The AR Rifle

Hey, it’s Todd Jarrett, we’re back with another pro tip, but we are using rifles today.  One of my favorite drills, that my students have always told me they love, is the Round About Drill. It gives me five different directions, and basically, teaches my students on safety mounting the rifle, trigger control, and of course the important part, foot work.  What I like about it is it gives me balance every single time I turn from one of the positions. It allows me to mount the rifle, as quickly as possible to the shoulder, acquiring the target and breaking the shot off. Learning how to be able to mount the gun up and find the target, will be something that we will be playing with, also. But the key thing here is balance. There’s a lot of people buying AR type weapons today, one of my favorite guns to play with on the range. Let me show you some of the operating controls on here, if you are not familiar with them.  Of course, we have the safety that sits on this side over here, clearly marked.  We have a bolt release over here, which loads the gun. We have the mag catch over here, and in the back of the gun there is a charging handle, which also can be loaded there. This right here would be our forward assist. Let me load it up for you, and I will show you what’s going on.      There are two ways to be able to load your gun, from the bolt release or the charging handle. The bullet is on the right insert in, pull down make sure it locks in, push the bolt release in, pull the magazine out, the bullet is on the left, so you know the gun is charged. Hit your forward assist and you know that you are loaded.    Remember, when ever using an AR type rifle, the hand guard must be on top of the prop at all times, never take your barrel and lay it on the prop. If this happens, you will miss the shot every single time because it is a free floating barrel inside that hand guard.  Lets move to a barricade, and I will show you a couple of things there. What you see me demonstrating, here, is understanding whenever you have a support that you can use to stabilize the gun, never use the barrel like we talked about earlier. Make sure you use the forearm, the handguard. Get good balance and bend those knees down, and get a good lock-in, by using your hand to pull against the firearm itself, to allow you to support that shot and get that round off.    Now when swapping to the left. By putting my hand guard up, I want to make sure my hand comes underneath of it around the prop, making sure I am locking around the back of the prop, if I have the ability to do that. It allows me to stabilize the gun with a nice firm platform. Keep your knees loose and it will increase your overall accuracy by using a prop in that method.    Well, guess what we learned, a few things about the rifle. Lets put them all together and I’m going to shoot a run for you. Good luck with the rifle, and I’ll see you soon on the range. CLICK HERE FOR PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION