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BLUF: Get a surefire.
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Many of you have never had a rifle with a light on it. I remember my dad, just a few short years ago, go looking for the ultimate flashlight, and came home with a huge D-cell maglight. If that’s the ultimate flashlight, then I don’t blame you for not wanting to mount it to your rifle. By the way, in the late 80’s, that’s exactly what special operations teams did. Maglight + electrical tape + radiator hose clamps = cutting edge technology.
Thankfully, technology in this area has evolved significantly in recent years. The D-cell maglight has been exponentially outdone in terms of battery life, light output and size. The only thing that maglight still has, is the striking power of a nightclub and the backbreaking weight of a small pumpjack.
4 D-cell maglites put out 122 lumens. My Surefire Scout light puts out 200 lumens continuously for 2 hours on something resembling a roll of dimes, instead of a $1,000 roll of silver dollars.
All of the options I’m going to list can be had for cheaper on online forums, or just by a little shopping around the internet.
Lights come in several different platforms. Let me put them in 3 categories:
Dedicated Forend Lights.
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This option has recently faded in favor of the lighter, more versatile options, so I will spend little time on this.
A dedicated forend light changes out the whole forward handgrip assembly, for one that has an integral light. For a shotgun this might include the surefire DSF (dedicated shotgun forend). And for a long time the surefire forend lights proved to be the front-runner in the AR15 game.
I have the surefire model on my shotgun, and think it’s a real game-changer to have a light on my shotgun as I clear the house in the dark. You don’t have to remove your hand from your platform to light up a dark corner, and if I were to find an intruder, it would be as easy as depressing a button to identify him, see if he has a gun, or hold him at bay with a flood of white light.
What this option does not give is modularity. If you do not hold the forend in the way that the makers of the light envision, then your hands will have to be maneuvered over the switch they’ve molded in place. Don’t like the shadow the light casts from your barrel and would like to move the bezel closer to the muzzle? Out of luck.
Pistol Lights
Due to the availability, modularity and cost of pistol lights in recent years, it has become popular to mount a small pistol mounted light onto the forend of a rifle. These lights are usually underpowered in my opinion, and offer some to be desired in terms of switches.
The Inforce WML is an exception to this rule, and from what I can determine, puts a satisfactorily bright light, all from a compact package. It is cost effective, and the switch is intuitive.
The X300 series of lights from Surefire attempts this, but is usually a tad underpowered for the purpose, while the ULTRA series lights from Surefire, more than double the amount of light that pours out of the bezel. The only downsides to the Ultra series seem to be the price point, and the same old switch.
Dedicated Weapon Lights (DWL)
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The Scout light seems to be just the right ticket for the AR15. This light can be had in 2 variants: the older 200 lumen, or the newer 500 lumen model. The scout light has a slim profile, an intuitive switch, and the modularity to be run from various positions on the rail.
Personally, I run a 200 lumen scout light at about the 11 o’clock position on my rail. It is mounted far enough forward that I get very little shadow in the beam. These can be had on online forums and such for the 130-200$ range.
There is a cheaper option which replicates the scout light. You can get the base model surefire tactical light (G2 model in several different variations), and buy an aftermarket mount for the light. Vtac, IWC (Impact Weapon Components) and a gilion other companies offer really good mounts for the light. The mount you choose should be solid and allow you the versatility to position the light where you want it.
Check ebay for other DWLs. If you can, get an LED version and pay attention to the lumens. Don’t get something under 120 lumens. Sticking with known brands such as Surefire and Inforce (I’ve never owned a Streamlight, but some like them) will save you a lot of heartache.
The beam
With a light, you have to worry about spill and throw. For our purposes the “throw” of the beam is how far it goes, and the “spill” is the amount of area side-to-side that it covers. For a weapon mounted light, throw is often more important than spill. You need that light to reach out and identify something at 100yds. Is it a hog? Is it a dog? Is it a coyote? Is it a calf?
Throw is what will identify your target. Spill will help you navigate and be aware of your surroundings.
The last thing to think about in terms of lights, is shock isolation. Why can’t I just throw any old light onto my rifle? Well, filaments in lights are fragile. Under the shock of repeated recoil, your filament will break with regularity.
With newer technology high-output LEDs the option is there for a bezel that does not need to be isolated. An LED is not prone to the same breakage that a filament is, but the battery contacts need to be examined.
