WWSD AR15 to 650yds: Practical Accuracy [InRange TV rifle | 1-8 ACSS Griffin Mil]

This video is brought to you by Slate Black Industries. For grips and accessories visit slateblackindustries.com. Jesus at least give us one good day of weather for practical actors. I know this is going to piss everybody off because we're going to shoot some influencer and youtube people's rifles and they're going to do really well but look at the windfall. Josh this is the blessed rifle and we have been blessed upon the day with low clouds and no winds. Pretty much the best sighting conditions, the best shooting conditions, but the problem with this rifle though I can point it out to you right away. There's no sniper button. I don't know how we're going to perform without the sniper button but ladies and gentlemen we shall persevere. All right I'm on a target one. Got him. On a target two. Those are up in the neck you saw yeah? Yeah. I'm on target three. Impact. Impact. Oh there's really tight groups too. Target four is going to be the gongs today. Okay. Impact. Impact. Wow dude that was that was sick. Uh one two three four five. Got it. Impact. Impact. Those are just on the bottom edge you saw? Yep. I'm on the 400 yard target. Impact. Impact. Okay. Wind is picking up a little bit it's coming from the back towards that direction. Yep. Okay I'm on at 450. Okay. Which is the base of the flag. Impact. Just off the left edge. Impact. Okay. On at our final target here at five. Impact. Wow center punch. Impact. Dude as expected I mean it's a laser beam. Yeah I mean this is what you get with the most current technology. I think something that we forget while we're running this show oftentimes is that we shoot so many legacy firearms and on top of that we're shooting so many uh types of ammunition that's just it's mil-spec ammo that we shoot a lot. So 55 grain mil-spec ball. Yeah. So dude do you want to try to shoot it a bit further? Uh yeah. I mean we definitely know that the rifle is capable to do it right? See if I can spot them. Just short. Just short. Right edge. Impact. I think that was also an impact but the plate was still moving from the first shot so I couldn't see it for sure. So that one was like I kept on bumping it up and it went to six mils before it hit. I mean I don't think that was from dispersion. I mean me being able to send a second shot off that quickly and still get a quick impact tag on it. Yep. I don't think it's a dispersion uh dispersionary thing. I'm wondering uh what the what the speed of the projectile coming out of the barrel is. As we walked out those were your first shots. Yes prior to this I only shot 20 rounds to zero it. Right. So this is also it goes to show you guys when you're running BDC or mil reticles or whatever and if you aren't chronoing the rifle specifically which in this instance we aren't. If you're not chronoing the rifle to to develop a dope chart and even if you are it's hyper important to confirm at range where your impacts are coming in. We just broke the course record the last go and this tied with that particular rifle. I don't know which rifle is going to be published. Yeah we don't know which video first. Yeah. Well let's head over to the debrief and talk about it a bit more. See you at the debrief. So turns out this is a very controversial rifle. I did not know that. When we did the debrief we did not really talk about any of the controversial points because that quite frankly we didn't know it and um it wasn't until I posted a few pictures on Instagram that there were a lot of people who gave us feedback on their concerns on the fragility of the components on this. Very peculiar though you're talking about people who had concerns on the polymer lower receiver which we've been using polymer lower receivers in firearms. Rifles for instance the G36 is a very well regarded assault rifle. The Bren 1, Bren 2 is widely fielded by the Czech Republic and you also have the SCAR 17 and 16 both also very widely fielded around the world. Pistols you have the Glock, you have my Walther that are all polymer components. Polymers have progressed to a point to where they're actually quite durable if you engineer it correctly. Obviously if you use the same dimensions as the aluminum lower you're going to run into problems with the polymer giving up giving away. But then the other part that I thought was interesting was the concern that the carbon fiber handguard could not withstand the durable use. This was particularly interesting to me because one of my favorite rifles the Mark 12 Mod 0 uses a carbon fiber handguard. In fact it was from the early 2000s and has seen significant use in warfare by the U.S. Army Special Operations. So what am I saying? I want to hear everybody's comments on this because it is a rifle that is bringing some new ideas into the community and I think that is healthy for the community. After all new ideas like the Accuracy International chassis system was a very healthy idea that was brought into the community but there were also a lot of people when that was brought to the community they were saying it's not going to work. I'm curious to hearing what you guys are saying but I would say just be careful when you're making comments to not make blanket comments that turns out there were success stories like the Mark 12, the G36s, Brens, and Scars out there. But anyways let's get back to the debrief I mean this is just an interjection. I feel like it's a reset of expectation because in as you said I think we potentially pseudo deceive ourselves when we start to think about what is and isn't reasonable and possible based on the success or lack thereof we've had shooting the different systems out on the range many of which are shot slick iron sights ball ammunition like you said so when you take a modern configuration with as you said modern manufacturing techniques with some