Tag: Rifle

Pat Goodale – Practical Firearms Training (PGPFT) Tactical Rifle AAR

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[Same introduction, note, and disclaimer as before.]

Ammunition (5.56x45mm NATO):

  • M193: Standard 55-gr ball cartridge, good for bulk shooting / practice.
  • Mk262: 77-gr Sierra MatchKing, good long-range performance, match-quality (and price)
  • Mk318: 62-gr, USMC standard. Hunting bullet – Open Tip Match Rear Penetrator (OTMRP) (62 gr. Federal Fusion).
  • M855A1: US Army “green” round (lead-free). Politicized development & adoption process.

Manufacturers:

  • Entry Level: M&P Sport
  • Low-Medium: Rock River Arms, Anderson
  • High-Midrange: BCM, Colt
  • Premium: Daniel Defense, LWRC

Sights:

  • Red dots need adjustments to avoid vanishing (too weak) or ‘blooming’ (too strong) depending on lighting conditions.
  • Red dot sights tend to ‘fuzz out’ (astigmatism) with (shooter’s) age.
  • Low-Power Variable Scopes
    • 1x-4x, 1x-5x, 1x-6x, etc.
    • Used by lots of military special forces
    • Have the lowest magnification as the initial & default. Once on target, then ramp it up – otherwise, like searching through a straw.
    • Throw levers can make the magnification adjustment significantly easier.
  • Expect scope + mount to be ~½ of cost of rifle. (LaRue mounts.)
  • With good quality mounts (indexed and repeatable) can hot-swap between red dot and scope.

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GORUCK Rifle Case / LaRue Covert Rifle Case

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Note: You can’t actually buy the GORUCK Rifle Case at the moment (it’s been available through a pre-order, an initial run, and a second pre-order to date). It’s probably 50/50 if it becomes standard production this time around, and even then, outside of their core rucks GORUCK often comes and goes on inventory.

(Not that there’s anything wrong with this; it’s just a different mentality that you have to be willing to accept. GORUCK is a small, high-quality, American-made gear company; they don’t have a logistics tail of Chinese factories & warehouses [although, fine, I admit that I don’t know where their Cordura, thread, etc. comes from…] nor front-end resellers buying in bulk.

Up-front for what it’s worth, if the GORUCK case had been available when I bought the LaRue case, I would have ponied up the extra for the GORUCK case. I’m happy with the LaRue case, but I’m also a GORUCK aficionado.

Now that I have both, though, they’re similar enough and different enough that I’ve got a better understanding of both of them; enough to provide a bit more of an overview than “Yup, it’s a case, it holds a rifle.”

Further note that my point of view on this is that of an OCPD geek. If you want to improve your shooting, buy a case of cheap ammo and go practice. If you want to take a piece of gear downrange, buy a pallet and test it to destruction yourself.

If you’re bummed that Sortimo T-BOXXen still aren’t readily available stateside and really wish that we could all just get along and choose one of MIL-STD-1913 / KeyMod / M-LOK already, then yeah.=ƎE=)

Both cases are advertised / designed to either hold an assembled SBR or a broken-down carbine or rifle. (I’m using my go-to AAC 300 BLK 9″ and a Noveske Light Recce 16″ here.)

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GORUCK FAD Rifle 002 AAR

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Update 2016-05-13: If you’re interested in GORUCK Firearms Gear and missed out on the latest pre-order, my brother’s put together a quick tutorial about upgrading a regular rucksack into a Shooter-style Ruck:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Goruck/comments/4ipyk9/homemade_ruckshooter_ruck_upgrade/

Note – I wrote this up for my own reference from my scrawled notes the week after the FAD. If anything ended up misremembered or flat-out wrong, that’s on me.

No idea how long it’ll be up, but the Facebook page with pictures and such is here.

Introduction:

We started off hanging out in the parking lot for a few minutes as people trickled in – lots of GORUCK gear in evidence, obviously, and mostly young to younger-middle-aged males. An interesting contrast to the mostly older men and women showing up in equal numbers for the handgun class being put on by the range the same morning.

Snow started falling fairly heavily and, as fun as it would have been to see the vortex trails from the full firing line, I’d foregone a base layer of tights and was just in jeans… Fortunately, it let up by the time we came back outside after the briefing.

The Cadre called everyone into the clubhouse and introduced themselves (there had been a brief delay due to three or four traffic stops by State Police on the way over). Cadre Machine was leading the course, with Cadres Jesse and Logan assisting.

Everyone confirmed their name, age, occupation, GORUCK experience, and firearms experience. As you might expect, mostly male, mostly young – thirty plus ten minus five, a preponderance of police / EMT / firefighters / forensics scientists, a few techies, and most had done several GORUCK events.

There were several, though, who hadn’t done any GORUCK events, and several who hadn’t fired a gun before. Only a couple had serious experience with the AR platform (besides the Cadre, of course), though most had some pistol and general firearms experience.

Standard uniform was Arc’teryx jacket and cargo pants, supplemented with sweatshirts and morale patches. Apart from a couple of guys with chest rigs or battle belts and one guy running drop-leg, the tacticool-aid was at a minimum.

Scene set, we drove over to the club’s law enforcement range and got out our kit, set our stuff up underneath the shelter, and then joined Cadre Machine in classroom formation out on the range.

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