Most lights on the market use the same old technology to pull the juice out of the battery: bent spring steel. Under the repeated recoil impulse of your rifle, that spring steel will lose it’s tension, and your battery contact will become intermittent – at best. Those in the weapon light business have poured the necessary budget into development of battery contacts that can withstand repeated recoil impulse, assuring your light won’t go down when you need it most.
Flashlights are probably the most underrated AR15 accessory out there. A flashlight can be used for target identification among a thousand other things.
One last word: batteries. High output lithium CR123 batteries are now the industry standard in weapon lights. You may like AA batteries, but the truth is that they simply can’t power a gun light for the length of time you’ll need it. CR123batteries.com is a great place to buy them in bulk. They have approximately a 10 year shelf life. Also, rechargeable batteries were not made with weapon lights in mind.
Demonstrated need for a light.
Several years ago I remember riding along with my father-in-law looking for a cow who was supposed to be having a calf that night. He had a very bright spotlight to help us find her in the dark, as well as his headlights. While his headlights wouldn’t reach all the way across the field because they are designed more for spill than throw, his spotlight could really identify something a long way away.
Well, his spotlight went out, and we were left with headlights. I remember shining my rifle light at a dark corner of the field 200 yards away, and the shock in his voice as he asked me what in the world that was in my hands. It was my little 200 lumen scout light and it had plenty of juice to see the black cow in the back corner of his dark field. I also remember a little disgust in his voice that my rifle was doing what his million candela spotlight was supposed to be doing. Imagine what I could have done with the 500 lumen model!
The light has served me better than any other accessory I could get on my rifle – even a scope. It can be turned on when I’m searching my backpack for my car keys, identify a target, or light up our kill for the obligatory post-carnage photo.
I’m a firm believer that next to magazines and bullets, the weapon mounted light is the most essential piece of gear that can be put on a rifle. Every AR should have one.
BLUF:
Shoot shoot shoot. Your gun is only as good as how much ammo you put through it.
You got this new gun. It’s cool. You lay awake at night dreaming about taking out Osama Bin Laden, but you’ve not actually shot it. Or maybe you’ve only ever shot it to sight it in.
Maybe you thought that immediately upon picking it up, you’d get a sudden surge of adrenaline or hair would immediately begin growing on your chest like you had swallowed a giant testosterone tablet. Far from being a viagra tablet with a trigger, you found that after anticipating shooting this beast for months, now that you have it on the range, you really don’t know what to do with it. Do I shoot it fast? Sure. rat a tat tat tat tat tat tat tat. Ok, now what?
That AR15 you’re holding, provided it’s a good rifle, is the culmination of half of a century of firearms technology evolving into the black monster you now hold.
It’s smaller than you thought, right?
To the untrained, all that the AR15 has, say on an old Remington automatic deer rifle, is a bigger magazine. But to those willing to put in the time and effort, the AR15 represents a major evolution in ergonomics and maneuverability that simply isn’t matched by many other things out there.
Where to start: you.
Let’s begin with the stance starting at the bottom and work up.
Feet are the foundation for where the weapons platform touches the unmovable earth. This is where we get our stability and function as the rock solid piece of concrete against which our rifle rebuffs. Stand square to the target. Don’t do that goofy bladed stance. This is a man’s gun. Get those feet apart at least shoulder width. Now, making sure your hips stay square to the target, move your dominant foot to your six o’clock about 12 inches. This makes you less susceptible to letting that recoil knock you back onto your heels.
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Bend your knees. No football lineman stands with his legs locked. That’d be silly. Especially when he knows he’s about to encounter a force coming at him from the front. Bend your knees and take an aggressive and athletic lean forward at the waist. Get ready to deal with a force coming at you from the front.
With your shoulders square to the target, put the top of the stock on the collar bone directly above your nipple. Roll your shoulder in around the stock to create a pocket. Now your shoulder is holding the stock on the right side, your pectoral muscle on the bottom and left, and your cheek will press down.
With your dominant hand grip the rifle firmly. This is a gun, not a baby rabbit. Death grip not necessary, but you’re holding a firearm, be a man about it already.
