student shoot themselves in just this way.

We moved on to using the gun as an impact weapon. This is one area where the AR class differs a bit form our AK classes. With an AK, using the buttstock is a major part of our impact weapon drills. In an AR, the stock contains a critical part of the gun’s operating system, so we don’t want to risk damaging it. With the AR we do a lot more work with the muzzle end of the gun. Randy showed us some simple strikes, including how to throw the buttstock and protect it by throwing and elbow along with the stock. After practicing these a bit, he had us work on some weapon retention techniques if someone grabs your gun by the muzzle. Lastly, we practiced blocking incoming contact weapon strikes and counterattacking with the muzzle.

We’d gotten off the X to the right and left (3 and 9 o’clock) yesterday. Today we added in the forward and rearward obliques. We worked our way around the clock face (the 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 o’clock directions) practicing moving off the X and shooting. The rearward angles add a bit of complication, but the basic principles were the same as what we did yesterday.

I had bought some new batteries and put them in my EOTech this morning. That got the scope working initially, but the reticule quickly dimmed and eventually I was taking more time trying to pick up the dim dot than I would have shooting with irons. I decided I was done with thins thing. I popped the sight off and went back to irons for the rest of the class.

Until now, we’d done all our engagements facing directly towards the adversary. In the real world, bad guys may pop up to the left, right, or rear as well. We practiced from a standing position with the targets off our left shoulder, behind us, and off our right shoulder. In standing we got off the X and shot on the move. We did the same thing from kneeling. Here, you lack the mobility you’ve got in standing so it’s just a matter of getting the gun on target as quickly as possible and shooting the threat.

We moved back to about 25 yards to shoot from prone (so we didn’t send rounds over the berm. For targets to the left and right we didn’t truly have the shooters turn 90 degrees, since that would be a safety hazard (unlike standing and kneeling you can’t really face someone and avert your muzzle in prone). Instead we had them pointing slightly forward of the line. For a target behind you when prone we did this one at a time, with all the spectators on the one side of the shooter so they could swing their rifle round safely and shoot from supine.

After spending most of the morning blasting away at close range targets, Randy wanted to exercise their accuracy shooting a bit, so we put up a set of three steel targets and moved out to 50 yards. Before the drill he was dinking around a bit with his pistol (an iron sighted Gen 4 G17) and asked if I had my RMRed Glock. I drew it and banged all three steel targets with one shot each (something I don’t think any of the students did with their rifles on the first try). RMRed pistols are just spectacular. After that bit of fun, Randy had the students shoot from standing, kneeling, and prone, and moving between them, much as we did yesterday.

At this point we ventured into the team portion of the program. We have entire classes dedicated to team tactics, but we like to throw a bit of this stuff into the intermediate and advanced rifle classes as well. This is not necessarily because we expect our students to form fire teams and fight as light infantry. It’s more a method of adding a additional elements they have to think about. Up to this point, the students have only had to think about running their rifles and moving. In the team drills you have to be aware of where you are in relation to your teammates, what they’re doing, what you should be doing, communicating, managing your ammo supply, etc. How well you’re able to run your rifle when you can dedicate your full attention to doing that isn’t really a very good test of how well you can run your rifle in a fight. Being able to run your rifle while you’ve got a bunch of other stuff to think about is.

We started off with a basic peel drill. The students lined up in a file facing one of the targets (a file runs up and down range, with each man behind the other, a line runs across the range, with each man beside the other). The first student fired four rounds at the target, brought his rifle up to high-noon ready, turned and walked to the back of the file. He taps the second man in the file on the shoulder as he goes by as a signal to start shooting. As each man moves to the back the entire file migrates up range. We shot this drill a couple of times, then moved on to a variation. Instead of going to the back of the file the students lined up across the range in prone and, once the last man was back at the line, everyone opened up on the targets. This sort of simulates breaking contact with a hostile force, then ambushing them.

For the next drill we had everyone line up shoulder to shoulder, facing downrange. Much like with the peel drill, the fellow on the left end of the line fired, then moved down to the right end of the line. The difference here is he was moving across the range, rather than down it. Once they had this down, we combined the two drills. They started out in a file, the first man shot and moved back to form the start of a line going across the range. As students shot they moved back from the file and took up a position on the right end of the line. Once the last man was in the line, the first one fired, then moved back to form a file behind the last guy. Keeping this up they moved back and to the right alternating between a file and a line.

Up until this point these had clearly been team drills, rather than actual team tactics. While they were modeled on tactics one might actually use (like the Australian peel) the spacing was way too close and things were very structured and staged. Now we moved on to somewhat more tactically realistic exercises.

First up was the Columbian special forces drill. The students started out at about 60 yards and fired a shot at a steel gong from prone. Once they hit it, they moved up to a piece of cover a bit further down range (the range outhouse) performed a proactive reload, and fired six shots at a paper target. They continued moving downrange to various pieces of cover, firing six shots from each. The magazine they loaded back at the outhouse had around 26 rounds in it, so they ran out while firing the six shots from the closest piece of cover and had to transition to pistol. When they fired their six shots from the closes piece of cover, they fire the pistol at the steel gong to end the drill. Then we counted the number of holes in the paper target. Everyone had at least 28 holes in the paper.

Back to the team drills, Randy had the students practice bounding and bumping. Both of these are ways that two elements (whether they be individuals or teams) can move forward with one always covering the other. In bounding, the shooters leapfrog past each other. So if there are two shooters and four pieces of cover (A, B, C, & D), the first shooter moves to A, then the second shooter moves to B while the first shooter covers him from A. The first shooter moves to A to C while the second covers him from B. The second shooter moves from B to D while the first shooter covers him from C, and so on. In bumping, the first shooter goes when the second shooter gets to his piece of cover. So, the first shooter would move to A and cover the second shooter while he moves up to A. When the second shooter gets there he provides cover fire from A while the first shooter moves to B. The first shooter provides cover fire from B while the second shooter moves up. When the second shooter gets to B he provides cover fire from there while the first shooter moves up to C, and so on.

Both of these require proper communication to make sure people are moving at the right times and there’s always at least one gun up and firing, even when someone needs to reload. To get everyone accustomed to this, we ran bumping and bounding drills just moving down the firing line about 7 yards from the target. One student would engage the first target while the second bounded past him to the second target. The other student would bound past him to the third target, and so on.

Once the students had been introduced to bumping and bounding, we went back and shot the Columbian SF drill in pairs. First the students bumped downrange, alternating pieces of cover (the cover was set up so there was no danger of anyone getting in their partner’s line of fire). Then they did the same thing bounding.

Finally, we moved back up to the targets and had the students work some one-handed reloads. This is awkward and slow and nobody is ever going to be quick and elegant with it. However, it’s important to have done it at least once, if only so you know it’s possible and won’t just give up if your arm is injured and your rifle stops working. For a bit of added torture, Randy also had them also do the one-handed reloads lying on their backs, as if whatever injured your arm also dropped you to the ground.

This finished up the class. Randy handed out the certificates and we went our separate ways.

Conclusion

As usual, Randy did a great job with this class. The advanced rifle classes really push the curriculum about as far as it can go, particularly when you’ve got a good group of students.

My rifle ran reliably, with only one non-operator induced malfunction. The other 5.56mm ARs did the same. The only troublesome one was the Armalite AR–10 in .308. It probably helped that most of these rifles got taken apart and lubed during the armorer course on Friday night.

Unfortunately, my optic was not as reliable as my rifle. I originally bought this EOTech about four years ago, but I only ran it for about a year before I swapped it out for an Aimpoint Micro. It’s been sitting on the shelf ever since. When I got this AR earlier this year I pulled it out and put it on the rifle. It’s given me nothing but trouble ever since. I’ll be calling EOTech customer service and seeing what they can do for me (at this point the optic is out of warranty). I guess this was a good chance to polish up my iron sighted shooting skills. As I mentioned earlier, the flaky optic did serve to confirm my preference for fixed, rather than flip-up, BUIS (at least on rifles with non-magnified optics where you can set it up for a lower 1/3 cowitness). The transition to irons when I realized I couldn’t see the dot was very quick.

Overall, this was a great course and Randy did a great job teaching it. While S.I. is best known for our AK stuff, we’ve also got a cadre of instructors who really know the AR well and a curriculum that teaches you to run the rifle and employ it to it’s fullest extent.

“Only You Are Responsible For You”

By Roger Phillips, Suarez International Specialist and Tier One Instructor  

This is the last sentence inside of the Suarez International videotaped liability release. These are not just words! It should be the very core to your gun safety philosophy. It does not matter what you know or where you learned your safe gun handling habits. It does not matter where you train right now. Only you are responsible for your own safety habits.

This means that you need to look at what you have been taught or what you do and decide if it is really good enough. Remember, the most likely person that you are going to shoot IS YOURSELF!

“How good is good enough?”

 Is your gun handling safety habits really good enough?  When it comes down to putting unexpected holes into vital areas of your own body are you really doing the best that you can to mitigate this possibility, all while still learning to be combat effective?

Gunfighting is dangerous! Training to gunfight is also dangerous. The reality of the matter is that the more advanced that you get inside of your training, the more dangerous your training becomes. When we look at the reality of the fight and the likely issues that will arise inside of a fight, it is clear that we need to learn a lot more than just the optimal skill sets for the optimal situations.  The reality of the reactive gunfight puts us in sub-optimal positions that require our safety habits to be the very best that they can be. We need to understand that the whole competition based safety habits simply may not be good enough inside of a fight or inside of fight focused training.

 

We all should be at the point where we at least know the Four Basic Rules of Gun Safety.

(1)    Treat every gun as if it was loaded.

(2)    Do not cover anything that you are not willing to destroy

(3)    Keep your finger off of the trigger and outside of the trigger guard until you have made the conscience decision to shoot.

(4)    Know your target and what is in line with your target, behind and in front.

But these are very general rules that do not nail down specific safety habits.

In the past, Gabe Suarez has done an outstanding job of bringing a little common sense and reality to these rules. I would highly recommend that you check into Gabe’s take on the Four Basic Safety Rules. 

The point of this article is to talk about overlooked liabilities and bad habits, more so than rules. It is the overlooked liabilities and bad habits that really define your personal safety level. The mitigation of liabilities and bad habits are what allow you to proceed into advanced levels of training, all while keeping yourself as safe as you possibly can. I will be covering the top five overlooked liabilities and bad habits that I see inside of my courses.

Overlooked liabilities can be fixed inside of a two day course, but as an advanced instructor teaching advance students advanced skill set, I should not have to constantly babysit people through their safety awareness. I should not have to constantly point out that safety issues are being over looked. These are all issues that should be taken care before the course by wrapping your head around the safety concerns involved with overlooking basic concepts. Sure I will remind you, but really, shouldn’t this be something that I should not have to remind people of. The whole “You know that you are jeopardizing shooting yourself because you are overlooking some very basic concepts” conversation gets very old, very quickly.

Top Three Overlooked Liabilities

Loose Garments Around Your Holster

This is by far the most commonly overlooked liability by the students. It feels as if I could spend an entire course reminding people to tuck in their loose garments around their holster. Getting a loose garment caught inside of the trigger guard while reholstering will but an unexpected hole in you. Why would you risk such a thing over something so simple as keeping your under garment tucked in tight and your over garment clear of the holster?  All of my under garments tuck in a good 12” past my belt line to insure that that do not come untucked and end up in my holster or trigger guard.  When I reholster it is seen as an administrative process that is all geared toward a “Don’t shoot yourself stupid” mindset. My over garment is cleared completely before any reholstering is done. I have zero concern for speed or coolness factor. If I need to look, I look, because it is just administrative. It is my opinion that every time you head back to ammo up, you should take a look at your garments around your holster. A couple of seconds of cheap insurance mitigates your risks substantially. If your under garment is coming untucked, tuck it in. Furthermore, take that lesson to heart, go home and find a garment that will not come untucked. It is not brain surgery or rocket science, it is basic common sense! This is something that an advanced instructor should not have to point out!

 

Why do under garments come untucked?

They come untucked because of the “elbow up” portion of the draw stroke and the pivoting during “the turret of the tank” concept.  “A” shirts and Under Armor type garments work very well for me. They are tight, tuck in deep, and deal with the manipulation of the shoulder, without coming untucked.

Dress around your gun and test your garments before you show up in a course.

An instructor should not have to show you how to dress.

Untested Gear Inside of a Course

When you show up for an advanced course, it is all about the skill sets and the corresponding mental aspect of the fight that are being taught. Your entire focus should be on these two things. Heck that is what you paid for, right? This is not the place to try out untested gear! This is not the place to “try this and try that!” This is not the place to experiment! This is the place that you show up with what you know best and put it to use inside of the framework of the course.  It is my opinion that you should plan on working with the one set up that you know the best, plan on working one gun, one holster, and one ammo supply method that you know the best. This is not the place to try out four different guns or four different set ups. You are there to learn what is being taught. Take that knowledge home and dry practice with all of your other gear. Inside of a course, where the learning curve is steep, concentrate on the course…..not your gear. Some of the most unsuccessful students that I have ever had were hardware focused and not software focused. While everyone else progressed rapidly…..they struggled to keep up. While struggling to keep up, their safety levels suffered. An advanced course is a challenge all in itself. Do not make a difficult and dangerous endeavor even more so because you are hardware focused.

Some will read this and think that it is contradictory to the whole “Dual Appendix” form of training inside of SI’s most advanced courses. That would be a huge misconception! It has been written out many times to not show up in an advanced course expecting to go dual appendix unless you are absolutely ready for this type of training. These courses are not where you learn to go dual appendix, they are designed to take your advanced skill levels to the next level. You learn to go dual appendix in your dry practice, your airsoft training, and inside of the basic courses. If you are not ready to hit the ground running, do not participate in these advanced applications. Just because some students in the course have prepared themselves appropriately, does not mean that you have. And if you have not prepared yourself appropriately, deal with that reality and learn what you can without needless putting yourself at risk by biting off more than you can chew.

Having the intellect to say to yourself “I am not ready for that” is a positive trait. SI will never force you to do something that you are not comfortable with. We want to challenge our advanced student base, but even more so, we want you to go home with the same number of holes that you showed up with.

Watch for and get rid of any gear that might impede with your draw stroke. There should be nothing above your holster that could cause a snag on the gun or the hands. Take the lessons that we learned about chest rigs and CCW holsters and apply the same concepts across the board.

 

Untested Skill Sets Inside of a Course

The last topic touched on this issue. It is very common to learn untested skill sets inside of a course. The vast majority of the time this is not a safety issue. The vast majority of time that is perfectly ok and acceptable. It is when we get to the advanced training and the increase safety concerns that these issues need to be looked at more closely. This is the point where we (the instructors) need honesty from our student base. This is the point that we need the student to be honest with themselves and with us on what they are truly and safely capable of.

Everything that we learn should be run through a natural progression. This natural progression is what keeps us safe and what keeps us from biting off more than we can chew. Let’s look at one single skill set and take a look at the progression that should be involved to reach the advanced levels of the skill set. Let’s look at “Completely Ambidextrous” with the handgun skill sets. This is not something that you look at for a couple of minutes and then plan on jumping into an advanced SI handgun course to put into action.  That would be very unwise for everyone involved. Even if you are an advanced student, there are skill sets that require you to step back to the basics, to nail down the skills that will allow you to be safe. I went through a very specific progression to be at the point that I am comfortable with my skill level, to head into completely ambidextrous shooting with a handgun.