of the best possible ammunition you could be shooting for this particular setup with a modern optic with a gradiated reticle like you know we're setting it up for absolute success and we also had very favorable environmental conditions right so I mean that all played into a very successful run even if it were unfavorable environmental conditions I feel like it would still just work just fine I mean we know of course 500 yards for 77 grain is kind of like child's play quite frankly it's not like shooting 76239 in high winds right do you still have to buck winds somewhat yes of course you do in fact we do have one shot that was off due to wind call on my part I would say but zero to three I deliberately shot on the heads for all of those targets and not just like headshots but I was like I was pushing it yeah you were you were slamming them pretty fast too yeah yeah all right I'm on at 150 target one impact impact okay you are a troll well it goes to demonstrate one of the major points of conversation that we have about lightweight setups which for those who might not know what this is or the design principle behind it this is basically like an ultra light build right and the reason this thing exists is ian and carl over at in range forgotten weapons were coming up with the what were the tenets in designing and stone eugene stoner designing the m16 or the ar-15 right and so in thinking about that we realized well when stoner originally tried to build the ar-15 concept well ar-10 which turned into the ar-15 there were some basic principles that were in play which was the use of the most modern materials yep for an extremely lightweight reliable rifle yep so you're talking about ultra lightweight setup no real snag points using entirely new materials because polymer was very new at the time at the time when you're thinking about the m14 like even your fowls were what were running wood right so polymer is a very a very new type of technology for firearms itself um aluminum as well I mean most of it was steel so you're talking about a hyper lightweight projectile hyper lightweight chassis when compared to you know previous things and you get an item that is drastically more nimble and easier to just hump around the jungle for you know like 10 20 clicks right which to that point it's funny because our minds are wired to think that heavy is good here is a sign of reliability yes you know as boris the blade runner would say it's funny because you look at it from from from afar the hand guard is very attractive it's carbon fiber it's got that beautiful carbon fiber print on it I then go to lift it out of the box and the first thing that shoots through my mind is this feels chintzy like this feels cheap because of how light it is right but it's like no wait wait this is the reason why they did this it's it's because they wanted something super lightweight that actually still performs right and then you realize at that point as you're pulling it out of the box that you just had like a boomer moment of the same guys who were turning in their m14s for the brand new mattel m16 that is lightweight and well they they said it was like a bb gun because it was made of plastic and metal right so to circle all of that back you have your ultra lightweight build and you were shooting it very fast on the like 0 to 300 area with the expressed purpose of demonstrating that despite it being lightweight recoil control in that type of an environment is still perfectly sufficient and capable granted now you have plopped on a different muzzle device it does give you a bit of enhancement in that area but all things considered like marginal enhancement for this particular rifle I felt that it was so light that I wanted some you know a little more give yourself a five to ten to twelve percent advantage on the recoil control capability by by slapping a break which makes sense and obviously again it it worked right like you were able to hammer the targets out on those closer range shots like very fast in a very tight cone of fire and that's one of the main areas again that people would generally critique when it comes down to ultra light setups the other being whether or not it can be used in a more precision role because again in small amounts of force added into the firearm cause greater amounts of deviation it's part of why when you get into precision setups they're generally speaking really dang heavy right yeah right so I mean when you get to PRS shooters they hang weights literally just putting weights on the gun for the purpose of keeping it more stable right but again for the context of what we were doing just shooting sub torsos out to five and I think we took some shots also out to 650 to record some hits yeah and they were successful all successful without any real issue and I would say too so when I put this together for the course I could have used the micro dots that Ian and Carl like to use on on theirs which perfectly fine it would have been an incredibly like paperweight at that point like sub paperweight but I decided to use the SLX 1-8 Griffin Mill and that was a deliberate choice I wanted to find something that was still light enough that still went on the light realm yeah right but at the same time gave me some type of PID self spotting capability when you know when I was shooting the rifle when you look at this you've got the arrow mount which is ultra light and you've got the SLX which is also on the much lighter end of the LPVOs it's definitely a weight conscious optic and again when we pick this up like if I pick this up it's still I don't consider it this is remotely close to being it's still lighter than this right precisely so which this compared to the stuff that you and I usually shoot much lighter yeah so so again to the point of having an LPVO in this setup I think it works absolutely perfectly especially because some