Please. PLEASE don’t chicken wing your right arm. Your elbow should not be pointed outward from your body. Get that elbow pointed down at the ground. The more stable the platform under the gun, the less recoil will effect your body. If you chicken wing in my presence I will take pictures of you and make fun of you in blog posts.
Now, with the support hand find a comfortable spot on the fore grip to grab that thing. It can be way out there, or closer to the magwell – whatever gives you the most control over the muzzle. Me, I like to grip it as far out as I reasonably can, because I feel that my extended arm is stronger than my half-bent arm, and I have better control over where that pointy end is … well… pointed.
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Roll your head down to reach the sights, this usually means forward, not to the side. Some like to put their nose on the charging handle. This gives them a good index point by which to see their sights.
You’ve got a good start, now let’s talk about how this thing that goes bang in your hands works.
Next: the gun.
How does this thingy work. Here’s a quick .gif to get you familiarized:
First, put the magazine in the magwell. The bullets should be pointing forward. Then, take the charging handle and charge the gun by pulling back all the way and letting go. Don’t “ride” the charging handle forward. Let go like a bow and arrow.
Now, rotate the safety off (it’s near your thumb) and depress the trigger straight to the rear.
Don’t forget to line up your sights first.
Now, when your magazine is empty, the bolt will lock back to the rear. This means that you need to first, eject the empty mag. It’s empty, it’s not gonna do you any good. This button is in the middle of the right side of the gun, and can be depressed by the trigger finger if you are right handed.
Next, insert full mag. When you do, push it all the way to the top, and then give it a little bit of a tug downward to see if it caught. This is a good habit to get into, because it can cause a big malfunction if you don’t have your mag seated all the way.
Now, to release the bolt, hit the top of the ping pong paddle looking thing on the left side of the receiver. That’s called a bolt catch or bolt release. It will cause your bolt to go forward, stripping the first round off the top of the magazine.
Your gun’s useful again.
Last: what to tangibly work on at the range.
Lots of us have been there: you get your gun, you go shoot it, and then you don’t know what to do with it, so you put it up, knowing it’s ready if you ever want to shoot it again. But you don’t want to be mediocre, right? So what separates those who just have an AR15, from those who know how to run an AR15?
Go to the range and figure this stuff out. It’ll take you several trips.
#1 learn how to use your trigger.
This is the most important thing that you can do no an AR, besides aiming. Your trigger is the key to the success of your rifle. Sure, anyone can pull a trigger one time. But that’s why bolt actions are given to children to kill their first deer. It takes someone who knows a thing or two about their trigger, to pull it consistently, quickly, and effectively to be able to do that on an AR15 in an accurate way.
When you shoot the first few times, don’t instinctively let off the trigger. Hold it down. Build into your system the idea of follow-through. Hold it down and only release it when you’re ready to shoot again. Get your sights back on target, take a deep breath, then let off of the trigger until it clicks then pull it again. Never take your finger off of the trigger all of the way in between two quick shots. Your finger will not fall back onto the trigger in the same place and you are wasting the valuable time you could have been spending pulling the trigger another 1 or 2 times.
The best gun hands in the world go to the range every day, and what do they work on? Trigger. You can always improve your trigger pull.
#2 Aquiring sights.
It is SO easy to focus on the hog/threat/target when we’re shooting, and forget to aim the gun. Practice acquiring that clean sight picture, whether it is a red dot, a magnified scope, or open sights. Be quick on the sights, and slow on the trigger.
Learn to acquire the sights as soon as the gun comes into the pocket of the shoulder. Learn to acquire the shots immediately after you pull the trigger, to get back on target quickly. Learning to acquire that clean sight picture is what will help you to capitalize on the ability of the rifle to rapidly produce follow up shots.
#3 Recoil control.
Even guys who have shot tons of rounds downrange, get laxidaisical about gaining superiority over the recoil impulse of the gun. The gun has so little recoil, we think we can just shoot it like a .22, but we can’t. You must practice leaning into that rifle and not letting it rock you on to your heels, especially in a rapid fire string. Don’t be the guy who, with ever successive shot of his AR, stands up a little bit more, until he’s leaning backwards by the end of the string.
#4 Don’t waste bullets.
Make every bullet count. With costs of nearly .40 per round these days, I’m not friends with anyone who has enough ammo or money to throw a bunch of rounds out the window. You’ve proven nothing if you empty a magazine quickly into a target. So what. But if you empty a magazine all into the same hole in a target, well, now we’ve got something to cook with.