Here is what I would recommend.

Step back to the basics and run a “secondary hand” Defensive Pistol Skills course. Run the whole two day course with your off hand. All manipulations, all draw strokes, and all shooting with your secondary hand. Take those skill sets and bring them home and dry practice them until you have it down cold. Have the ability to run your secondary hand at, at least 80% of your primary hand. Take a “secondary hand” Close Range Gunfighting course and do the same thing, including the dry practice. Only then, after you have put in the time, step into an advanced course that runs dual appendix. We all need to recognize that it is secondary hand draw stroke and the uneducated secondary hand trigger finger that makes the dual appendix training a very high skill level skill set and high safety risk.

Put in the work and never bite off more than you can chew!

Inside of an advanced course is not the place to try to figure this all out!

Top Two Bad Habits

 Slamming Your Gun Back Into Your Holster

In the past, I have covered in depth my concerns with this epidemic.

I've trained a lot of places and proportionally Suarez International students are the most squared away group of students I've ever worked with. But even some the very best have ingrained slamming their guns into their holster.

Ingrained "slamming your gun into the holster" is not something that I can fix in two days.

The solution to the problem is not going to come out of taking a course with an instructor. The only solution has to be made by the person that has ingrained such a reckless and dangerous habit, to reprogram not just the way that they reholster, but to reprogram the way that they think.

The slamming of the gun into the holster comes across like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. It's like the final emphasis put on something explosive.

The thing is that our explosiveness of the draw stroke, our movement, and our fast and accurate hits needs to be separated from the reholstering process. The "reluctant reholstering" process begins with our after action drills. We need to ingrain the fact that we pulled our guns out for a reason, in defense of life. We need to take that thinking and realize that you never want to reholster until you know for a fact that the confrontation is over. "Is he down?" "Did it work?" "Does he have any friends?" "How’s my 6:00?" "How’s my ammo?" "How am I?"

"Is this really over?"

This process allows us to change gears from the explosiveness of our initial response, to the slow, methodical, administrative act of reholstering the gun safely.

Let me make this clear. I am reminding myself just as much as I am reminding everyone else. As an instructor, when I am giving demo's, it is possible to think so much about the technique that I am teaching that I do not run through the after action drills as much as I should. But it is the after action drills and the mental aspect attached to them that allows for the down shifting the will dramatically cut down on the desire to slam that gun back into your holster.

IMHO, there is no way to over stress the dangers of slamming your gun back into your holster.

Murphy is a ruthless bastard. He will jump up and pound you mercilessly if you are not careful. I do not care if you have slammed your gun in the holster one hundred thousand times without a problem......eventually Murphy will take his pound of flesh!

 

Non-Robust Trigger Finger Index

This is my new pet peeve and the real catalyst for this article.

I am seeing all kinds of trigger finger indexes that would be considered all well and good inside of “The Four Rules.” But once again, this is not about target shooting holes into pieces of paper…..this is about preparing for a fight! How robust your trigger finger placement needs to be during target shooting is completely different from how robust it needs to be inside of the reality of the fight. This in turn, is simply not good enough for advanced fight focused training.

It is my opinion that your trigger finger should be indexed completely straight and up as high and possible/reasonable on the frame/slide.

If the trigger finger is straight, it is less likely to be effected by any sort of impact, jolt or jostle.

If the trigger finger index is up as high as possible/reasonable, this leaves us a larger “margin of error” if the gun is snagged on something during the draw stroke. This snagging, which could be due to an unwise gear choice or a Murphy moment on your garments, can lead to the gun feeling as if it is going to be ripped out of the hand. At speed, the gun feeling like it is being ripped out of the hand will probably lead to a convulsive gripping/tightening of the gun hand which can lead to a non-robust indexed trigger finger ending up inside of the trigger guard and on the trigger.  

Even something as simple as a grasp reflex, out of the startled response, can allow one to blow right through a non-robust trigger finger index.

This is something that I lecture on at the start of every course. But it is also a habit that I will simply not be able to reprogram out of an advanced student inside of an advanced course. The proper robust trigger finger index is something that needs to be ingrained before the student ever arrives inside of an advanced course. The more advanced the training is, the more important a robust index is. When we are talking about speed of the draw stroke, speed of the movement, versatile drawing/shooting positions, and possible awkward drawing/shooting positions we need to make sure that we are mitigating our risks. One of the very best things that you can do for yourself is to ingrain a robust trigger finger placement.  

As it stands, I have not “sent anyone packing” from inside of my courses. But this one issue (robust trigger finger index) may change that very soon. If you think I am making sense here, great! Show me your robust trigger finger index inside my courses. If you strongly disagree and plan to show up to one of my courses with a non-robust trigger finger index, please do not be surprise if I send you packing.

Remember, shooting yourself affects more people than just you!

If your overlooked liabilities and bad habits look as if they might affect Suarez International, my other students, or myself……I will ask you to leave.

This is the optimal trigger finger index that Suarez International  is now looking for.

 

Discuss this here

Find Roger's schedule here

 

 

 

The Fighting AR15

-Jon Payne, Suarez International Tier 1 Staff Instructor

The AR15/M4 Carbine has become a fixture in America today. I dare say the AR is more popular now than ever and with good reason. The M4 is a light handy carbine and is the current rifle of our US Fighting Men. Rifles used by the US Military and Law Enforcement usually find favor with the American public.

A peculiar thing tends to occur when a firearm become "popular". Greed begins to set in and manufacturers begin to jump on the bandwagon to make a few bucks. Some of these companies cut corners here and there, I have no issues with making money, but if you're the one spending the money you're best off spending it wisely. Buy once, Cry once...I didn't invent the saying, but I sure do use it often. When it comes to buying an M4/AR 15 I hope I can give you some ideas on how you can spend wisely.

Building a gun from an “AR kit” can be an option. Unless you have experience building firearms or you are an armorer, building your own will be an interesting journey. When you consider that you are building something that will be producing a controlled explosion just in front of your face, building your own rifle can be a risky proposition unless you are skilled and can follow detailed instruction. If you’re not up to the task, you can seek out companies that build rifles that are a known quantity. By no means am I saying not to build your own, just do your homework first.

I have worked on AR's for the USAF as a CATM (Combat Arms Training and Maintenance) Instructor and I have owned and used AR's that cost a variety of dollar amounts across the globe and were at various levels of quality. If you buy a firearm from a reputable manufacturer or retailer and you have problems with the weapon, it can be returned for repair, replacement, or sometimes a complete refund. Pick a rifle from a commercial manufacturer and you have those options. When you buy from a trusted retailer you have those options.

Those are good options to have, especially if you are new to owning ARs. Of the lower-priced/lower-end ARs, I put DPMS, Del-Ton, and Bushmaster in the same category. They aren't the least expensive and but they definitely aren't the most expensive. You can find a very serviceable recreational rifle from one of these companies. I’ve used weapons from all three companies and have very good results on the square range. There is one difference between the DPMS/Del-Ton and the Bushmaster.

The Bushmaster has a chrome lined bore. If you're going to shoot in tropical/saltwater environments, shoot tracers, and clean your barrel infrequently this is important. However, if you clean your barrel after each shooting session and take care of it, a non-lined barrel will last just fine. There is no doubt the chrome lined bore is harder, very corrosion resistant, and it’s a good option to have. It’s just not a deal breaker for me with an entry level AR. The DPMS and Del-Ton aren’t that different from the Bushmaster with the exception of the chrome lined bore. If any gun dealer tells you the AR’s I just wrote about are just as good as the LMT, BCM, Colt, etc., they are not! They may perform as well on the range, but the costs cuts come from somewhere don’t they?

The more expensive high-end rifles are more expensive for a reason and the lower-end rifles are not just as good, but that does not mean they are not useable. The higher end maker’s parts are individually tested instead of being selected from a batch and the rifles generally come with more features. When you buy a Tier 1 AR you’re dealing with a known quantity and good performance is more of an expectation than a matter of luck. Don’t get the impression I’m trying to be an AR snob; I’ve used a DPMS as a patrol rifle and training rifle for three years. It has held up well, but there are many others who have not had the same experience with the same brand. With a high-end rifle there are fewer unknowns so to speak.

These high-end rifles are not “must buys” and I would never say you have to own one of them, because you can get into the AR game for less money and spend the difference in ammo and training before you upgrade to a higher end rifle, but again, look at what the purpose of your rifle is going to be and buy accordingly. In America, we tend to be more gear driven than skill driven. All the cool guy gun gear on your high dollar AR won’t make you a better shooter, but a good shooter can benefit from a top end rifle and certain accessories.

You need to take your AR out and shoot it. By shooting it and practicing your Rifle Marksmanship Fundamentals you can start thinking about optimizing your rifle for you. My training partner runs his AR box stock. No red dot sight, no scope, just straight irons with the carrying handle that came from the factory. He has decided to go with an ACOG when he’s ready to put optics on his rifle, but for now he is satisfied in becoming the best rifleman he can be with a stock rifle. I tend to think the same way, but there are some advantages to utilizing today’s technology.

In my opinion, holographic sights are the best thing since sliced bread. The good ones are exceptional and the cheap copies are junk. If you go with Aimpoint, Trijicon, or Eotech, you won’t be disappointed. Keep air soft junk off your fighting rifle. The awesome thing about a holographic sight is you go from having three things to line up to sight in a target to just one. When using iron sights you have to align the rear sight with the front sight and then center them on the target. With the holographic sights, when zeroed, you just superimpose the dot on your target. It’s fast and it’s simple. The only problem is anything man-made can fail even holographic sights. That’s why every rifle I own has Back up Iron Sights (BUIS).

Again, fundamentals are everything. You have to be able to use iron sights to be a good rifleman. If your holographic sight goes down you’ll need irons to get you back in the fight. The BUIS I use is made by GG&G and it is the flip up type. There are several makers of good back up sights. Again, steer clear of junk. Buy good quality kit and know it will serve its intended purpose. Make sure you zero your BUIS. Sights are important on a rifle whether they be optics or irons, but what about the trigger?

A service trigger in an AR15 is not the best target trigger. A match trigger is not the best service trigger. I like the Rock River Single Stage Match Trigger for target use, but for a carry rifle I use a stock trigger. If you shoot a stock trigger enough you might be surprised at how well it slicks itself up. On one of my rifles I’ve been accused of having a trigger job done, but that’s what about 2500 rounds will do for your trigger along with allot of dry practice.

Now you have some information on how to break into the AR scene without breaking the bank. Buy quality, stay away from cheap components, and get good solid training. Follow those simple rules and you can reach your and your rifle’s full potential.

 

AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting September 10-11, 2011 with Don Robison and Jon Payne

TSD - GUERRILLA SNIPER BAG

 
TSD - GUERRILLA SNIPER BAG

 

The Guerrilla Sniper bag was purpose designed by one of our students currently deployed as a sniper.  It was designed to serve as a "killer's office" of sorts, offering the positioned sniper the ability to access all the tools he needs to make the shot. 

  

The bag is purpose engineered to be used as a shooting rest, with a special forearm guide intended to hold the rifle steady, regardless of the angle of the support surface, for those critical shots. 

That forearm guide, and the ground-facing portion of the bag, are fitted with rough rubberized material to hold the bag in position, and to better hold the rifle steady during firing. 

 

It is low in profile, but yet high enough to allow use with both bolt action rifles as well as magazine fed semi auto rifles such as FALs, AR-10s, and M14s.  While the bag can be carried anywhere, the focus and scope of the bag is to provide the sniper with an easy to carry and deploy kit, and not necessarily to fit into a "gray" social environment.

 

On either side of the shooting rest there are pockets that are sized to contain two (2) 20 round boxes of ammunition, or metal box magazines.  These pockets are accessible from the right side or the left side (top/bottom) while maintaining a shooting position.  Alternatively these pockets can be used for the positioning of rangefinders, wind meters, GPS or other mission essentials.

 

There are molle attachments through out, and several internal dividers, allowing the sniper to custom rig his bag for any personal or mission needs. The entire bag comes with a shoulder strap allowing a quick donning or ditching as necessary, and can be equipped with any water/hydration bladder as desired.

 

 Dimensions are 9x7x17 inches.

 

ONLY $89.99   READY TO SHIP

 

 

ORDER IT HERE

AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting - After Action Report

Over Memorial Day weekend I attended Randy Harris' AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting class. This will be is a bit different from my usual after action reviews. I was not actually a student in this class. Instead, Randy was nice enough to let me sit in as an 'Assistant Instructor', which essentially meant that I watched Randy teach the class, helped run the firing line, demoed stuff, and offered the occasional comment from the peanut gallery.

Why spend a weekend over in Chattanooga doing this? Well, back in February I taught a Fighting Rifle Skills class and one of the students brought an AR. I'm mainly an AK guy, but I'd prepared for this eventuality: I watched the AR-15 Rifle Gunfighting DVD, read up on SI doctrine for running the AR, etc. I think I did a pretty good job telling the student how to run his rifle, but I could have done better, particularly when it came to demonstrating some of the AR specific manipulations. The best way I can describe it is that I knew this stuff in my head, but not in my hands. 

The first step in improving my ability to do this was to get myself an AR, so I could get some hands on experience. I got the gun put together about a month ago, did dry work with it, and shot it for about half the exercises in Roger Phillips' Long Gun Point Shooting Progressions class the previous weekend. 

This hands on experience has certainly helped (and I'll continue to get more of it as time goes on). As I was putting the finishing touches on my new rifle, I noticed Randy's class on the SI schedule. He knows a lot more about the AR than I do (he bought an M16 before he bought his first car), and I figured seeing how he taught students to use it would be quite helpful. 

I brought my new AR, a BCM upper with a lightweight barrel and midlength gas system on a Palmetto State Armory lower with a Sully stock. It's got Magpul handguards, a Daniel Defense fixed rear sight, and an EOTech on a LaRue mount. The latest additions have been a flashlight mount for a Surefire G2 on the front sight post and a set of nice Suarez International logo decals. I am really happy with how this gun turned out. I’m still and AK guy, but this rifle is tempting. The gun was fed with PMAGs. I brought my Sneakybag, but ended up just using one of Dale Fricke's kydex mag carriers and a belt mounted dump pouch (either EMDOM or Maxpedition Rolly Polly).

On the pistol end of things, I brought my Glock 17 with a new RMR on it. This is actually the first time I've used the RMRed pistol as a carry gun. It rides (very nicely, I might add) in a Dale Fricke Seraphim holster.

This was a fairly big class. There were twelve students, all told. They all brought ARs. One was in 7.62x39mm, but all the others were in 5.56mm. The majority was using iron sights, but there was a strong minority of red dots (Aimpoint and EOTech) and one magnified optic. Some rifles started out with a lot of stuff bolted to them. One began the first day with a flashlight, green laser, bipod, and a vertical fore grip (after the first round of dry drills, these accessories started disappearing).

There was quite a bit of variety in support gear. We had sneakybags, chest rigs, tactical vests, a plate carrier (sans plates), belt rigs, and one student who just fed his AR out of the pockets of his jeans.

Glock was the most common pistol, with a smattering of XDs and 1911s. Most folks ran with a pistol on the belt, but there were a few with thigh holsters. Several people had some rather unusual pistol carry methods, including a cross draw holster on a vest, and two who carried their pistols inside their shoulder bags.

Saturday

The class started off with the usual safety briefing. Randy explained the four rules and how we would run the range. He went over the medical plan and what to do in the event someone got shot. 

