Sniper

SCATTERED SHOTS (PART 4)

I originally planned to have the second part of the rifleman post up today but it is a holiday and I wanted to go hunt for Easter eggs. So instead i thought I would do another scattered shots, where I will show you some random things that caught my interest this week or may feature into upcoming articles.

First up is an image that has been around for a while. It was from a report on Hmong people still fighting the communists in the mountains of south east asia. The M16A1 below was carried by one of the Hmong. He had been carrying it and using it in the jungle since the Vietnam war. But yeah. only the AK is tough…

If you haven’t seen the John Wick films you are really missing out on some great shoot’em up action movies. If you have seen them I am sure you will “get it”. It, in this case, gave me a great laugh.

I don’t remember what news story I snatched this image from but I am really glad I thought to save it. Proof that every country has their own Top. Men. In this case in Africa. Nothing says elite like using your camel bak as frontal armor. Hey, water does a good job slowing down bullets so maybe he is on to something. I don’t think that is how you are supposed to wear your gas mask though.

good trigger discipline though

After the recent Kalifornia senator decided to run for POTUS, some worthy made this flag up..

A friend of the website and maker of fine facebook groups about the M1911, has shared with me this picture of his own BREN 10. Stuart has promised to write a guest article about his BREN10 so we can all look forward to that. Until then..

A certain 1980s TV show was clearly on his mind when he took this picture.

With the .gov in the state it’s in and the FBI showing itself to be the most top of the TOP. MEN. It felt like a good time to remember that time the Top Men saved the hell out of those kids in Waco, then posed by their burnt out bodies like trophies. Remember what Ronaldus Magnus said, the scariest words in the english language as “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”

Beyond the insanity of that image is the noteworthy detail that the sniper’s rifle has one of the rare LEO used Unertl 10x scopes. Which is the same model used by the USMC on the M40A1 for many years.

’nuff said.

Above is a scan or picture of a picture, taken on an old gun magazine about the then new Ruger varmint rifle in .220swift. The Unertl Target/Varmint scope being the only thing of interest. As for the author’s claim that the M77 was accurate, I never found that version of the M77 much to get excited about in the accuracy department.

I have always liked this image above. Yea, yeah its pure vintage FUDD stuff but I still have a soft spot in my heart fore the outdoor and hunting stuff from days gone by. What I like most about this is the longer you study it, the more neat little details you notice.

Have a medical emergency and can’t afford to go to the sawbones? Try this new pain relief!





This image of a rifle with silencer after heating up a bit I thought was pretty damn cool. The hog shooting must have been furious indeed.

I run across this guy’s political cartoons posted on social media pretty often. He clearly isn’t afraid to give them some edge. I did have a chuckle over this one. Don’t no one get asshurt and tattle to my mommy about it.

Last is a picture of the Knight’s Armament M110 Sniper system in all its glory with all it’s kit.

KeyMod vs M-LOK

M-LOK Left, KeyMod right

We were asked, “What are the pros and cons of M-Lok vs Keymod?”

Long ago there was no standard for attaching stuff to firearms. We use sling studs, bayonet lugs, hose clamps, bespoke custom mounts, etc.

Then came the MIL-STD-1913 Picatinny rail. And all was well. It took some time for people to move away from the weaver rail, but eventually most of the world adopted the 1913 rail. Except for Zee Germans, who as always thought they could do better. They came up with their own spec for rails, where they took the surface most likely to get damaged in use and make that the critical dimension. Thus the NATO spec rail was born.

Then people wanted smaller and slicker hand guards. Companies started milling off the rail section and offering bolt on rail sections. But each company had their own system. While the bolt spacing was somewhat standardized due to the sizing of Picatinny rail, how the rail section interfaced was not standardized. KAC, LMT, Larue, Colt, etc all had their own various rail attachments for their slick handguard.

VLTOR designed a new mounting system in 2012. Somewhat similar to the old post and slot system used in shelving, they included a taper on the mounting tab and recoil lugs. Best part is that they released the design as open source, so any company could use it for free.

Noveske and Bravo Company were early adopters and helped popularize the system. It looked like it was going to be the next standard. But then something interesting happened.

Before we get to what happened, lets talk about the other option, M-LOK.

Magpul came up with a new mounting system on their Masada and their early MOE line of accessories. They had slots cut(or molded) into the hand guards allowing accessories to be bolted to the slots. This was 2009. But this MOE slots sucked. They were inconsistent, and the backside of the slot had to be accessed to install an accessory.

In 2014, Magpul came up with a new standard, the M-LOK. M-LOK used slots where the accessory would lock in using a rotating T-Nut. M-LOK is free licensed, not open source like KeyMod. So people can made it freely, but they have to get permission from Magpul. This way Magpul ensures people don’t deviate from spec.