Every shot should teach you more than 1 thing. You shouldn’t just shoot a bullet to teach you to control recoil. You may be thinking about your recoil management, but you should also be able to analyze your shot placement, and have noticed your ability to pick up your sights after your shot. You should also be able to see if you exhibited proper follow-through on your trigger. Each pull of the trigger is a book waiting to be read, you just have to be aware enough to realize it.
#5 know your ballistics chart.
Depending on what zero you picked for how you will use your rifle, you need to know your gun.
I can’t tell you how many times my ignorance of my ballistics solution has cost me game, particularly in the 150 yard range. With my 300 yard zero, my bullets hit 5 inches above my crosshairs around the 150 mark. There is no substitute for the sort of confidence you gain when you completely understand the flight of your bullets.
#6 shooting from awkward positions
You should have the ability to put rounds where you need them to go even when shooting under a car, leaned up against a tree, hunkered down over a log, bending over a corner, etc. If I had a dime for every time I shot from a standard platform, I’d still be almost as poor as I am right now. But if I got that same dime every time I had to “make due” with something less than perfect, well, I could buy another AR15.
Click on image to enlarge
Click on image to enlarge
#7 malfunction clearance and reloading.
Because I shoot more than the average bear, I get my mags mixed up a lot, leading me to run with mags that I thought were full, but surprisingly were not. After my initial few shots, I realized I grabbed the wrong mag, and had to reload quickly. Two videos here:
and
You’ll notice that I had to reload, and if I didn’t do it quickly, it would cost me more shots on the hogs.
I should have done a better job of my reloads, and practice is the only thing that’ll make me better.
Also, malfunctions happen occasionally, and there have been times when I’ve needed to clear that jam in order to be able to get back into the game. There’s no substitute for practice.
You have a lot to work on. Hopefully this gives you a good start. I recommend you getting some good videos that will help you to understand from some industry experts (which I am most certainly NOT). Panteo Productions has some really knowledgeable guys that are all experts in their fields.
Perhaps the most valuable tool you can have is a partner that can help you to diagnose and push you in learning some of these things. Two guys working with each other on the range, pushing each other to become better, is SO much better than you going to the range by yourself and just trying to make due. You’re less apt to make excuses with someone else, and more apt to justify your mistakes to yourself.
Any old fool can shoot an AR. Go learn to run one.
You have a new AR15. And now that the frenzy is over, and you know that it will be at least the next Presidential election until you can barter with it for someone’s store of fresh water and beans, and you figure you want to shoot it. Good. It’s a shooting tool that needs to be used for it’s purpose.
But how do you use one of these things? Maybe you’re new to the platform, or maybe you’re just new to shooting in general. Let’s talk about some of the basic things that you’ll need to know in order to put your rifle to use.
First, the physics. Bullets fall from the moment they leave the barrel. If you drive a car off of a flat pier, it will eventually fall into the water. If you drive it faster, it will get farther, but it will still begin it’s downward trajectory the second it leaves that barrel. So too with bullets. So, with a bullet that falls as soon as it leaves the muzzle, how do we make it go as far as we want it to? We lob it. Just like a football. The farther we want it to go, the more we lob it into the air.
Zeroing a scope is nothing more than adjusting the sights to allow the bullet to lob more or less into the air – and then it doing that in a controlled way every time.
Here’s an illustration that I took from someone over at M4 carbine.net:
Click on Image to Enlarge
click image to enlarge
Armed with this information, let’s consider that if we lob the bullet from the end of the muzzle, and it flies in a parabolic trajectory, then the bullet crosses the plane of the scope twice: once on it’s way up, and once on it’s way down. How far apart those two crossings will occur depends on both the bullet weight, and the bullet trajectory. For our purposes here today, let’s narrow the conversation to the most popular AR15 bullet: the 55 grain M193 round. This will give us our constant in a world of variables.
First, you need to examine what you want to use your gun for. Are you going to be dialing in on some long ranges? Are you going to be clearing your house and never shooting past 50 yards? Are you going to be stretching it out to 300 or 350 for a coyote, while also wanting to have a good handle on anything nearer to you in the 75 yard range? These are different guns that you’re wanting, and you’re going to have to figure out what you want your gun to be good at. Let’s look at some zeros:
The 300 yard zero.