With that out of the way, we began with a lecture on the history of the AR platform. This sort of thing could be a little boring, but Randy was able to provide lots of visual (and tactile) aids from his extensive AR collection. There were also a couple of students with some old school rifles that helped illustrate the early years of AR design. One had a three prong flash hider (pre-birdcage) and both lacked the forward assist and had slab sided magwell (without any ridge around the mag release button). From this starting point he used his extensive knowledge of the AR's history and various examples to take us through the development of the gun to the modern day. 

The AR does have something of a mixed reputation, and we talked about some of these alleged issues. During recent conflicts, the AR has acquired a reputation for poor terminal performance. Randy pointed out that the two primary culprits in this: the adoption of the 62 grain green tip round and the widespread issue of shorter barreled guns took place during a time period (the '80s and '90s) where we weren't shooting a lot of people. As citizens we can choose more effective ammo, we are generally forced to use somewhat longer barrels, and we don't tend to be taking real long shots. 

The other issue ARs often get knocked on is reliability. A lot of this is operator induced, usually either insufficient (or no) lubrication. An AR will not run bone dry, and it needs to be cleaned occasionally. On a well lubed and reasonably clean rifle, the usual mechanical culprits are a bad extractor spring or bad magazines. The extractor issue can be mitigated with newer, more powerful extractor spring with a D-ring around it. With mags, you can either buy newer mags, or replace the followers on old mags with newer, better ones. Randy demonstrated this by replacing a black follower in an old mag with the anti-tilt green one during the lecture. The other thing you can do with mags is to identify and get rid of your bad magazines. If you keep your gun well lubed and relatively clean, have a good extractor setup and good mags, it will run much more reliably than many people will believe.

We talked about the AR's different controls: the sights, trigger, safety, mag release, charging handle, and bolt release (we pretty much ignored the forward assist). Some of these are pretty self-explanatory (sights, trigger) but others require some education. One of the things that makes running an AR different is that there are two different controls for manipulating the bolt: the charging handle and the bolt release. On an AK (or most other military rifles for that matter) you do all the bolt manipulation using the charging handle. On the AR, you need to know when to use the charging handle and when to use the bolt release. Basically the charging handle is for loading and malfunction clearance, while the bolt release is for reloads. Using the charging handle for everything is slower, less reliable, and risks damage to a somewhat fragile part. 

The other point about the ARs controls is that they aren't ambidextrous (at least not in the stock configuration). SI places great stock in being able to run the rifle on either side, so you need to be able to operate all of these with either hand. Right handed, the mag release is run with your index finger. With the rifle on the left side, you use your thumb of your right hand as you grab the mag out of the rifle. On the right side, the left thumb hits the bolt release. On the left, if your fingers are long enough you can hit the bolt release paddle with your index finger. If they're shorter, you can 'choke the chicken' and reach around the front of the magwell and slap the bolt release with your fingers. Right handed, you can operate the charging handle by hooking it with your left index finger. On the left side, you can reach under and hook it with your right thumb. In either case, just hooking the left side of the charging handle (where the latch is) is faster than taking the stock off your shoulder and grabbing both sides of the t-handle.

Randy had the students empty their rifles and divest themselves of any loaded magazines. Thus denuded of any live ammunition, we started with some dry practice. First up was simply mounting the rifle to the shoulder with the sights in line with your eye and pressing the trigger to the rear. We moved on to the reload, and had the students change empty magazines in their rifles. Then, in their first taste of SI doctrine, Randy had the students switch to their support side and do the reload with the gun on that hand. It was immediately obvious that many people's support gear was not really set up for support side reloads. Many also had difficulty with a lack of a good place to put 'expended' magazines in either the primary or support sides. SI is not a fan of dropping expended mags as a default. 

Moving on to some position work, Randy had me demonstrate kneeling and prone, and had the host of this class, who has taken lots of Randy's rifle classes, show SBU, urban, and modified (Spetsnaz) prone. Then Randy had the students practice tracking him while prone and seeing how they had to shift positions to address potential threats in different directions.

Randy continued the dry work by doing mag changes on the move. Everyone lined up abreast and moved down the road, doing three mag changes. They did this at a walk a few times, then stepped it up to a jog. The first few times there were a lot of dropped mags, but these diminished as students got more experience. Then, of course, we switched shoulders and did the same from the support side.

Next up was the slalom drill. The students lined up about three yards apart, and one at a time they slalomed down the line, treating each student as either a right or left handed corner, switching shoulders each time. 

While this dry work was just the first part of the first day, it really encapsulated the SI philosophy: everything we do we want to be able to do ambidextrously and on the move.

After lunch, we moved out to the range and worked on zeroing everyone's rifles. We shot prone from 50 yards. Most folks were either right on or pretty close, but there were some exceptions. One student had a brand new EOTech that he'd never sighted in, and it was shooting way low. We had to dial it up around 65 clicks to get it on target. Another students iron sights were so far off he was off the paper entirely. Randy took his rifle while I ran the line and spotted and we got it dialed in after some major adjustments. While he was doing this, he doubled a couple of times. He eventually concluded that if you didn't fly your finger off the trigger with each shot and instead tried to properly reset it, the rifle would double more often than not. 

Once all the rifles were pretty well zeroed, we moved on to some snap shooting. Shoulder the rifle, make any small sight adjustments you need to get the sights lined up and on target, and press the trigger. The better your mount is, the fewer adjustments you need and the quicker you can press the shot, so a solid mount is an important skill. At reasonable ranges with the right skills, you can press the trigger as soon as the rifle hits the shoulder. After doing this from low ready, Randy had me demonstrate the SI ready positions (contact ready, close contact ready, Sul, patrol ready, port arms, and high noon ready) then proceeded to practice mounting the gun and making snap shots from all of them.

Next up Randy introduced the "caveman EOTech". This is a method of point shooting the rifle, similar to the metal on meat method for pistols. You basically look over the rear sight, put the front sight tower of the rifle on the target, and press the trigger. If the target appears larger than the sight tower, you're probably going to hit. For the portion of the class with optics, we talked about looking over the optic and using the top of the sight housing for your caveman EOTech. We did a fair bit of shooting like this to get people used to the concept. 

Randy also talked about mechanical sight offset. The AR's sights are 2.5 inches above the bore, so at close range the bullet will hit low. If you're trying to shoot a guy in the chest, it’s not really an issue. If you're trying to shoot him in the eye, and your daughter’s head is right under that eye, you need to take this into consideration. Randy had the students shoot at a small dot on the target's head and see how low their bullets hit, then had them compensate for this and try to put the rounds right through the dot. There are two methods. One is simply to aim about two inches high. The other is to get an alternate sight picture with your irons, with the front post up above the rear aperture. With a little practice, everyone was able to get very precise hits on the dot. 

Continuing our emphasis on ambidextrous shooting, we did some more shoulder transfer drills, this time shooting it live. Fire two shots from the strong side, do a partial transfer (move the butt of the rifle to the other shoulder but keep the primary hand on the firing grip and the support hand on the magwell) and fire two shots, switch the hands and fire two shots, do a partial transfer back to the primary shoulder and fire two shots, then switch the hands and fire two more.

Our last major drill of the day was to practice against multiple adversaries. We split the class in two and I ran one line while Randy ran the other. Each line had three targets and one student at a time would engage them. We started with firing at each target three times each, then switched to shooting them once each, then twice each. This got students used to transitioning from target to target and taught them that shooting them once each is going to be faster than hosing each target down with a burst. 

To wrap things up, Randy talked about malfunctions. Because of its design, the AR is subject to some rather . . . interesting . . . malfunctions. Cartridges or empty cases can end up in odd places (like between the bolt and the charging handle) where they are rather hard to get out. Given the variety of problems that can crop up, many people like to do diagnostic malfunction clearance: figure out what's wrong and perform some remedial action specifically designed to remedy that problem. We're not really a fan of that at SI, regardless of the platform. It's quicker and easier to deep the diagnosis to a minimum and apply a general solution that will fix a broad range of problems. We can't quite get to completely non-diagnostic malfunction clearance the way we do on an AK (if it stops working, reload it). However, we can keep diagnosis to a minimum. We divide malfunctions, and our actions to clear them into two categories: dead trigger and mush trigger. The dead trigger goes click, and you get nothing. The mush trigger doesn't even go click. The difference between the two is if the gun goes click (the hammer falling) you know that must be in battery. If the hammer won't even fall, the bolt is probably not all the way forward. 

If you get a click, it means that you either have a dud round, or there's nothing in the chamber. The most common reason there's nothing in the chamber is a failure to seat the mag completely. If the magazine is not all the way in the magwell, the bolt won't be able to strip the top round and drive it into the chamber. To fix either of these problems, we do the same as we do on a pistol: tap the bottom of the magazine and cycle the action. This insures the magazine is seated, gets a dud round in the chamber out (if there is one) and chambers a new round. Gun should be ready to go.

If you don't get a click and the trigger is just mushy, it means you have a failure to extract (the previous round is still in the chamber and the rifle is trying to drive another round in behind it), a failure to eject (commonly referred to as a stovepipe), a true double feed (two rounds trying to get in the chamber at the same time) or one of the AR's more complex malfunctions (most of which can be described as rounds somewhere in the mechanism where they shouldn't be). For all of these problems, step one is to get the mag out of the magwell. Depending on how stuck it is, you may be able to just rip it out, or you may have to lock the bolt back first to relive some pressure. Once the mag is out, the rounds causing the problem may fall out on their own, or you may have to coax them out by cycling the bolt or by hand. Once the gun is completely empty, insert a new magazine and cycle the bolt. If this is one of the more complex malfunctions, you may have to do some diagnosis at this point (and perhaps use your multitool to help get cases or cartridges out). 

Randy had demonstrated one other malfunction clearance technique earlier in the day (when we had an actual need for it). During the procedures above, you may run into a situation where a shell is stuck in the chamber so tight you can't even move the charging handle. This can often be solved by 'mortaring' the gun, though sometimes it will require a range rod to clear. If you have a collapsible stock, collapse it (otherwise you may break the pin that holds it in position). Then, while pulling the charging handle to the rear, drive the gun butt first into the ground (angled downrange, please). The sudden stop when it hits the ground should allow the inertia of the bolt to yank the stuck case out of the chamber and clear the malfunction. If it doesn't, you may need to bang it out with a range rod.

As it was getting a bit late, we held off on practical application of these procedures until tomorrow. Randy, several students, and I adjourned to a steakhouse for dinner and some excellent fellowship before turning in for the evening.

Sunday

We started out the day with a review of the material we covered yesterday, which evolved into a discussion of the context for civilian use of the AR. Unlike a pistol, we're probably not going to carry a rifle on our person all the time. A rifle lives in the closet or the trunk until a situation where you need it. Those situations are probably limited to home defense and SHTF scenarios. While Katrina is the default example for a SHTF situation these days, the tornados that hit the area where we were training about a month prior (much damage was visible on our drive to the range each day) provided a more immediate real world example. In these sorts of situations you might be glad to have something with a bit more reach than a pistol. Randy had a personal example of this. After the tornadoes, he some trouble getting home from work that day because the police closed off the road due to downed limbs and powerlines ahead. He was on the verge of walking the last half-mile into his subdivision when they opened up the roadblock. Now, he wouldn't have had to fight his way through half a mile of zombie cannibal looters, but I'm sure having a get-home bag, which included a rifle, probably made him feel a little better.

We moved out to the range and Randy started the students off with some dry practice in the various shooting positions. The first live drill exercised the different shooting positions from both shoulders. From 50 yards, the students shot five shots standing from their strong side, five shots kneeling, did a mag change, then did five shots prone. Then they switched to the support side shoulder and did five prone, another mag change, five kneeling, and five standing. Positions shooting from the support side shoulder and reloading while prone were clearly new to a lot of folks. I suggested that the students running shoulder bags swing their bag out in front of them when shooting prone. This makes mags a lot more accessible and even offers the possibility of using the bag to shoot off of (it's probably too low to put the forend on, but you can plunk the mag down on it for a bit more height).

After giving everyone some experience on the support side, Randy concentrated on strong side position shooting for the next few drills. They worked shooting standing from 50 yards, then kneeling, then prone. The shoulder bag users really liked swinging the bag up for the prone work.

One of the things that really differentiates SI is our emphasis on dynamic movement. We had been putting together the building blocks for this on the first day with the caveman EOTech and shoulder transfers. Now it was time to pull it all together and shoot on the move. As with most things, the first step is to do it dry: take three steps to the right, turn and transfer to the left shoulder, then take three steps to the left, turn and transfer to the right shoulder. Once everyone had it down (and everyone was doing it pretty much in unison so we didn’t have shooters bumping into each other) we did it live. Three shots as you take three steps to the right, then three shots as you take three steps to the left. As Randy emphasized, this is just a drill. You’re not going to pace back and forth in front of an adversary while shooting on the move. This is just a way of practicing shooting on the move and transferring the gun from shoulder to shoulder during movement. 

A more realistic application for these skills is shooting while getting off the X (GOTX). The “X” is where you were standing at the start of the fight, where the attacker expects you to be, and where all of the death and destruction he can muster is bearing down on. Standing there and shooting it out with him is like playing rock-em sock-em robots with guns. It’s not going to end well for you. It might not end well for him either, but which is more important to you: shooting the bad guy, or not getting shot yourself?

The way to avoid this is not to be standing on that X. We need to move, and move far enough and fast enough to change what the attacker sees so that he has to reorient himself and reacquire you as a target. In the meantime, we put a bunch of rounds into him so that he never gets that chance. The key here is to use the caveman EOTech skills we introduced on Saturday. These let you move much faster than you can if you’re intent on maintaining a traditional sight picture, yet they’re sufficiently accurate for shooting at the ranges where getting off the X is an appropriate response. 

This is all pretty easy if you’re going towards your strong side. Unfortunately, that won’t always be an option. If there’s a wall to your right when your fight comes, you better know how to get off the X to your left. This is where the shoulder transition comes in. You can do the partial transfer (moving the stock but not switching your hands) and get the first shot off almost as quickly as you can going to the right. After taking more than one or two steps, this is going to get more and more awkward, so it’s usually best to swap hands after the first shot. We ran this several times getting off the X to the right (our dominant side for all but one student) then did it several more times going to the left. After giving everyone their first taste of getting off the X, we broke for lunch. 

After lunch, Randy talked about the after action assessment. Plenty of people have gotten killed because they shoot the bad guy they see, then relax before the fight is really over. The guy you just shot may get back up or he may have friends. We need to remain aware, check for additional threats, and keep an eye on the guy(s) we just shot. Randy teaches this using the F.A.S.T. acronym (also known as the Wyatt protocol). This stands for Fight, Assess, Scan, and Take cover, Top off, Treat injuries, Talk to anyone who needs to be talked to. The Fight part of this is what we’d been working on the entire class so far. Assess means check out any attackers you shot at. Ask yourself “Did I hit him? Did it work?” Scan for any additional threats. Look left and right, moving your muzzle and eyes together in the contact ready position. There’s no sense looking with just your eyes and having to drive the gun to the target if you spot an additional attacker. Real life is not a square range where there are only targets in one direction, so you need to check behind you as well. This is where the Sul position comes in. Drop the muzzle down and you can turn around and safely look for threats behind you. The key here is to step forward when you turn, rather than pivoting in place or stepping backward. This will give you a little extra space between you and any potential adversary behind you. The various ‘T’s might not always be applicable to a situation, and the order they are performed in may vary. We want to get to a better position and Take cover if possible. Top off by performing a proactive reload to get your gun ready in case additional threats show up. Check yourself and your friends or loved ones for any injuries and Treat them if necessary (we do not advocate treating the attacker, he can fend for himself). By Talk to anyone who needs to be talked to, we mean calling 911, talking to witnesses, responding police officers, etc.

