Gun Nuts Media

I spent the the last week putting 800-1000 rounds through Smith & Wesson’s latest addition to the M&P-15 line of AR15 pattern rifles, the MOE version. “MOE” stands for “Magpul Original Equipment”; the rifle comes from the factory wearing a Magpul stock, pistol grip, handguard, and the Magpul MBUS plastic backup sights.

From Gunsite Trip

I didn’t shoot the M&P-15 with the plastic sights, however I spent a good chunk of the third day shooting an M&P-22 that had been kitted out with the Magpul parts, and I have to say that I liked the plastic sights. The rifle itself is a great idea, as the platform comes from the factory with many of the “upgraded” parts you’d see users add to their rifle after the fact. The foregrip would be an excellent platform to mount a light, although I can’t recommend it for a vertical foregrip as that can introduce a bit of wobble, as a light bearing platform it’s excellent.

Of course, the real question is how did the rifle shoot? Well, over three days in the Arizona desert, it never puked on me once. And I don’t say that lightly, as we were shooting in conditions like those pictured below.

From Gunsite Trip

That’s dust blowing around the guns; or as they call it down there, Gunsite Fog. In the picture is Matt from Smith & Wesson, the M&P product line manager. His personal M&P-15 MOE is fitted with a quad rail handguard and a Surefire muzzle brake. Let me tell you, that Surefire muzzle break works, although it’s less than pleasant to be shooting next to it.

Three days in the Arizona desert with around 1000 rounds through each gun, and the guns kept running. Some guys did no maintenance to their guns during that time, and all I did was squirt a couple of drops of oil on the bolt of my gun to keep it lubed up. I was absolutely impressed with my rifle, so much so that I decided to buy the rifle. I don’t have a whole lot of AR-15 platform rifles, but the two that I have now are both winners. I have a ton more pictures as well, including ones from the suppressor/night shoot.

Someone asked me over the weekend how I would describe the Gunsite Carbine class I had just finished during the week.  I took a couple of minutes to think about it, and decided that the best way to summarize the class would be as such: Gunsite doesn’t teach you to shoot – they teach you to think.  That’s an important distinction, because shooting is a mechanical skill, whereas thinking like a fighter is all mental.  I have to give credit to Ed Head and the training staff at the range – the collection of writers and industry people represented a wildly diverse set of skills, backgrounds, and shooting talents.

The class started with zeroing the shooter’s rifles, the excellent S&W M&P-15 MOErifle, which I’ll have a more detailed review of later on in the week.  The rifles were all mounting the new Trijicon 3.5×35 ACOG, with their new “green donut” reticle.  After the rifles were zeroed in at 50 yards on the first day, we starting the real training working on snap shots at 3-10 yards with the ACOGs.  Because of the magnification and the height of the sight, my personal rig had about 4 inches of sight offset at 5 yards.  For those not familiar, sight offset is what happens when your sight plane is higher than the bore of the rifle – inside of certain ranges, the bullet’s trajectory doesn’t change enough to make the sight line and bullet flight path intersect.  The result of this is that inside 25 yards with the ACOG sighted for 50, you had to hold 1-4 inches higher on the bullet point of impact.  If you were shooting for a center of mass shot, this wasn’t a concern, however on close range headshots it was important to remember to put the green donut higher than your desired point of impact.

On the second day of class, we really go into the shooting – snaps, failure drills, non standard responses, all the good stuff.  The second day was capped with a night shoot, utilizing the Crimson Trace MVF-515, their new combo light/laser vertical grip.  Shooting at seven yards in near darkness with the laser as your aiming point of reference was a real eye opening experience.  If you have a rifle for your home defense weapon, and you don’t at the very least have a light on it, you need to get one now.  Once the MVF-515 is available, it would honestly be my first choice.

The last day of the class was divided in to two parts – the first half of the class went to shoot The Scrambler and then take a run through The Pit, one of Gunsite’s many shoot houses.  After lunch, my half of the class went back to the square range to do more non-standard response drills, and I spend the afternoon shooting the Smith & Wesson M&P-22 – their .22 LR AR trainer.  As far as the morning went, my favorite exercise was shooting the Scrambler.  I have never considered myself much of a rifleman, and that particular course of fire gave me an excellent opportunity to test the new skills I had learned during the week.

For those not familiar, the Scrambler is an outdoor course of fire, consisting of 7 targets that must be engaged from 7 different shooting positions.  Targets vary in distance from 35 (I think) to 85 yards.  Each target may only be engaged with 2 shots, which means if you miss twice, you’re done on that target and have to take the misses.  You can really feel the influence of Jeff Cooper’s love of big game hunting, as the Scrambler requires you to get into a shooting position and make a fast, accurate single shot on a distant target.

My week at Gunsite was excellent – the quality of the instruction was simply top notch, no ifs ands or buts about it.  I went in to the class as someone who could shoot a rifle, and I left with a much better understanding of the mechanics and thought process behind fighting a rifle.