The 300 yard zero is the Marine Corps zero. It is a very good zero, if you understand that between 36 yards and 300 yards, you have a bullet that is going to hit above your point of aim, sometimes as much as nearly 5 inches! I’ve missed quite a few coyotes and hogs at 150 yards, because I wasn’t aiming below them.
If you want your rifle to come back down and meet your crosshairs at 300 yards, you need to first sight it in at 36. Now, as with all of these zeroes, you need to actually push your gun out to 300 yards and confirm the zero and make your final adjustments, but if it’s right on at 36, it will be close at 300.
The chart for the 300yard zero looks like this:
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click image to enlarge
You see that the barrel begins 2.6” below the line of the scope. The bullet is lobbed up to cross the path of the scope at 36yards, and then it comes back down again at the 300 yard mark. This let’s you reach out a long ways with the gun (300 yards is a long distance to shoot at a small coyote) with consistency. Just remember, the big deal with this zero is that at 175 yards, you have to aim 5 inches low, in order to hit where you want to hit. You need to be somewhat proficient with range estimation to use this zero.
The 100 yard Zero
If we lob that bullet so that the top of the parabola is hitting the line that the scope is looking down, the bullet only touches that path 1 time. This is a very simple solution to not having to decide when to shoot under or over a target, as you will only ever have to adjust upwards as your bullet gets farther and farther away.
Here is the chart for the 100 yard Zero.
Click on Image to Enlarge
click image to enlarge
You can easily see that to shoot a coyote at 300 yards, you’d have to raise the crosshairs 15 whole inches! And if you misjudged him by 25 yards, and that coyote were really 325, you would miss him by 5 inches. That’s not the sort of zero you would use on your gun, if you plan to use it out to 300 yards.
It IS however, the sort of zero you might use, if you only plan on using that gun inside of 200 yards. You see that the bullet is always inside of a 2” bulseye as long as it’s within 200 yards. That’s a great group at those close ranges, but let’s be honest,
The 225 Yard Zero (or the 50 yard zero)
I like this zero a lot. If you sight it in at 50, it is back on at 225. At the height of the trajectory, it’s only ever 2” high at any time. Now, your bullet is not going to be anywhere near the ballpark when you get to 300, but it’s a pretty good medium distance zero.
Here’s the chart on that one:
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And a graphic representing the various options:
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Now that you’ve picked which zero will perform best for you, a few pointers before you go off and start shooting your rifle.
First, You may have a rear sight that adjust for specific yardages. The KAC 600 meter sight is a very popular sight that I use on my rifle. The Matech rear sight is also a popular one. The KAC sights can be had right now on ebay for around 50$. This is an incredible deal as they usually sell for around $175. The Matech rear sights can be had for somewhere around $35.
These sights have adjustments on the rear sight to allow the user to quickly dial in a range, and expect the bullet to be there. The way to sight these in is a little different than if you have a regular sight.
First, you put the sight on the Z. This stands for zero. Zero the rifle at this marking. You do this by ADJUSTING THE FRONT SIGHT UP AND DOWN until you are hitting where you need to, and only touching the rear for left/right movements. Sight it in at 36 yards on the Z.
For the MATech rear sight, turn it to the 300 yard mark. Now, zero at 25 yards. Now, all of your adjustments will work.
Adjusting the front sight is done through depressing the button just on the muzzle side of the post, and rotating the post.
You always move adjustments, whether it is on a scope or a sight, in the direction that you want the bullet to travel on the paper. So, if I am missing low and left, I need to adjust the sights up and right. These directions will be indicated with markings on the sight itself.
I hope you get some good out of this. There is nothing that inspires confidence in one’s firearm than knowing the gun is on. Go spend some concentrated time just working with your gun. Every rifle will be a little different depending upon ammo, barrel length, atmospheric conditions. What I have given you above are generalities that will be very close to most guns, but probably not exact. There is no chart, and no substitute, for knowing your gun.
The AR15 platform is surprisingly versatile and impressively accurate for a short, mass produced firearm. It is perfectly capable of holding a 3” group at 100 yards, and many times much better than that.
The Cowboy Tactical Gear Blog 