We ran the GOTX some more (just to the strong side this time) following it up with an after action assessment. One of the traps it’s easy to fall into is turning the scan a ‘tactical pirouette’. You swing from side to side then turn around, but you aren’t really looking, just going through the motions. To drive this point home, I made some silly faces or held up my knife during some of the scans, then asked folks what they saw.

Next up was transitioning to pistol. Transitioning to a pistol is much faster and simpler than reloading a rifle or clearing a malfunction. Most civilian rifle work is going to occur well within pistol range, and civilians generally can make the choice to carry a pistol in any circumstance when they’ve got a rifle on them, so this makes sense as a default when your gun doesn’t work. SI recommends a simple two-point sling and for most folks we recommend not tying yourself to your rifle. You may have to drop the rifle quickly when responding police officers show up, lest you get shot by the cops, and you may need to employ the rifle for home defense in situations where you don’t have time to climb into your nifty tactical sling. There are circumstances where being tied to your rifle makes sense, particularly if you may get blown up by a roadside bomb. It’s nice to have your rifle close at hand when you regain consciousness and the post-IED ambush starts. For those of us not operating in areas with an IED threat, not being tied to our rifle is generally the better choice.

One fellow in the class was running a one point sling that tied him to the gun, so all he had to do to transition is drop the rifle. If you’re not tied to the rifle, you’re going to have to do something with it when you transition. The method we teach is to bring the rifle up over your head and drop it so it hangs diagonally across your back. This gets the rifle out of your way, gives you two hands to access your pistol, and is reliable even at a dead run. For this to work properly, you need a long enough sling. Most folks showed up with their slings adjusted on the short side (especially folks who were used to using the sling as a shooting aid) but we were able to get everyone adjusted out long enough (though some were pretty marginal). 

We ran through this dry a bunch of times, until everyone was able to do it safely, without muzzle sweeping the next guy in line. Then we went live with it. Now some folks run transition drills with full magazines and have the student put the safety on before transitioning. There are two problems with this. First, if you are doing anything dynamic, there’s a good chance the safety could get knocked off on some piece of gear. Second, you’re building in a training scar. For any malfunction on an AR where you get a click instead of a bang, you won’t be able to engage the safety. You don’t want to be standing there in the middle of a gunfight with your transition disrupted because you can’t get the safety on like you do in training. Train like you fight. The way we do this is to have each student load a mag with two rounds. They chamber the first one so they’ve got one in the chamber and one in the mag. Randy emphasized that he wanted students to try to fire a burst of at least four shots. This fires the two rounds in the rifle and makes absolutely sure it was empty. It’s important to be absolutely sure you’ve shot the rifle dry and it’s safe to transition. This also simulates a real gunfight, where it will probably take several failed trigger presses before you realize the gun doesn’t work.

The first time we did this live, one student found his pistol wouldn’t shoot. I examined it and it turned out the bump pad on a new 1911 mag was preventing the magazine from going all the way in. Luckily he had several mags with a different bump pad on them that worked. 

A fair number of the people in this class were wearing thigh holsters. Many of them were adjusted way too low, closer to the knee than the hip. These shooters really had to stretch to reach their pistols. Thigh holsters should be run high enough that you can easily grasp the pistol’s grip. Closer to the hip is better. I could also tell which student had put a lot of time in practicing with his thigh rig and which students were new to this carry position. I think this is a pretty good argument for keeping the position of your pistol on your tactical rig as close as possible to your CCW rig. It’s one of the reasons I like running a shoulder bag so I can wear my actual EDC holster. I’m planning to go with a war belt for my more ‘tactical’ use rather than a chest rig for similar reasons. 

We’d talked about malfunctions on Saturday, now it was time to give students some hands on experience with them. We divided the students up into groups and set out four rifles. While the student faced uprange, the instructors would set up four different malfunctions (an empty chamber, unseated magazine, stovepipe, and a failure to eject). The student had to turn around and fix each rifle in turn. Everyone managed to fix all the malfunctions and get the rifles going, but several people went to removing the magazine and reloading the rifle on malfunctions that could have been fixed with a simple tap-rack. Another problem occurred when a student clearing a double feed locked the bolt back to make it easier to get the mag out. He didn’t send the bolt forward until after he inserted a new mag, so it just rammed the top round from the mag into the back of the round that was still in the chamber. You’ve got to make sure to cycle the bolt and get everything out of the gun on these kinds of malfunctions.

The last drill of the day was the combat rundown. We ran this drill one student at a time. They started at 100 yards with 25 rounds in their rifle. First, they dropped prone for their first shot. They moved up to 75 and shot from sitting behind a barrel, then to 50 and shot kneeling from behind a tree, then standing at 25 yards from behind a barricade, then moved out from cover, fired their last five shots on the move, then transitioned to pistol and put five more in the target from about five yards. As Randy pointed out, this is just a drill. Assaulting over open ground like this by yourself would be suicide. It gives you a chance to practice moving with the rifle and getting in and out of different positions. It’s also a big, fun drill to cap things off with. Visually impressive too; I had several students ask me to take pictures while they ran it. Hopefully some of them will be willing to post some of them in this thread.

We finished up by presenting the certificates and asking what the students thought of the class. Everyone seemed pretty happy with it. The number one request was for cooler weather.

Conclusions

The AR often gets knocked for its reliability, but I was favorably impressed with how well most of these rifles ran. There were only two that gave significant problems. One was the AR in 7.62x39mm. This gun had some major magazine issues. When you turn a mag over, you shouldn’t have four or five rounds pour out. The problem was the follower was getting hung up on the transition between the curved portion and the straight portion of the magazine. The AR just wasn’t designed for such a tapered cartridge. The 7.62x39mm wants to feed through nice, curved magazines like the AK uses. When you try to run it through a mag that has a straight section to fit in the AR magwell, it’s going to cause issues. This gun also suffered quite a few stuck cases, some of which had to be beaten out with a range rod. During the transition drills, the student with this rifle finally got so frustrated with it he gave up and switched to his AK. That, I think, is the ideal solution. If you want to shoot 7.62x39mm, use a rifle designed for it.

The other troublesome rifle was one shooting Tula ammo. Hearing this, one might immediately jump on the “don’t shoot steel case in your AR” bandwagon, but none of the problems he had were extraction or chambering related issues you would expect if the case material was the problem. Instead, he was getting failures to fire. The firing pin strikes in the primers were nice and deep, so this was probably just a bad batch of primers. This gun also had a hammer pin start to walk out during the second day. Randy hammered it back in.

Other than these two guns, almost all the malfunctions we saw were operator induced. Failing to fully seat the magazine was the most common. We even had a discussion of whether not having a magazine in the gun when you started the drill counted as a malfunction (consensus was no).

Aside from the fact that some calibers don’t work in ARs, the most obvious learning point from the class was some of the gear issues. This is not intended as a criticisim of any of the students. Part of the reason to come to this class is to test how well your gear works. I’m not trying to knock anyone here, just to draw out some lessons for future students.

Suarez International is not gear focused. Yes, SI sells gear though One Source Tactical, but we aren’t going to tell you, “you must have this doohickey on your rifle or you will die!” We won’t look at you askance if your dump pouch isn’t the brand that OST sells. While we don’t care what brand of gear you bring, over the years we’ve found some setups work better than others.

Most folks brought rifles that worked pretty well. The biggest problem was having too much stuff bolted to your gun, but that’s easy to fix at the class with a screwdriver or hex wrench. A sling is pretty much mandatory, an optic is a nice addition, and maybe a flashlight if this is a home-defense gun. That’s about it.

The most common piece of additional equipment on the rifles in this class was the vertical foregrip. At SI we’re big advocates of the floating support hand. Basically, your support hand moves in and out depending on what you’re doing at the time. A VFG (or the MagPul AFG) tends to inhibit this. While there’s a bit of physical aspect to this, preventing you from sliding your hand easily forward and back, it seems to be as much mental as physical. A VFG tends to glue the support hand in one particular spot, even if that’s not the best spot for that hand at the time. Where this is really evident is during shoulder transfers. Hands stay on the VFG even if it’s a really long stretch, when it would be much easier to just grab the magwell instead.

The most troublesome accessory was a magnified optic with a very small field of view mounted on top of a carry handle. For what we’re doing, iron sights or a red dot are really much more useful than a magnified optic, especially one over four power. The top of the carry handle is a pretty lousy place to mount any sort of optic, as its way too high for any sort of reasonable cheek weld. 

Another issue we ran into on some rifles was the stock length. The A2 stock, in particular, is really too long for the kind of shooting and manipulations we do. The A1 stock is workable, and a collapsible stock not extended all the way is pretty good. I got some interest on the Sully stock on my AR, which (in the configuration I have) is just about the right length.

I discussed slings earlier. There’s really no need to go for anything fancy here, as long as it’s long enough. Something like the Saiga sling OST sells, which is basically six feet of webbing and a couple of buckles works fine. A good test to see if your sling is long enough is to loop it behind your neck and hold the rifle horizontally across your chest. If the gun hangs at around belly button level the sling is about right

As far as support gear goes, the key is to have mags available to both hands, for doing reloads on the support side shoulder. A shoulder bag works for this because you can swing it around and access mags with your strong hand. Chest rigs place the mags where they’re easily accessible to both hands. On a belt rig, put one mag carrier on the strong side for support shoulder reloads. You also need a way to stow expended mags. Putting them back into mag pouches is far from ideal, both because it’s generally difficult, and because of the danger of grabbing an expended mag when you wanted a new one. If you’re using a shoulder bag, it works pretty well as a dump pouch (again, swing it around for the support side reload. With chest or belt rigs, a dump pouch of some sort is best. One solution to the ambidexterity problem is to put the dump pouch in the 6 o’clock position, accessible to both hands. Another solution with a chest rig is to tuck the expended mag behind the chest panel until you have a chance to move it to the dump pouch.

I certainly got a lot out of helping Randy teach the class. It was great to see how someone who really knows the platform taught it. Just as important, I got to see how a fairly big, diverse group of students responded to that instruction. What worked well, what things tripped them up, etc. I hope they learned half as much from me as I did from them. I'd like to thank Randy for letting me sit in on this excellent class. I'd highly recommend AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting and anything else Randy teaches.

Bandoleers Are Back!!!

TSD Magazine Bandoleer Kit

The magazine bandoleer has been around as long as the magazine-fed rifle itself. Inspired by the Vietnam era bandoleer for the 20 round M16 magazines, this modern day version is suitable for any magazine for any rifle. Although we picture it with the top of the line AK30s, you can use it with your M4, FAL, HK, or M1A just as easily. Made out of modern tan colored cordura nylon materials it will last for a very long time.

$19.99

ORDER HERE

Choosing Optics For Your "Assault" Rifle

In the beginning there were iron sights. These did pretty well, and every rifleman should know how to use iron sights, but as the eyes age, often the ability to align those two tiny pieces of metal and then having achieved that, superimpose them on a distant point, becomes more and more difficult to do with certainty.

Twenty years ago there were few options, but as I have said it is 2011 and not 1911. Just as we send emails and not letters, and carry smart phones to call our friends rather than use pay phones, the landscape of sighting options has changed dramatically in the last few years. Today we have many more effective options to choose from. But the choice has to be made wisely in order to acheive the goal.  Again...the goal is simple.  Hit what you want to hit within the limits of your weapon system.  That weapon system will have limits based on design, cartridge and shootability.  With an assault rifle, the goal should be to hit an enemy in the head inside of 100 yards and in the body out to 300 yards.  Don't laugh...it is easy once you have received the correct training. In fact, reaching out past that is very doable as well given the limits of a cartridge. So lets look at how do make this happen with the various sighting options available today.

First, you should know and be able to use the iron sights on the rifle. At least...know what you and your eyes can really do with them. There are two things that need to be done with the sights which any rifle student learns on the first day of class. Sadly...not every rifle school teaches rifle skills.

The sights must be aligned. Since I do most of my work with Kalashnikovs, I will focus on the AK sights. Use them just like you use the sights on your handgun. "Equal light, equal height" as they say.

Once that alignment is visually established, the whole package must be moved onto the desired target. You see it is not just being able to see the sights...you must be able to see them in relation to the target and index them in a way that those sights DO NOT cover up the target itself. The ability to do that will get you hits, while the inability to do that will make you miss. if your sights appear bigger than the target you wish to hit, you will not be able to  index them properly on that target and whether you hit or not will be a matter of happenstance and not design.  One mistaken solution has been the use of the Big Dot sights on AK rifles. The only thing I can say to a student that has been sold these is to get rid of them ASAP. They turn a 300 yard rifle into a 30 yard gun. Another mistaken solution has been to open up the rear notch almost to the point that no alignment can take place. A little is good, too much you may as well just get rid of the rear sight for the good it will do you.

The only solution to using the AK iron sights well is this - USE THE AK IRON SIGHTS. They are the best sights for speed and for hitting moving targets. No, they are not as precise as the sights on your M1A, but they are much faster. If you want more out of your rifle, read on.

Beyond the iron sights, the first option is a 1X red dot sight. Before I get into the meat of this I will tell you that if you want to "cheap out" on this, do yourself a favor and stay with the irons. All good optics will cost you and there is no "cheap and good" on these.

The Aimpoints, and Trijicons rule the roost here. In my opinion, Eotechs do not belong on an AK. I have yet to see one Eotech - AK combination that worked well. They may be the bees knees on an M4 but they suck eggs on the Kalashnikov.

Top choices here are the Aimpoint Micro (as good as the bigger units but lighter and sleeker). next would be the Trijicon RMR series which is almost as good. The Micro has a far better battery life but is bigger (not a big deal on a rifle).

Third choice would be one of the Trijicon units such as the Tri-Power, or the various 1.5X units. If you are looking for a red dot sight of little or no magnification, my top choice guys is the Aimpoint Micro.

Note that there are various ways to mount these. Thanks to Ultimak, Midwest Industries, and Texas Weapon Systems, we no longer need to deal with the clumsy side mounts.

The red dot systems are good but limiting. They are fine for Close Quarters Battle at close range but lack the characteristics to allow you to hit farther out...or at close range small targets.

I can run my red dot equipped, short barreled rifles to 150 - 200 yards without any issues, but beyond that I need more. And yes, we run the AK system far beyond what the short-sighted "C Student" range Instructors think is possible.

Remember....IT IS A RIFLE, NOT A BIG HANDGUN!

The next step is an actual optic that magnifies what you see downrange. The trick is to have enough magnification to give you good long range capability (think 500 yards is impossible with an AK? Not with the right optics!), yet not reduce your close range capability.

Here I am not talking about some 3-9X scope. I refer to a short and light fixed power of no more than 3X. Top choice here is the ACOG TA-33. I have one on a 5.45 and another on a 7.62x39 and have taken shots with these rifles that border on the incredible...at least if you read the internet writings of the "C Students".

To use these ACOGs or other type of traditionally positioned scope) you will need a mount. There are many "jury rigged" affairs out there but the cadillac of the bunch is the Texas Weapon Systems top cover unit. That mount opens up a whole new world for the AK system.