of the choices you chose when selecting the mount and the optic were to maintain that that weight discipline that that we're after with the overall build here so on the topic of accessories I know Josh and I bounce between this all the time and he's actually brought this up but we forgot to talk about it in the debrief yes there are obviously your grip stops your vertical fore grips your bipod mounting surfaces your picatinny rail interfacing but is MLOK suitable for mounting IR laser aiming devices the bottom line is the best practice is to have an integrated pic rail on top integrated into a metallic hand guard for the current technology and that provides a very solid mounting surface for infrared devices now can it be done on carbon fiber yeah of course you can mount MLOK picatinny slots on the top I mean it'll work until it doesn't work I suppose but it's doable for sure now this was again very peculiar to me that people would bring that up as a point of concern for accessories because that literally is the carbon fiber hangar that you use on the mark 12 mod zero a lot of times guys had a an extended swan rail to mount like a clip-on night vision device or they would have your d-balls or pec units on the side whether you're trying to call in indirect direct fire whether you're trying to use it as passive aiming so is it possible to mount infrared and night vision capable devices onto carbon fiber handguards I mean I think the answer is yes it just depends on your specifications when you're calling out for a contract now how many people do actually run infrared night vision laser devices on their rifles out there in the general public and does that warrant for a picatinny rail integrated carbon fiber handguard that is enabled for that I mean I think that's a conversation for whoever is purchasing the firearm for their own use in conclusion then for my purposes the weight to performance balance is heavily weighed towards performance because generally speaking when I am going to have my firearm it's in the context of being in my vehicle or immediately near my vehicle in my home or on the range it's not something that I'm having to go hump around and climb mountains with if it were I'm sure my perception and philosophy on which gun I'd take and which gear I'd add to it would be adjusted right so for me I like lightweight rifles and it's not because I can't carry a rifle I mean in in the military humping I don't know like 10-15 miles and you know with a 240 or 249 I mean that's that's normal that is kind of like a base requirement of stuff that doesn't mean that you need to kit everything out to that weight for the sake of getting out to that weight I mean in that perspective a machine gun is that weight because it is a machine gun right just because right just because you can carry the weight doesn't mean that you have to or should carry the weight right and this is this is a topic that frequently comes up in like M14 and FAL episodes for some reason like people when I say that I would rather have something lighter weight it's not that I cannot carry that but I could go longer distances if I had less of that weight on the rifle another fringe benefit to that is when you're shooting in strange and awkward positions having a weapon and bullpups are great for this either balanced or rear balanced making it very pointable is very advantageous when you're shooting from awkward positions per se now again the muzzle brake is there for a reason because a lightweight rifle is not the best at soaking up recoil so two ways you could do this tuning the gas system but then also having a decent muzzle brake technically having a suppressor as well but I think this is a good point of talking about the light the pencil barrel actually when I was shooting it on range to you know as as we were doing evaluations we saw once it was suppressed the using the OSS suppressor it did not add any gas in the system but it was dropping the point of impact about four to five inches now if you are unaware of that that is severe but if you are aware of it and know that that is your drop then that is okay however I would say so my theory is because it's got a thin barrel inside of a free floated system to where there is no other support for it when you try to droop the barrel down I'm theorizing and we could test this I'm theorizing this and we could test this down on the range is that when you let's say shoot if you're shooting under obstacles your rifle is banked to a side potentially that would give you a nine o'clock point of impact shift or a three o'clock depending on which way you're holding it that is more of an issue than a point of impact shift in my opinion right it needs to be consistent one way or the other like you want it to be consistent so it's something that we need to look at at a heightened level yeah I agree so obviously with 77s highly lethal both speed and it being able to handle the distances that you would typically throw at a carbine like this weighing in less than this in the entirety of the package that is impressive agreed so I think we'll spend some more time on this but we do need to thank Ian and Carl for setting us up with the rifle and also thank Brownells for sending the rifle out for us to evaluate let's see what else we come up with in in the classic see you guys next time subscribe to our newsletter at slateblackindustries.com where you can get updates on nine hole review publications and access the practical accuracy scoreboard to help you argue with people on the internet on which rifle performs better on the practical accuracy course we maintain this newsletter to be majority gun content with nine hole reviews updates per every email with less than 33 marketing content subscribe today on slateblackindustries.com six this is roger over zero nine one one pack green green over roger over one big door two packs