Wow, writing the history there took longer than I thought this article would be.

So what are the cons:

KeyMod accessories can be installed wrong. When I first mounted a KeyMod QD swivel, the next day I read about people mounting Keymod accessories backwards. I said, “How could anyone mount one of these backwards?” Then I found out that I mounted mine backwards. Doh.

Also some companies are cutting corners and making KeyMod accessories out of spec. Either missing the critical taper on the lugs, or missing recoil lugs.

As for M-LOK. M-LOK accessories protrude into the rail, so in areas with little clearances they can be an issue. Or sometimes the screws can protrude enough to touch a barrel in a narrow free float tube.

M-LOK screws protruding past the hand guard

It looked like KeyMod was winning the modular handguard war. Many were pushing it as the superior mounting system and it looked like the Army was going to adopt it for use on newer hand guards and sniper rifles.

Then we get to the interesting test. NSWC-Crane did a test between the two. They deemed M-LOK as being better.

https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2017/armament/McGee19427.pdf

Overall, test and evaluation demonstrated that the M-LOKTM modular rail system surpassed the performance results achieved by other modular rail systems. In repeatability testing, M-LOKTM allowed for the repeated installation of the same accessory rail in the same location on a handguard with an average point of aim (POA) shift of 1.3 MOA, as low as one quarter the average POA shift observed by other modular rail systems. Drop test results demonstrated that M-LOKTM systems maintain securement of accessories to the handguard and sustain less damage from impact forces than some other modular rail systems. Failure load testing demonstrated that M-LOKTM systems support the highest load of all modular rail systems tested. In fact, the test equipment used to interface with 1913 accessory rails secured with the respective modular rail system across testing repeatedly failed prior to failure of the M-LOKTM attachment system. Even so, testing of the M-LOKTM systems failed at loads as high as over three times the maximum failure load of some other modular rail systems. NSWC Crane recommended to USSOCOM that the M-LOKTM modular rail system be utilized over the alternative systems tested. USSOCOM has chosen to incorporate the M-LOKTM modular rail system in acquisition efforts including the Suppressed Upper Receiver Group (SURG) and Advanced Sniper Rifle (ASR).

Since this test, interest in KeyMod has been reduced, but it is far from dead. M-LOK is gaining much more popularity.

M-LOK design of just being simple slots has allowed M-LOK mounting slots to be added to a great deal of accessories for other older firearms. Newer gun designs are able to have thin aluminum hand guards with simple slots milled in them allowing for the end user to add what ever accessories they deem fit.

Both are good, but now the consensus is that M-LOK is better.

I don’t get the appeal of .300 Blackout

Long ago I was at the range and one of the regulars was talking about how he had loaded some .300 Whisper rounds and that they were so super quiet. Everyone was so excited to hear them, that it was suppose to be like shooting a silenced rifle. I was working as a range officer at the time so we arranged for the line to be called hot just for this guy so we could hear him shoot.

A shot was fired. I was so very disappointed because it sounded like any other gunshot.

.300 Whisper was changed slightly, and became the .300 AAC Blackout. Robert Silvers did some brilliant marketing and made it popular.

I have heard and read some really outlandish claims about the .300 BLK. Had someone tell me it makes .308 obsolete. I’ve seen many claims online that a suppressed subsonic .300 is hollywood quiet. I’ve even seen more than one person proclaim that the U.S. Military needs to replace all the rifles, carbines, machine guns, and sniper rifles with .300 Blackout. Claims like that made me even more skeptical about the round.

A more realistic comparison is 7.62×39 Russian or .30-30 Winchester. Both are good rounds, but I don’t see anyone clamoring for the U.S. Military to switch to either of them. .300 BLK does have the advantage of using a wider variety of bullet weights than either of those two other cartridges.

For someone plinking unsuppressed, 7.62×39 is far more available and cheaper. .30-30 has more than proven it self over the years.

It seems to me the best strength of the .300 Blackout is out of short barrels. You can have a subgun sized weapon with better performance than a pistol caliber.

An overlooked plus of the .30 cal bore for special operations would be that the barrel would drain quickly when exiting water. Unlike the issues with capillary action keeping water in a 5.56 bore.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/202468.pdf

Subsonic .300 BLK provides muzzle energy similar to a .45 ACP. Subsonic .300 BLK is more like a pistol cartridge than a rifle round. But it retains the greater flash and blast of a rifle. With the really short barrels and super sonic ammo, you are talking similar performance to an M1 Carbine firing .30 carbine.

I often see the comment of a short barreled AR15 in .300 BLK as a replacement for the MP5. That makes sense as the MP5 is old, large, heavy, has a worse manual of arms. But if you are looking for the smallest package, a SMG with the mag in the grip would be even smaller than an AR15 style weapon.