For the guys running 5.45x39 I suggest the TA33R-H. It has a BDC for 5.56, but I have used it successfully with a 5.45. On the 7.62x39 the TA33R-13. They come in green, amber or red....my choice being Red, but Green is also very popular. This system has a traditonal reticle with appropriate BDC, plus fiber optic and tritium illumination. The reticle is a horseshoe design that has a red dot in the center giving you commonality of sighting if you are using red dots on other systems (like your TSD Glock).

Well built AKs, high quality ammo, TWS top cover, and an appropriate ACOG will allow you to do (what some think is) the impossible with your AK rifle. All of these optics and mounting systems, by the way, have been worked hard by our staff and have surpassed expectations.

So there you go guys....there is the long and short of it.

 

A Picture Worth 1000 Words - That I Know Will Be Very Controversial

 

New 5.45x39 12.5" Barrel - $200
Texas Weapons Systems Top Cover - $140
ACOG TA33 - $1100
Hornady V-max ammo - $34.00 

Hitting an IPSC Steel at 500 yards with an AK-74 - Priceless

 

*For everything else there is One Source Tactical 

The Sling - More Than A Carry Method

 

Since the first musketeer decided to cut a length of leather to carry his “smoke stick”, fighting men have added slings to their rifles in one form or another.  Some slings are so silly-complicated that they need to ship out with a special DVD.  Other slings so simple that they consist of an old bootlace tied by an African bushman to his worn G3.  Whether complex or caveman simple, the sling has many uses.

The sling exists primarily to carry the weapon in non-contact situations.  Look through any news stand gun magazine and you'll invariably see, either in an article or an ad, a photo of some guy “wearing” a long gun. I say "wearing" because he will probably be using some sort of multi-strap like device harnessing the rifle to his body.

If the issue is simply to do away with the Fudd rifle rack while standing around looking cool at the range, any sling will do.  But if the matter involves moving through rough country, running, or really needing a hand-free situation, it will get considerably more complex…or actually, it will get simpler. 

If you are in a conflict area, the rifle will be in your hands.  Some units have gone as far as to eschew slings altogether to compel their men to keep the weapon in hand at all times.  While this is not the best policy, it does kill the lazy sling carry habit.  If you need to run without the rifle in your hands, to climb, to secure a prisoner, or anything requiring the use of both hands, you will want the rifle on your back and not hanging in front of you like an additional appendage, banging into everything in sight.  Thus your sling, whatever it is, should allow you to sling to the back. 

The sling must also be simple and stay out of the way.

The rifle must be deployable without the need to “strap in”, and without a long length of nylon loop floating around to catch on everything. It must allow for a quick and dynamic transition to pistol. 

With this last requirement, I suggest taking a look at our DVD programs depicting the over the back transition method. 

There have been far more clever methods devised and in sue for quite a while, but I would submit that a non-clever, but stress-proof method, not requiring perfect timing or extremes in dexterity, that provides for a high probability of success is a far better choice than an alternative that looks cooler.

But that discussion is for another time. 

One other thing the sling can do, in some cases, is as an aid to marksmanship. 

Sling use goes back to the early part of the 20^th century.  While my research was not clear on who produced the first shooting sling, many sources point to the Boyt Harness Company and the Rock Island Arsenal.  Theirs was the famous 1907 pattern shooting sling often seen on 1903 Springfields and M1 Garands. What these slings did, and still do on the right rifles, is to lock the weapon tightly to the shooter’s upper body, and allow him to relax in position enhancing bone support while reducing muscle tension. The sling is made up in two parts, the longer part in essence creating a loop through which the shooter put his up[per arm, sand cinching down, locked him into the rifle.  The rear length of sling was there for carry and irrelevant for any actual shooting. That sling works great, but takes time to loop up.  Hardly practical in situations where time is of the essence.  

Eventually, the leather sling was usurped by the cotton webbing sling, and later nylon sling, probably to reduce weight and cost.  These later slings were of one piece and did not have the capability for a front loop.  Crafty shooters devised ways to do what they had seen others do with the older 1907 designs and worked up the “hasty sling” in which the shooter simply loops his arm through the sling tightly.  Unlike the 1907 system, this later method puts opposing pressures on the handguard, barrel, and action, which unless the rifle has been free floated, will invariably cause the point of impact to shift. 

 

 

The 1907 slings, and its various system copies such as the CW sling, and Ching Sling, do not do this, as they create pressure between your arm and the fore end only (at least if used correctly).  So unless your rifle is free floated, stay away from the “hasty sling” method, and opt for the 1907 style slings. 

The nice part is that the 1907 system can be used on your light assault rifles with a gain in accuracy, without the annoying impact drift caused by improper sling use.  Any sling can suffice here as long as it has a forward loop, adjustable for the individual, that can secure the upper arm to the handguard. 

One argument against sling use is that there is often not enough time in field shooting to “sling up”.  With the traditional 1907 system that is true, but the newer derivatives are much faster. Nonetheless, if one has a rest to use, such as a vertical surface, it will be much quicker than slinging up, but with a little ingenuity, you can still use the sling in these situations. 

 

 
So grab your assault rifle, and see what you can do with your sling.  Make sure the pressure is ONLY between your arm and the handguard, and then get out into the field and see how this simple device can improve your shooting. 

I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

The sling Gabe is using in the pictures

Assault Rifle Training Schools 

The Combat Lever Action Rifle

By Uli Gebhard

Living in one of the most restrictive states in the US one is sometimes forced to get very creative to find effective defensive tools.

For those who are not familiar with California's laws, centerfire autoloader rifles are highly restricted to the point where many police officers will err on the side of caution and take a rifle in for safe keeping if they are not sure whether or not it fall under California Assault Weapons Law.

That said, two years ago, I began looking at non-autoloading rifle platforms that will allow a quick rate of fire, handle fast and ambidextrous, have a good choice of effective calibers and hold a decent amount of ammunition. Gabriel Suarez' work on the combat lever action rifle came to mind and I began researching this platform.

 

Lever Action Platforms:

There are currently two basic systems on the market: Closed-Top/Side eject and Open-Top/Top Eject. What do those terminologies mean and what kind of an impact do they have on us as a user?

The distinction between Closed-Top and Open-Top refers to the layout of the frame when the bolt is opened.

Examples for open-top rifles would be Winchester 94, Mossberg 464 and Rossi 92 Rifles where the bolt covers all or the majority of the top-rear surface of the receiver. When the lever is thrown downward, the rifle opens up on its top surface to allow ejection of the spent shell.

The advantage of this design is that it allows very easy access to the breech when the bolt is retracted to the rear. We will revisit this point later when we come to reactive reloads, meaning that we have to get rounds into a rifle that has been shot dry.

Top to bottom:  Marlin 336, Marlin 1894c, Winchester 94, all are fitted with forearm ammo cuffs

 

Closed-Top rifles have a solid receiver top with an ejection port on the right side. Samples of this Type are Marlin 336 and Marlin 1894c models. The advantage of the Closed-top design is an overall stiffer, stronger receiver.

There is one other characteristic that I need to take a look at: All of the above rifles have loading gates on the right side of the receiver. Single rounds are fed through this port into the magazine tube. There are very few lever-actions out there that have a different loading system. Henry, for example uses a removable magazine spring assembly and a loading port in the lower front of the magazine tube. Since this system makes it very difficult and cumbersome to top the magazine off, I will exclude these rifles from the scope of this article. Don't get me wrong: from all the feedback I've seen, those are good rifles, but I would not make them my first choice in terms of a fighting tool.

 

Handling Characteristics:

The first thing most people notice about most lever guns, especially a carbines, is how light they are compared to an AK or AR. I'm not talking about vintage reproductions with an eye-catching heavy octagonal barrel. I'm talking about the basic lever action rifles that one can find at a Sporting goods store.

Exploding off the X and putting rounds downrange works well with a Lever Action

The low weight makes it a very fast handling gun – and fast on target is good. It comes fast from a porte-arms carry to the shoulder and bringing the rifle around to track is easy. In a mechanical sense: little mass equals little inertia – in common terms, low weight does not have a whole lot of resistance against motion. Snap shots with a lever action rifle are fast, regardless of the ready-position. The same goes for following a laterally moving target. All these movements are swift and require less effort than a heavier fighting rifle such as a modern autoloader. Skeptical? Have a small statured novice handle an AR (just a basic gun with little or no attachments) and a lever gun like a Winchester 94 trapper. Both have a 16” barrel, hence are comparable in size. Most likely, the novice will prefer shooting the lever gun due to its handling characteristics. We’ll revisit these later in a different context.

The light weight is also advantageous if the Lever-Action is used as a bug-out rifle. Lower weight here translates into ease of transport over longer distances. This may not be a huge aspect for people in Urban areas, but consider how many people live in rural places and may have to walk a healthy distance after their car breaks down to get to a phone or to an area with cell-phone coverage. Traveling light has its advantages.

Speaking of transporting the rifle hidden in plain sight: A fully-loaded lever-action fits easily into a camp-chair bag. I've had students help me unload my car when we got to set up for class at the range and most of them were quite surprised that the last bag in the car did not hold another chair, but my rifle.

There are others who take it a step further and remove the shoulder stock for storage. It's only one screw that holds it in place and that screw seems to interact nicely with the screwdriver of a Swiss-Army knife. This is sure not the fastest way to get the rifle into action, but it makes for very compact dimensions for transport.

 

Caliber Choices and Ammo Capacity:

The aspect of the caliber is two-fold: While each caliber has its ballistic advantages and disadvantages, the size of the cartridges will directly impact the magazine capacity of the rifle.

A handgun-caliber round is overall shorter and will allow for more rounds in the magazine tube than a rifle-caliber in a comparably-sized rifle.

Lever guns typically come in either revolver-type calibers or in the classic lever-action chamberings such as 30-30 and 45-70. There are quite a few other rifle calibers still out there, but I want to keep the focus on those calibers that are common today. Let’s take a closer look at both general variations: the handgun-equivalents and the classic lever-action cartridges:

 

Handgun Calibers

The most common handgun calibers offered in lever rifles today are .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum and .45 Long Colt. On Rossi and Marlin rilfes .357 and .44 can usually also handle their smaller siblings: .38 Special and .44 Special – offering the option to train with a less expensive round.

One other aspect that comes to mind is that Ruger considered the .44 magnum powerful enough to be a hunting round. They dedicated a magazine fed-lever action (discontinued after 11 years), an autoloader (in production for 13+10 years, now discontinued) and a bolt-action rifle (current production) to that caliber, which shows the popularity of the .44 magnum as a hunting round. I think we can say with a decent level of accuracy that this round seems to have a pretty good reputation for taking game down.

As far as the .357 is concerned, two associates of mine used to go hog-hunting with.357's during handgun season.

These chamberings bring a more than decent amount of power to the table. Another aspect is that many people carry Revolvers in .38/.357 or .44 as their every day defensive tool. Those rounds will have a decent ballistic effect when fired from a 2-inch to 6-inch revolver. 16-inch or more of carbine/rifle barrel increase the muzzle velocity and with that the amount of energy that the projectile carries. In plaintext: the lever action rifle can shoot the same ammo as your revolver and gives the round more oomph on the way –nice!

 

Classic Rifle Calibers

What about those rifle calibers of old? 30-30 is roughly the ballistic equivalent of a 7.62x39 – a rifle round of choice for many Suarez International students. The projectile will punch through quite a bit of material that some people may consider cover. Recoil on the other hand is bearable. One nice side effect of the thirty-thirty being a non-military round is that was still relatively easy to get even during recent ammunition shortages. It has been around for a long time and people have hunted with it equally long. That said, there are quite a few well-designed expanding bullet types on the market – if it expands well enough to bring a deer down, chances are that it will also help a good deal if you are faced with a two-legged predator.

Now, some people dismiss the 30-30 as not powerful enough – same as the 7.62x39. That be as it may – another option is the 45-70, available for example in the Marlin Guide Gun. This round was designed to take down big game up to the size of a buffalo. That in mind, it should be sufficient to take care of the common bad guy – even if he is hiding behind a car door or something similar.

While the 45-70 is an expensive round, it is also build on a straight casing, which makes it relatively easy to reload.

 

System Limitations

In terms of ammunition, we also encounter two limitations of the classic tube-fed lever action rifle.

The main limitation of the lever action rifle is its capacity. Depending on caliber and overall length, a lever gun can hold anywhere from 3+1 to 10+1 rounds. Reloading the magazine is relatively slow, since every round has to be loaded individually – no stripper clips or speedloaders can improve that. If one choses to use a lever-action rifle as a defensive weapon, I highly recommend investing into training cartridges and practicing proactive reloads. The idea is to fire a shot or two and immediately push more rounds in through the loading gate. One technique that makes the reloads less cumbersome is to push a round in the majority of the way and hold it with the left hand still inside the loading gate, while the right hand brings another round up. Repeat until the rifle is full. With this sequence you do not have to go through the effort of pushing every single round all the way into the loading gate until it is locked in place. As a failsafe option, practice pushing rounds in until the last round bottoms out part of the way in. You fight as you train and if you work on a tactile feedback (round does not go in) rather than trying to remember a specific number you are much more likely to be successful. Keep a dump pouch or similar in your gear to discard non-used rounds. This can be as simple as a nice, large opening in your ready bag that allows the rounds to fall easily into it.

Now, from what I've seen in my classes, the gun will eventually run dry... now what?

 

Impact weapon

There are a couple of possible answers: If the opponent is within striking range, you have a 5+ lbs impact weapon in your hand. Practice striking your opponent with the muzzle of the rifle and include follow-up strikes. The latter part is important: again, you fight like you practice and if your dry-runs stop after the first strike, you will find yourself in a real fight, having smashed the bad guys teeth and hesitating with what to do next.

 

Transition to Pistol

Second option: the rifle runs dry and you have a couple of seconds until the bad guy closes the distance. In this case sling the rifle and go to pistol. 3.5 seconds and you're back in business with at least another 5 rounds, hopefully more, depending on what kind of handgun you carry.

 A simple two-point sling allows getting the rifle out of the way and bringing the pistol into action FAST

 

I'd like to touch briefly on the sling. A simple 2-point sling with decent length works best for me. The left hand dives in underneath the fore-end (fore-end on left forearm) the right hand remains in position and rotates the butt of the rifle up and counter-clockwise. Once the hand is behind your head you let go and let the sling catch the rifle. While the rifle settles, go for the pistol. I've seen students guide their rifles to a soft, gentle stop. Folks, this is not the time for pleasantries but for aggressive and decisive action. The .5 seconds that make the settling of the rifle more comfortable will not do you any good if these are the .5 seconds that give the bad guy the opportunity to tackle you and foul up your draw. Again, on the risk of sounding like a broken record: you fight like you train.

 

Reactive Reload

If the rifle is shot dry and you have quite a bit of distance on your side, throw the lever down and load a single shell into the open ejection port. This will sound very familiar for people who shoot shotguns a lot and have the habit of loading the first round into the chamber through the open breach. This is exactly the same principle

I mentioned earlier the advantage of the open-top receiver design of the Winchester 94 and similar rifles. This layout provides plenty of access area to dump a round into the open breech. This is true regardless whether you fire your rifle left-handed or right handed.

A side-eject gun will be considerably slower to reload in this way, since the ejection port is smaller. It also means that a side-eject gun can be loaded most effectively with the right hand, limiting ambidextrous options.

We timed this reloading method and found that even with a 30-30 a firing rate of 3.5 seconds from shot to shot can be accomplished. This requires some additional support gear. Bear with me, I'll get to it in a bit.

 

No Magazines: Weakness and Strength

So, the lever-action rifle uses on on-board tubular magazine to store the ammunition, unlike a modern autoloader with a detachable magazine. Is that truly a disadvantage? In terms of capacity, the answer is clearly yes. However, lets look at it from a different aspect: With an autoloader, one has to log magazines around and store them in a dump pouch during mag changes. Sure it's fast, but it also means extra gear and dedicated bags.

When I ran the Lever Action Gunfighting rifle course for the first time I used a very basic shoulder bag that held loose ammunition – done! I did not have to worry about keeping magazines. It was the lightest and most compact bag setup I ever used while teaching a rifle class. In terms of simplicity less gear means less weight and less bulk. Even when I upgraded the interior of the bag with loops to hold the rounds more readily available, it remained very compact.

 

Simplicity of Operation

Feed rounds through the loading gate until no more rounds fit. Swing the lever forward and back get on the sights and press the trigger. Repeat that sequence until the gun goes “Click”.

This concept seems to be easier for most novice shooters than having to deal with an external magazine of an autoloader.

Now add low weapon weight to this equation. I run classes for autoloading rifles as well as for lever actions. The drills are similar. One thing I noticed this fall after working primarily on lever action material during the summer is that the lever action students never complained about the weight of their weapon when we went through dry runs over and over. Credit to my students, none really complained, but it was visible after keeping their rifles up a good stretch of time, that they welcomed the relief when I told them to go to “safe and sling”. The weight issue also reflects in a way earlier experience, when several years ago I’ve got a couple of people started on rifles with a Winchester 94 in .357 Magnum. All tried the AR or AK/Saiga during the same session, but many preferred the lever gun.

Their reason was primarily the low weight, but also the ease of operation and (here is where the comparison is not on equal ground) the low recoil of the .357 compared to 7.62 x 39 and .223.

The students were also more at ease with a rifle that they could reload with single rounds from a dump pouch or directly from the box – without having to deal with a removable magazine.

This does obviously not apply to the more trained shooters but there is certainly an advantage to a completely self-contained system that does not rely on external components (magazines).

 

Ambidextrous Operation:

Lever guns are ambidextrous in the shooting operation. It does not matter which hand you operate the lever with – no re-thinking or re-training required.

Most autoloaders in comparison have the bolt handle on the right side (such as the AK, SKS, M-1A and SU-16 to name a few. One can train to manipulate it equally well with either hand, but it is a different motion when used with the right hand compared to operation with the left.

Again, this is not an issue for people with a higher level of training. However, For others who use a weapon only occasionally, it is a lot more important.

Where is ambidextrous operation important? When working corners and while shooting on the move.

When I approach a doorway with a long gun, I want to expose as little of myself as possible, regardless which side I approach from. If the door opening is to my left, even being a mainly right-handed shooter, I need to have the ability to use the rifle from my left shoulder, so that only a small portion of me is visible as I progress forward. I also need the ability to cycle the rifle fast and decisively, regardless of the shoulder I'm running it in.

In our Gunfighting series of classes we introduce our students to movement to avoid incoming fire. We are sure not the only ones who have figured out that fast lateral movement works to our advantage. In case I have a moving target and the first round misses, I need the ability to get another follow-up round downrange fast and accurately! The lever action gun handles very naturally and allows for smooth, swift operation from either shoulder.

 

Shooting the rifle on the move could fill an article in in itself. I want to keep it brief: a shooter should always have the rifle seated in the shoulder of the direction that he is moving to. In other words, if I move to the right, I use the rifle in my right shoulder, if I move to the left, I use it in my left shoulder. This way, I can maintain my aim towards the target without winding my body up. A natural posture will result in less resistance from the body and in more accurate shots.

 

 

The dreaded Political Correctness

Last Point: We live –unfortunately- in a world where many people have swapped common sense for political correctness. A modern-day fighting rifle is not politically correct. In the contrary: some people inadvertently associate the AR-15 with our military and a no-no for civilians. They will also associate the AK-47 with terrorism. They do not see the benefit of a robust and reliable weapon that has long since served as a civilian defense rifle, around the world as well as here in the US. They see the image of Osama bin Laden and his thugs training with the AK-47 to take their Jihad to the US.

The lever gun on the other hand has been an icon in many western movies, enabling the good guys to prevail. Score one for political correctness. This may not be a huge issue in many areas of the US, but living in CA, believe me, it is an argument that bears quite a bit of weight.

First and foremost, it is a good choice for overly restrictive states such as California and for others where a “black rifle” is problematic. As many restrictions as we have on firearms, lever action guns are not affected by them, unless someone wanted a version chambered in .50 BMG – but that is rather unlikely.

For those of us shooting revolvers, the lever gun can be a nice extension of the handgun. As Gabe discussed in his article about pistol caliber carbines: they have a niche in the close range area and for smaller statured / recoil sensitive shooters.

In larger chamberings they have a place as a very basic, low-profile CDR (Civilian Defense Rifle). All it takes is the rifle itself, a dump pouch for the ammunition and a carrier that holds rounds alongside the barrel such as the Minuteman ammo cuffs for fast single-round top-off’s. A lever-action requires less support gear than an autoloading fighting rifle since it does not require exchangeable magazines.

A small and lightweight red dot sight enhances the capabilities of the Lever Action

 

The only other enhancement I would suggest is a red-dot such as an Aimpoint H-1 to improve quick target acquisition.

To close things – I bought a Winchester 94 chambered in .357 about twelve years ago to complement our revolvers. It has accompanied me on a couple of road trips as backup, way before I got my first Saiga and also way before I started working with the close range gunfighting material.

I always enjoyed shooting it, mainly as a larger plinker, but I did not fully appreciate its potential until I started looking into the lever gun as a bug-out, get off the X rifle. Now that I have worked with it quite a bit, I am sure that this weapon stays in the family arsenal!

 

Uli Gebhard

Suarez International Staff Instructor

www.gebhardsolutions.com

Accuracy and Performance Standards For The AK System

 

 
How much accuracy is needed and for what?

The propeller-heads with their protractors and pocket calculators would say of course, "As much as possible". Yet if that comes at the cost of reliability, weight, or ease of resupply, that would be too much.

Our targets are not some metro-sexual bullseye, or some Elmer Fudd's "bunny"...they are men...or targets that represent men. After all, one buys a Kalashnikov...or an M4 for that matter to develop skills in the martial use of the rifle, otherwise, we would be playing with Ruger 10-22s.  Martial = combat and that means shooting men. So accurate means being able to hit a man. For simplicity we divide the "man target" into head, and body. Thus head shots and body shots.

First we have the Suchka, SBR PDW, 8"- ish barrel.  That little blaster, in essence replacing the submachinegun should allow its operator to hit a man's head at 50 yards, and the body with boring consistency out to 150 yards.

Next we have the Insurgent Rifle that we wrote about in the previous article.  With a 12.5 - 16" barrel, it should be able to do head shots to 100 yards and bodies to 300 yards. And Mr. Propellerhead, I know you are reading this out there in cybespace. I have several good kalashnikov rifles that will do that. 

 

Then the Guerrilla Sniper Rifle, chambered in a full sized cartridge such as 7.62x51, or 7.62x54R, should be able to do head shots at 200 yards and bodies out to 600 yards.  As a matter or record, the last Guerrilla Sniper class had several guys shooting 16" barreled Saiga 308s hitting man-sized IPSC steels at 1000 yards.

It would be nice to have an AK in caliber that could do what a GSR can do with the ease of carry of the Suchka....but outside of custom wildcats, such a rifle does not exist....IN ANY FORM.  At least not yet.

Understand also that merely "touching" the target IS NOT enough. The goal is killing it. Killing it in the environs where the rifle is likely to be used. And when necessary, withstanding wind, rain, light brush and penetrating cover with aplomb.

The temptation is often to try to make do with one rifle only, going as big as possible, handling all problems, but sadly that will not do.

As I said...all rifles are "special weapons" and if one tries to force one to "do everything" it will....it will "do everything poorly".  Choosing the right tool for the job is essential. Choosing poorly will only yield frustration and failure.

There is a great deal of "lost knowledge" in the study of the rifle. One thing we have always been good at with Suarez International's Training Staff is researching. There is a great deal of "lost knowledge" to be rediscovered. I think that the "rifle community" has become so focused on CQB that it has forgotten much of the rifle's general application.

 

And then, when the realization is made (seldom enough) they try to "gear it" rather than learn the skills needed to surpass. This is due to a number of reasons.

1). Today's wars have a strong CQB component to them, and while that does need to be prioritized, NOT at the exclusion of everything else.  At the recent Houston class we had a father-son team attend. One was an old time Marine, and his shooting was not as good at the CQB realm and was his distance shooting. His generation focused on long range stuff. The son, back from recent service, smoked in the CQB realm, but did not do as well as his dad at the longer ranges. What we need is to blend the two.

2). Many trainers....regardless of what they may have done at one time in a past life, tend to be closed minded, ease-driven, and seldom venture out of their "comfort zone". The students are no different, parroting what they learned in school without analyzing if it makes sense or not.

3). Finally, there are far more pistol ranges reaching to 50 yards than there are rifle ranges reaching to 500 yards. So often, the training is developed as a work around to a limited training environment (and no, no matter how hard you wish, shooting a small target up close is not the same as shooting a target out at distance).

 

All of these have served to considerably lower not only the expectation of the individual, as far as what he can effectively do with his rifle, but also served to "dumb down" the rifle training available to the interested party. 

Here is what a good friend of mine commented on the material in this article -

"This was a primary objective (CQB shooting skills) when we trained in FORECON, to blend the 2. Marines being rifleman first, the CQB aspect can be built on a solid foundation.. We saw the real need during MOUT, where guys would excel in room clearing but then lose focus on a 200yd shot from a window. The ability to to slide easily along that scale makes an operator golden".

I could not agree more and that is the goal, focus, and mission of our rifle program.  So make sure your PDW, your Assault Rifle, and your Sniper Rifles are up to the task, and more important....make sure YOUR rifle skills are up to the task as well.

MORE ON THE SUAREZ INTERNATIONAL RIFLE SCHOOL

Rifle Applications - The Insurgent Combat Rifle

 

THERE IS NO PERFECT RIFLE

THERE IS NO PERFECT RIFLE

THERE IS NO PERFECT RIFLE 

The 308 battle rifle is great until you need to hide it in a tennis raquet bag and walk through an NPE. The 308 battle rifle is great until you need to hump it for ten miles through rough terrain or run the walls in a house. The Assault Rifle in 223/545/ or 7.62x39 is great until you need to hit a man at 600 yards and kill him dead on the spot. Or shoot in a high wind, or penetrate what he is hiding behind. The SMG is great until you need to reach way out there or punch through body armor...or a car door. The Bolt Gun Sniper Rifle is great until you have a platoon charging at you with disciplined fire and maneuver....or you need to clear a house. 

another little saying.....

ALL WEAPONS ARE "SPECIAL WEAPONS"

ALL WEAPONS ARE "SPECIAL WEAPONS"

ALL WEAPONS ARE "SPECIAL WEAPONS"

Perhaps those who think there is such an animal can begin a thread under that name at http://www.warriortalk.com and I will show you where your choice sucks. 

That leaves us with "A pretty good choice that handles most of the problems history has shown us may happen".

When we put it those terms, I still choose my Kalashnikov platform....in 5.45 Suchka for the house, and in 7.62x39 for the outside world general purpose.

Just as some "man" coined the phrases/terms "Assault Rifle", "Scout Rifle", and "Battle Rifle"...I am now setting some "concepts guns" into print - Some new..some not so new.

 

The Guerrilla Sniper Rifle - a semi auto, magazine-fed, military styled rifle in .308 caliber minimum, with a variable power optic going up to at least 6X, and capable of head shots at 200 yards and body shots out to 600 yards.  Based on our research, we don't need a super heavy crew served bench rest bolt gun that shoots shirt buttons out to 3000 yards. Why not? Because sniping happens much closer.

Reports we have been getting back is that most of the work takes place inside of 400 yards...well inside. So we established the GSR requirements of being able to hit heads out to 200 yards and bodies out to 600 yards. We did this without any issues at the various GSR classes. The typical rifle for this application is some sort of semi auto magazine-fed rifle with a ten round magazine and a magnifying optic of at least 6X. Calibers, to do what we require without any drama or undue stress on the sniper, begin at 7.62x51.

 

The Insurgent Combat Rifle is an assault rifle in the intermediate cartridges. It is much LIGHTER, and HANDIER than the Guerrilla Sniper, and its intended range is half...or 300 yards realistic range. Given it is 2011 and not 1911, we use optics and modern quality ammo to maximize the results. So I have been working the concept out.

The original term "assault rifle" is a translation of the German word Sturmgewehr (literally "storm rifle). The name was coined by Hitler to describe the Sturmgewehr 44, the firearm generally considered the first assault rifle. Incidentally, I was able to work an StG 44 in Eastern Europe and to say that Kalashnikov was not inspired to emulate it strains the suspension of disbelief.

The strict definition of Assault Rifle is -

It must be an individual weapon with provision to fire from the shoulder

It must be capable of selective fire

It must have an intermediate-power cartridge: more power than a pistol but less than a battle rifle

Its ammunition must be supplied from a detachable magazine.

And it should at least have a firing range of 300 meters 

I know that propeller-heads worry about point number two, but I will say that a good man with a semi auto can easily keep up with a full auto shooter for anything other than “mad minute bullet dumps”.

During World War II, the Germans pioneered the assault rifle concept, based upon research that showed that most infantry firefights happened at close range, within approximately 300 meters. This was confirmed by the Soviets in their after action of the fighting in WW2. The power and range of contemporary rifle cartridges was excessive for most small arms firefights. As a result, armies sought a cartridge and rifle combining submachine gun features with an intermediate-power cartridge effective to 300 meters. 

So I think it is reasonable to expect our rifles to reach out and hit a man in the torso out to 300 yards. More than this is really not necessary...specially if the price is reliability and weight.

As well…rifles with optics should be expected to do that with increased accuracy. It is a myth that optics will not help you shoot better. They will not make up for slovenly marksmanship, but will allow a good shot to see better and index on target better. So we will establish a training criteria for this system. Iron sighted rifles should be able to place head shots at 50 meters, and optically sighted rifles at 100 meters. Either one should be expected to be able to hit a chest at 300 meters.

I think that the rifle training world has been excessively focused on CQB and has ignored the distance intervals beyond 50 meters. Why?

Simple. Few ranges have capability beyond 50 yards or 100 yards. But an overachieving student of the combat rifle will remedy that by at least…getting out once in a while and verifying he can accomplish the requirements we have suggested.

And before we begin hearing the “I can’ts”, I will say that at Houston, after a briefing on the fundamentals, we had relative novices to the AK platform (four days of training) hitting a steel human-sized target from standing at 200 yards and from sitting at 300 yards.

So there it is.

The RPK (Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova )

The RPK (Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova ) or "hand-held Kalashnikov machine gun, is a 7.62x39mm light machine gun, developed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the late 1950s, parallel with the AK-47. It was created with the intention of standardizing the small arms of the Red Army, and specifically to replace the aging 7.62x39mm RPD light machine gun. The RPK continues to be used by the armed forces of countries of the former Soviet Union and nations that were assisted by them. The RPK was also manufactured in Bulgaria, Romania, and variations of it manufactured in the former Yugoslavia.

 
It is the Yugoslavian version, or the Zastava M72, that we are taking a look at in this article.  The Zastava M72 rifle chambers and fires the same 7.62x39mm round of its counterparts. It is gas-operated, air-cooled, drum or stick magazine-fed, and uses a fixed stock. There are some differences between the M72 and the Russian, Romanian, or Bulgarian RPK.  The M72 does not have a scope side rail mount, or the so-called “Clubfoot Stock”. The M72 also comes with night sights and no carry handle. Unlike the other RPKs, the barrel is not chromed lined, which creates maintenance concerns when using military corrosive ammo.  As a point of note, no Yugoslavian weapons were issued with a chrome-lined bore and some surplus versions have bores that have been virtually worn out.

My particular rifle was a kit from the long ago days of plenty when you could buy a matching serial numbered kit, with unfired barrel for less than $150.00.  I sat on this kit for some time and finally had it built into a working rifle with the issued barrel.  My intent for the rifle was as a dry practice tool.  Being considerably heavier than a light Suchka, or AK-104, the concept of difficulty training applied.  It is the same thinking that professes training with a heavy steel pipe and fighting with a light rattan stick applied. I would show students in the Red October series how we would work in a set of kettle bell snatches and then some transfer drills with the heavy RPK.  But sadly, the nice Yugoslavian RPK M72 would not shoot.  The best I could manage was a 12” group at 25 yards.

But via our TSD technicians we located a new US barrel and rebarreled the weapon.  The finish was nearly gone on it so we also refinished it in an as-issued black semi-gloss.  What I did not change however was the wooden furniture.  It showed the dings and scratches of action seen.  This rifle most likely saw action during the Balkans wars, as evidenced by the several purposely cut notches in the stock.

Some might sneer at such a heavy semi-auto rifle with the usual brainless quip of “what good is that for a civilian”. Well I will tell you.

  One, it is a heavy understudy for the main rifle platform.  Do a 45 minute session of snap shots and position assumption with this beast and the 5.45x39 rifle you rely on for a “GO TO” weapon will seem weightless.

Two, believe it or not…a man with a trained trigger finger with a semi auto RPK can serve as a fearsome base of fire for a small group.  With a 75 round drum in the weapon, and several more in the wings, a good man with a good RPK can keep up a very healthy volume of fire providing cover and maneuver capability for his team mates.  No, it is not better than a true full auto RPK as we have seen in the Kalashnikov Training sessions, but it is in fact, the next best thing and gives up very little to the faster talking brother.

Three, it is a welcome addition to anyone’s Kalashnikov collection.  While I am all for modernizing the AK rifle with modern magazines and red dot sights, etc., there is always a fond place for the original. I have this rifle for the same reason I have a 1945 Tula Arsenal SKS.  Because I can, and because it is cool.  One more reason of course…it causes fear and dread in the craven hearts of liberals.

 
If you are interested in the RPK, and think you might ever want one, now would be the time.  Prices are low and the “uncertainty” of the futures effects on your ability to get these things has not yet hit. And then…bring your RPK to class and let’s learn how to run that heavy beast to its best effects.  You will be surprised at how good you can get with it.    

Magazines for your RPK

Training with your RPK

Gear for the Rifleman

by Suarez International TN Staff Instructor

Ryan Acuff

 

I got an email last week from a guy that was wanting to take a Fighting Rifle class I'm teaching in March.  One of his questions was "Other than a rifle, what other equipment do I need?".   Good question!

If you plan on employing your rifle for more than just a safe queen, you’ll need a way of holding ancillary equipment.  When deciding what to get, we need to understand that there are lots of different missions to plan for. Private citizens should at a minimum have a rifle with a good sling and have a haversack with enough space to hold the two bare bones pieces of gear…ammo and water.  There are plenty of options for this role, the Terrorist Interdiction Bag or the US Peacekeeper Rapid Deployment Pack.  A step up from there and we start to get into equipment that is typically associated with high risk operators, Military/SWAT/Security Contractors/Partisan Operators etc.  For those of us that train in high risk operator tactics I recommend a layered system also referred to as “lines of gear”, with a 1st, 2^nd, and 3^rd line.

Let’s start off with the first line.  I’ve always liked the ALICE gear that was so popular years ago, which was basically a belt with padded shoulder straps.  Today’s rifleman has a similar option.  Enter the era of padded MOLLE belts.  I’ve played around with no less than 4 different brands of MOLLE belts.  All worked, but weren’t just right.  At a friend’s suggestion I bought the High Speed Gear Inc. Suregrip belt along with “Taco” mag pouches, 1^st aid pouch, and suspenders.  The belt comes with a removable polymer stiffener (insert witty remark) and an inner duty belt.  The inner belt is thick enough to hold up thigh rigs without the belt rolling over.  In my case a Blade-Tech WRS in flat dark earth.  The MOLLE portion also has 3 open slots in the bottom for mounting sub-loads, such as the Blade-Tech.   The MOLLE belt’s Suregrip feature is an inner lining of Neoprene that helps to keep the belt in place and aids in distributing the weight. 

 

The belt can be used as just an outter belt to carry the holster, pistol mags, and dump pouch or you can really load it down with extra rifle mags and even Nalgene bottles.  I chose to go middle of the road and currently have my pistol, three rifle mags, two pistol mags, cool guy multi-tool, med pouch, Surefire light, and dump pouch mounted.  The Tacos pouches work great at securing different magazine types.  Everything from Makarovs to .45 Glock 21 mags will fit in the pistol pouches.  The rifle pouches fit both the AR15 mags and US Palm AK30’s and are tension/size adjustable via shock cord.  The rig is set up so that I can still go prone and actually move while wearing it.  Another approach would be to place just one rifle mag on the belt and the rest would be on a chest rig (2nd line). 

The suspenders help to reduce fatigue with shock cord loops at the ends.  This really helps to stabilize the belt platform while running.  This is important because if you can’t run in your gear then you're either using the wrong gear for you or you're using crap.  The suspenders go unnoticed when worn in conjunction with hydration bladders, chest rigs, and rucks which would fall under our 2^nd and 3^rd lines of support gear.

 

Keep in mind that gear is not the prime focus of our training and tactics, but we can’t dismiss it either.  Having quality equipment is important.  You shouldn’t have to fight with your gear every time you’re on the range and certainly not in the real world.  We’re fortunate that we live in the golden age of quality support gear. 

Link to Rifleman's Gear

Links to train with Ryan in  TN and KY

 

 

"Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist"                                   

Ephesians 6:14

  

 

    

Right Hand, Left Hand, One Hand, Both Hands, Either Hand

Ambidextrous training is like some medicine—it may be distasteful to you, but it helps you to take it anyway.

CR Williams

I have not always been as much an advocate of ambidextrous training with firearms—doing the same exercises and drills with both hands from both sides with rifle and pistol—as I have been over the past three or four years. On the other hand, I have done more gunfight-focused and tactical training in the last four years than I have in the ten or twenty preceding that and—to paraphrase Mark Twain—training as if you are going to be in a fight at any time you step out of your house, and sometimes if you don’t, has a wonderful way of focusing the mind. And one of the things that it focused my mind on was that it is helpful—not absolutely necessary, perhaps, helpful—to be able to swap hands at will with confidence that I can be at least adequate for the fight with that other hand.

A couple of months ago at the time of this writing, a polite question was raised about my advocacy of ambidextrous training on a closed forum where I am a member. I repeat the bulk of the well-done argument here:

“Although we typically use the term "strong side," what we're really talking about is dominant side. Except for a very small percentage of the population who are truly ambidextrous, human brains are wired to favor one side or the other. When the brain gets inconsistent images from both eyes, it picks one and deletes the inconsistent portion; the one it chooses is the dominant eye. When we learn to write, most of us chose one hand or the other. Some may have been forced or biased toward the right hand by parents or teachers, but about 90% choose that side naturally. Regardless of how much you train or practice, you will always be better with one side than the other.”

You know what? He’s right.

I DON’T CARE.

DO IT ANYWAY.

Another member, herself an instructor, put it this way on that same thread:

“It's in the wiring...”

You know what? She’s right.

I DON’T CARE.

DO IT ANYWAY.

Many times when the subject is raised, on that forum and every other one I’ve been on where it was discussed, one or more people will write that they won’t ever be as good with one hand/one side as with the other.

You know by now…

That may be true. (It likely is with most people.)

I DON’T CARE.

DO IT ANYWAY.

Here’s why:

It adds an element of variety to your training. Even though you may be doing the same thing on one side as on the other, because of the difference in mental and physical dexterity that most of us have between sides, it can often be like learning something new. Switching sides and becoming as dexterous as you can pushes you out of your comfort zone and out of the box of complacency you risk falling into by doing the same things over and over. Looked at the right way, this can be a whole new experience for you to explore and enjoy.

It’s a way to challenge yourself. You’re looking at the same thing, but somehow it’s different; you’re doing the same thing, but somehow it’s different. There’s some stress generated and some effort, like when you were just learning something for the first time. There’s some uncertainty, too: Can you do it? Can you move the skills over? How good can you get? Think of it—without spending any money, without adding significant time, you’re having to focus again and work out the movement again. You both learn and reinforce what you know at the same time. It can be hard, but isn’t that the way some training should be? We can’t prepare for hard things by doing easy things; we have to prepare for hard things by doing things as hard or harder. Changing sides is an easy way to make things hard again. And when you do…

Doing it, training each side as far up as you can, gives you confidence and reduces fear. Consider that some training is not designed to instill a skill into the trainee, it is designed to condition the trainee to continue to act and move and try and do under conditions of stress, uncertainty, and fear. That conditioning is not as specific as skill training, and so the mind, under real-world conditions of stress, uncertainty, and fear is less likely to freeze up or get so confused and distracted that the person can’t act. It’s not the same degree of stress, but making yourself work through the awkwardness and frustration and even initial failure you may face shifting hands helps overall with other things. When you are faced with some other confusing or awkward or stressful situation, the subconscious calls on all those things you have been through, including this, and says to itself, “I have done that; I can do this. I have faced things like this before; I can do it again.” And so you don’t freeze from uncertainty. You act. Doing hard things makes it easier to do other hard things.

Having even a limited capability to switch hands gives you options you did not have before. If you don’t practice it, you don’t know if you can even do it, and you don’t know how well, how much, or when it is best to do it. If you haven’t done it even to a degree, you probably won’t think about doing it when it brings you an advantage or reduces disadvantage. Physical ability, then, gives you mental flexibility and choices that could make the difference in whether you live or die. In the fight, options and flexibility are good.

It gives you a way to surprise or confuse the attacker. We live in a right-handed world and we expect things to go in a right-handed way. That’s the reality of it. The attacker is most likely going to be right-handed, and the attacker is most likely going to expect the would-be victim to be the same way. The ability to either start with the left hand or to switch quickly and with confidence to left-handed employment could be just enough edge to get the initiative back and win the fight. Left-handers are troublesome to right-handers in a number of sports; offering the same kind of switch-hitting trouble to your attacker could work to your advantage. (Natural lefties, realize that you have this edge and bask in the glory of it as much as you wish, but keep training regardless. It’s a potential edge, not a guaranteed fight-winner.) It may not be a big advantage, but it may be enough to make a difference.

You need to be ready to do it if you’re forced to. This is usually the first reason offered for working with the other hand—that you might take a hit in the dominant side and have to switch over. Most people nod their heads in agreement, run a few minutes of other-side drills occasionally and call it Good. Is it? Is it good enough to get you through a hit to the ‘good’ side? Is it good enough to carry you through days or weeks in a sling following an injury and immobilization? (I’ve carried when one arm was in a cast. At the time I was doing that, if I had had to run the gun in a fight, I likely would have not been able to do it well enough to survive.) Is it enough, in other words, to live with?

“You’re talking worst-case situation,” you might say, “it doesn’t happen that often.” Neither does a gunfight or an attack where we would have to use a gun to defend ourselves, but we train for that. We, gun-carriers, are an optimistic kind of pessimist. We have a positive attitude because we prepare, mentally and physically, to survive the worst-case situations. And there are cases where defenders have taken hits in the gun-hand and had to switch to survive. If training for it provides the other benefits listed besides this very important one, why not add mirror-image practice to your schedule?

So you see the why of it…what about the how of it? How can you better prepare for the necessity, or choice, of switching to the other side to run the gun with? The most obvious way is to run parallel sets of drills and practice routines. You don’t have to immediately double the number of repetitions of an exercise or double the training time, either. Begin with a one in five or one in four ratio in time spent or in repetitions run. Gradually increase that until its 1:1 and continue from there. Another option is to schedule ‘broken wing’ sessions where you force yourself to do everything start to finish with or from the other side.

Something else you can do is to switch sides sometimes in day-to-day activity. We all favor one hand or another for lots activities like eating or brushing our teeth or combing our hair. Occasional movement to the other side, or something like a half-page of ‘abcs’ done with the non-writing hand now and again, can help to move us to general dexterity in mind and body that will help us to get ambidexterity with the gun.

Hard? Maybe so, for some. But it’s important. That’s why we do things like this even when they are hard.

Because there may come a day…

Be safe out there. If you can’t be safe…be dangerous.

Bullpup Rifle Gunfighting - The DVD

 

BULLPUP RIFLE GUNFIGHTING

Operating The Bullpup Rifle In Combat

 

With John Chambers

The Bullpup rifle system is perhaps the most controversial weapon in the modern armory.  First shown to the world in the form of the Steyr AUG, it has served in many armies and fought in several wars with distinction.  Today we see the bullpup system alive and well in various great new offering from American gun manufacturers.  But the controversy remains around this compact rifle system.  There are those who love it and those who hate it and few positions in between. 

Suarez International staff instructor John Chambers took this rifle system into the field and found it both workable, efficient, and comfortable to use.  John is no stranger to combat rifles having served with distinction as a US Army Soldier in an infantry capacity and carried rifles in harm's way many times.  John's findings on the Bullpup system will cause all of us to take a second look at this weapon.  Just like the AK, the system cannot be forced into an AR-15 centric shooting method.  To the contrary, it needs a shooting system particular to the weapon. 

 

Just like we did for the Kalashnikov platform, this DVD delves into the Bullpup concept and destroys much of the dogma surrounding it.  Myths will be shown to be false and the advantages of the weapon platform will become obvious.  John Chambers shows the most applicable and efficient system for running the bullpup rifle in combat. If you own a Bullpup Rifle, you need this DVD to learn how to run it to its highest efficiency.

 

DVD - 45 Minutes

$29.99

ORDER HERE

Guerrilla Sniper Solutions on a Budget

While attending CQB instructor training in Prescott I received a request to make some specific recommendations regarding rifles, optics, etc., especially in regards to setting up a proper rifle when you have to work with a budget that does not allow for a $3000 rifle, $1500 optics, and $400 rings.  These solutions are wonderful, if you can afford one, but if we are working with the Guerrilla Sniper guidelines of 200 meter headshots and 600 meter torso shots, there are more economical solutions that a well trained shooter can use to great effect.

Now, I generally make conceptual suggestions, instead of specific hardware recommendations because I really do not want to hear folks gripe about the fact that I did not list their personal “All-Time-Greatest-Hammer-of-Thor-Hadji-Slaying-Binkie-Rifle” as one of my suggested platforms.  There are other rifles that will be perfectly acceptable, but these three choices will work very well as tools for the Guerrilla Sniper.  If you have rifle that you like better, so be it.  Guess what, I do too!  But I would remind you of a very important fact:  A $1000 shooter with a $5 rifle will always be more dangerous than the opposite and these solutions will not break the bank.

AR Pattern

Source:  CDNN

S&W M4 pattern rifle

16” barrel, 1-9 twist, M4 pattern w/flash hider

Flat top upper with quad rail hand guard

6 position stock

Troy rear BUIS

Magazines – EVERYWHERE for $20 or less

Rifle price:  $979

Same rifle with standard hand guard and detachable carrying handle:  $849 – This is false economy, the folding sight and free floating barrel are worth the money.

The only potential down side to this rifle is the barrel twist, if you just HAVE to shoot the 77 grain bullets.  But since we are not limited to Geneva Conventions compliant ammo, find a good controlled expansion hunting bullet in the 69 grain range and this rifle will perform very well within its ballistic envelope.  The adjustable stock and the free floated barrel are very good things, but I have also seen non free floated ARs shoot 1 MOA or less with good ammo.  Point of impact shift generally will not be an issue unless you bi-pod the rifle or use a tight sling.  As you can see from the pricing, there is not any reason to skip the free floated barrel.

Please note that there are cheaper AR rifles available, but this configuration is a very good balance of price, features, and performance.  Now that being said, recently CDNN had standard S&W MP15/M4 flat tops that were $600 after the factory rebate.  I had one student use this rifle, a Burris 3 X 9, and the Burris PEPR scope mount in a recent M4 Sniper – DMR class and he did VERY well.  He absolutely blew the hell out of a half size steel silhouette at 300 yards.

FAL Pattern

Source:  J&G Sales

CAI marketed G1 FAL

21” barrel, 1 -10 twist, with standard FAL flash hider

Bi-pod included

Fixed stock

DSA Scope mount - $80 or less

Magazines – Available from most surplus outlets, $10-$15 each

Rifle price:  $689 (!!!)

This rifle is a SMOKING deal!!  I do not know who is building these rifles for Century but the rifles I have examined are beautifully put together.  We have a few of the instructors who are running these rifles and the accuracy they are getting is perfectly acceptable for this intended role.   Any semi-auto rifle that will put GI ball in a group that will fit inside a coffee cup is more than usable.  You can add the DSA scope mount and the bipod is already included.  As things stand right now, I believe that this rifle is the best buy in a semi-auto GSR available today.  It is heavier than an AR, so if this is an issue for you, I would advise you to get stronger.  The Combat Fit DVD can help! 

 

Bolt Action

Source:  CDNN

Howa 1500 Varmint in .308 Win

20’ or 24” barrel

Synthetic stock

Rifle Price:  $399 (!!!!)

The Howa 1500 series is one of the best buys in the rifle word.   This is the same rifle that is marketed as the Weatherby Vanguard and I have yet to see one that would not group under 1 MOA all day long with good ammo.  I would go with the 20” option and add a flash hider and bipod.  A Harris bipod is available at OST for $80.00,  and multiple cans of camo Krylon sell for $20 total.  Add a bipod and camo the rifle and it will be capable of hitting anything you need to kill, if your skills are up to par.

Optics

Source:  One Source Tactical

Leatherwood CMR - $379 – This one is perfect for the AR and is also a good choice for the FAL, if you need a CQB capability.  The reticle is illuminated and it has ballistic hold overs for 5.56 mm.

Burris Fullfield 3 X 9 with Ballistiplex -  $249 – The perfect choice for the bolt action and is also good on the FAL in the GSR role.  It is not bad on the AR, but I prefer a more compact option for that weapon system.

Burris Xtreme Rings - $65.00 – These are very solid rings that will hold zero, but will not cost you as much as the optic.  Great choice if you are on a budget.

 

Quick note:  I know that there are some that will want to know how they can be sure that these solutions will work for them.  This is easily addressed with TRAINING. 

http://www.suarezinternationalstore.com/guerillasniper.aspx

http://www.suarezinternationalstore.com/designatedmarksmanriflecourse.aspx

 

The General Purpose Combat Rifle - Part 2

 
The general purpose combat rifle revisited.  The original article has had the most comments of any other article in this blog.  While many comments have been in agreement, other have vehemently disagreed, some telling me that I was totally wrong because I did not choose their pick as the most general purpose, etc., etc.  Some of the link backs were hilarious to read.  At one forum devoted to the AR-15 (probably populated by 13 year olds in their trap door p.j.s on their mom’s computer) my character was assassinated because I did not think a good M4 was the choice of universal rifle.  Others were from self-anointed “old guys” claiming that they could not possibly carry a ten pound rifle. It is almost as if the rifle was a religion and by bringing up a concept they disagreed with I was calling the prophet a phony. I don’t necessarily mind any of this because few 13 year olds will ever attend one of my classes or buy a DVD, nor can my character be assassinated (so many have already tried), but I want a clarity of subject on the matter because it is an important matter.

The best explanation of “General Purpose” I have to say is Jeff Cooper’s.  While I think his choice of a bolt action rifle for combat use in our times is as anachronistic as choosing a horse over a Jeep, his description of the concept is still valid.

"A general-purpose rifle is a conveniently portable, individually operated firearm, capable of striking a single decisive blow, on a live target of up to 200 kilos in weight, at any distance at which the operator can shoot with the precision necessary to place a shot in a vital area of the target."

Let’s analyze this further. 

General Purpose means “everything possible”, not everything probable. It is possible to need a rifle to fight in a house CQB style.  It is possible to need to drop a bull with a rifle.  It is possible to need to snipe someone 400 yards away.  It is possible to need to shoot through a motor vehicle. All these things have been done by our staff at one time or another either in CONUS or overseas. That one of these things is not likely for a given person does not invalidate the requirement to be ABLE to do them with the rifle in question.

One commenter was adamant that his AR-15 was general purpose.  Sorry, no assault rifle cartridge is sufficiently capable to do all of the things a rifle may be used for.  Whether or not US Forces use it is totally irrelevant.   

Conveniently portable – well that is up to interpretation.  If a man is physically incapable of carrying a 10 pound rifle afield then clearly he must opt for something smaller and lighter.  No question about it.  But that does not mean that his choice is equal to another rifle because it is his choice.  Life is not fair and physicality cannot be ignored.  The 65 year old guy with a bad back that does Krav maga three times a week is not the physical match for Chuck Liddell in the UFC cage, and the barely walking octogenarian with the uber light M4 is not carrying a general purpose rifle.  Life sucks sometimes.

Individually operated needs no further elaboration, but the next point is important.  Capable of striking a decisive blow on a live target up to 200 kilos.  I know a man in Africa that has taken down elephants with a 308 FAL.  To date I am not aware of anyone having done this with an M4 or AK. Hitting the target is not sufficient.  It is great fun to ding steel at long distances.  At a recent class we had one gifted shooter dinging steel at 800 yards with a 7.62x39 RPK.  Very nice but that will be  having no more effects on target than dinging it with a 5.56. There is a reason why the SR25 has become so popular in the wars.  One very big reason is that it is not in 5.56.

The final point is also important enough to examine in depth. “At any distance at which the operator can shoot with the precision necessary”. Now that covers not only the potential accuracy necessary, but also the ability to withstand wind and other atmospheric conditions, as wells the penetration of light cover and brush. If we are looking at calibers to do all of this, scientifically and not emotionally, we can immediately eliminate all commonly used assault rifle intermediate calibers (including 5.45x39, 5.56x45, and 7.62x39), leaving the obvious 7.62x51.  You don’t have to like the choice, but it is what it is. 

The general purpose combat rifle is reasonably sized, field portable, rifle, capable of fulfilling the mission of the battle rifle, assault rifle, designated marksman rifle, perhaps the submachinegun, and the sniper rifle.  It must be capable of striking a single decisive blow, as well as repeated blows on a live adversary or adversaries, at any distance and under any conditions, at which the operator can shoot with the precision and terminal ballistics necessary to eliminate the target.

Whether that description fits an urban apartment dweller with no interests in sniping, or a man who lives on the Great Plains with no interest in CQB is not the point of the exercise.  Identifying the rifle that can do all of these things, and working up a skill set for it is the point of the exercise.  And that is typified by the short, semi auto, military style rifle with a detachable box magazine in a 308 or similar chambering. Existing rifles that fit that role are the FAL, the G3 and its clones, the AR-10 and its clones, the M1A and its clones, the Saiga 308 and the PSL.

Discuss this at http://www.warriortalk.com 

 

  

 

The General Purpose Combat Rifle

 
Today we see a big emphasis on close quarters battle.  Truly, it is what much of the fighting around the world, by US forces as well as other forces, is all about.  I said much, but not all.  There is a good bit of application in an area where CQB (close quarters battle) leaves off and long before the Sniper Application begins. A rifle chosen to cover this area should be capable of both close quarters battle (although not specifically designed for that) and sniping (although not specifically designed for that either).  Such a rifle could be called a General Purpose Combat Rifle and must be, well, general purpose. It should do all things reasonably well.

Except for the “combat” part, this is the same notion that led to Cooper’s Scout Rifle.  The Scout Rifle, however a sacred cow it may be, was never meant for fighting specifically but for hunting. Few Scout shooters ever kept up with even an adequate semi auto shooter. Specially if the shooting test was not specifically set up to favor the Scout. So what do we need for a GPCR?

1). It must be in a military caliber capable of reaching out to distant targets to about 750 yards.  The cartridge must be capable of penetrating brush and light cover, and possess wind resistance. The caliber must be easily found everywhere.  That means that it should be available in military surplus form, and at common retail outlets. 

The concept needs will specifically exclude any assault rifle cartridges such as the 5.45x39, 7.62x39 and the 5.56x45.  Sure…I know the DMR/SPR in 5.56 can achieve some fantastic accuracy but that is not the point.  It needs to do something out there once it hits and the 5.56 is simply not capable of achieving what we need. Moreover, while the 6.5 Grendel, and the 6.8 SPS sound like fantastic calibers and could probably do well in this role, they are simply not available at the level that we need.

The suitable calibers that fit our needs are the 7.62x51, the 7.62x54R, and maybe the 30-06 (although finding a rifle suitable for our mission will be difficult as you will see).

2). The rifle itself should be usable both at 500 yards and at 50 yards.  Suitability for borderline sniping as well as house to house MOUT is essential. That will require a robust system that has seen military service.  It will also require a detachable high capacity magazine to be capable in the close quarters envelope.

This requirement immediately excludes bolt actions, or sporting style semi autos such as are found from Remington, and other built-for-civilian-hunters rifles.

They may be great for hunting, but are simply not strong enough, reliable enough, nor capable of sustained fire as required for close in fighting.

What is available today?  Options include:

The FAL. A short Congo-style rifle with a folding stock and a 17-18" barrel would be perfect.  You can get high dollar FALs from DS Arms, or Jim Fuller. And you can get lower grade FALs from Century and other makers.

Another very good option is the M1A. The M1A SOCOM, or any M1A style rifle with a shortened barrel will work great as long as they are not too Americanized with bells & whistles, but simply a basic rifle. One necessary addition here would be a pistol grip stock.

A G3 clone, or CETME, or HK-91 suitably modified would do as well. The big issue here will be triggers but there are many sources that can fix an overly heavy trigger on these weapons as on the FALs.

AR-10 style rifles will be great here as well as long as it has been built to be reliable and not just accurate. Many of the rifles I have seen in this weapons family seem more focused toward sniping and not so much to general purpose.

Although the magazines are an issue and less desirable at only ten rounds, the PSL can be made into this....see the AK54. Same can be said about the Saiga 308.  That rifle suitably arranged, and in the hands of a capable shooter, can hit at 1000 yards. The problem with the Saiga is a lack of military-grade magazines.

3). Weight:  At the warriortalk forum the issue of weight was brought up. While weight should be A consideration, it cannot be the only consideration.  Any of the military rifles we have discussed will weigh in at about ten pounds if the heavy bull barrels and uber-adjustable stocks are left off the weapon.  The scout people made a big deal out of what a rifle weighs, but I think we must not be driven by weight alone. 

If the man cannot carry a ten pound rifle in the field then rather than do with a substandard weapon that is lighter, the better solution is to strengthen the man. I challenge the entire premise of weight. If a man cannot carry a proper combat rifle in the field then this is may not be the discipline for him. We will not dilute the concept because the physically undeveloped can't hang.

4). Optics: These rifles need some sort of Variable Power Optic. Part of the duties envisioned for this platform is use in close range combat out to 100 yards.  Another part includes hitting the mid ranges between 100 yards and 300 yards.  The final part, and where scoping has the most effects, are hitting targets beyond 300 yards.  The goal is out to 500 yards…and maybe farther out.

Red dot sights so popular in CQB are not adequate for this mission, nor are the super powerful dedicated sniper optics.  On my rejuvenated FAL I added a Burris 3-9 as I intend it for the Guerrilla Sniper role and expect that 200-600 should be no issue for it. On the GPCR I think a more "flexible" optic would be better. An ACOG would be fine, as would a Leupold Mark 4 1.5x5.

Scout scopes and extended eye relief scopes are fine for CQB but suck for everything else. The reason they are so popular on Garands and M1As is that scoping such a rifle that way is technically easier but you will not see any rifles set up for the mid to long range equipped with scout scopes.

 
In the end what we end up with is a concept of a rifle that will do everything well, albeit not as well as weapons specifically designed for the task.  The rifle will perform well inside a house, although not as well as a purpose-designed submachinegun.  It will also perform at typical CQB ranges, although maybe not as well as an assault rifle.  And it will reach out there and smack the crap out of an adversary across the canyon, although not as well as a sniper-grade bolt action rifle. The pessimist might say the rifle does nothing well, but I would say this rifle concept will do everything good enough.  And that concept has been proven time and time again throughout history to be more than sufficient.

READ PART II OF THIS ARTICLE SERIES

Finally!! AR-15 RIFLE GUNFIGHTING

AR-15 RIFLE GUNFIGHTING

 

DELIVERY AFTER SEPTEMBER 1

 

Of the world's infantry rifles, the AR-15 system and its various derivatives is one of the most prolific.  It has been the US military's weapon for decades and will likely remain in that position for the rest of our lives.  Like it or hate it, it is here to stay. 

 

In this DVD, Suarez International Instructor Dan Agakian examines the AR-15 rifle and explains how to use it to its best utility in combat.  Dan is not a range instructor.  He is a former US Army Infantryman who saw extensive action in Iraq and a few other places.  He has used this rifle against the enemies of freedom and knows well what it takes to make it work right and to its most efficient level. 

 

Rifle Basics, Close Quarters Battle, Manipulations Under Duress, and many other discussions and demonstrations await the viewer. 

 

This is not a DVD full of product ads disguised as instruction, nor a showcase of game gun skills painted over as combat tactics.  Like our other rifle instructional material, this is pure gunfighting right from the start. 

 

If you rely on the AR-15 as a combat soldier, police officer, or civilian defender, this DVD is essential for your library.

 

72 Minutes

 

ONLY $39.99

 

ORDER YOURS HERE

AVAILABLE NOW!! From Infidel Media - Lever Action Rifle Gunfighting

ONLY $29.99

BUY YOURS HERE