I don’t really see the appeal. Certainly not a bad round, but what is the real niche of it?

Optic of the week: Leupold MK6 1-6 CMR-W 7.62

This is the most awesome optic that I am not going to recommend.

I’ve been selling off some of the stuff I wasn’t using. I ended up getting this scope in trade for a scope I wasn’t using and wasn’t going to use. I wouldn’t purchased this scope outright, but now that I have it, I really love it.

The MK6 1-6 is kind of an odd duck. It is most often seen with the CMR-W reticles which are most like an ACOG BDC with addition milradian hash marks and wind hold marks. It has a very bright daylight visible illumination, great turrets, an awesome 1x setting, a really nice battery cap, etc. But the list price is insane, and it is build for to be used in a way that I think makes it less preferable for most people.

There are two issues which I think makes the MK6 1-6 the wrong choice.
First is cost. MSRP is $2859.99
I’ve seen them sold used, with a mount for less than half that. Even so, that is pricey. While this scope is great, I wouldn’t pay that much for it. I only have once because I traded a much cheaper scope for it.

Second is the role of the scope.
There is a spectrum between speed and precision. A reflex sight is built for speed, and that 42X bench rest scope is built for precision. As magnification increases, users tend to want something geared more towards precision. This scope has a course BDC reticle and coarse adjustments, it is more like an ACOG+ than a mini-sniper scope. Most people I’ve talked to would rather have a mini-sniper scope these days. Now we have all sorts of new 1-8X and 1-10X that better fit that role over this scope. It is as if this scope is obsolete before it came to the market.

The glass is imported, so it doesn’t say “Made in the USA” I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t agree that foreign glass is better.

The turrets on this scope lock at zero and have a button to release them. If you press the button and turn it away from zero, they are no longer locked and you can turn them normally. Each click is clearly felt and barely audible. I found it really easy to set the zero on these as once I loosen the cap, turning it to zero locked the rotation, allowing me to just re tighten the screws. I would be perfectly happy if all my scopes had turrets like these.

These scopes turrets are .2 milradian adjustments. So about .72MOA per click. This allows the user to dial in up to about a 900m zero in a single turn, but also clearly shows that this is not a scope for precision shooting. I don’t think of this as a downside, but it is certainly an unpopular choice.

This is the best scope at 1X I have ever used. It felt the most like an Aimpoint than any other.

If you are properly aligned with the scope, the illumination is amazing. At 1X it is the flattest, nicest, most Aimpoint like view I have seen out of a magnified scope. But due to the lighting system this scope uses, if you are slightly off axis it dims greatly.

Lined up and the reticle is very bright
Move your head slightly and it dims.

The CMR-W BDC reticle is in meters. The 5.56 version goes to 900m (about 984 yards) and the 7.62 version goes to 1200m.

The center dot is for 200m. To the left and right there are mRad hash marks and a mRad vertical scale on the left. Along side the bullet drop chart there are wind lead marks for 10 and 20 mile per wind hold. Also on the left side of each distance there is a range finding tool.

A side note, I highly recommend when you are zeroing a scope, that is new to you, to start at close distances. This scope is was set 9 inches low at 25 yards. Had I started at 50 or 100 yards I would have been well off the target.

The battery compartment has a recessed button and flips open

The battery compartment makes for easy and fast battery changes and removes the chance of cross threading a cover back on. For the optics with short battery life, they all should have battery compartments like this.

The 20mm objective lens looks tiny in the 34mm tube.

I really enjoy shooting with and using this scope. But I do not recommend anyone buy one. Doubly so at list price. Optics design and tech is rapidly advancing. Now there are cheaper and smaller 1-8X scopes like the Nightforce NX8. When I first used the MK6 I thought it felt heavy and clunky. I was sort of surprised when I read it is the same weight as some much smaller scopes I own. It isn’t really heavy for what it is, but it is large. I think it feels clunky and overkill for an AR15, but less of a long range precision scope than you would want on a .308 Semi Auto.

It is a great scope, but if I was spending fresh cash, I would rather spend far less cash on newer scopes.

Inland MFG M3 Carbine

We have seen a few really nifty M1 carbines out of Inland the last few years. It was just a matter of time before they offered us the version the least known or seen. The M3 was the variant done up to mount a huge active IR night vision “sniper” scope and a huge battery to run it. It didn’t really pan out at the time but it’s existence did mean the carbine Colt version of the M16 would forever be known as the M4.

Now, if you add some normal day time optic to the handy little carbine that is another story. Above you can see the base/ring mounting system Inland has developed for the mounting of optics. Simply put, the base uses the redfield/leupold turn in front ring and dual windage screw rear ring system. any rings you want to buy that work in this manner will fit and work. And it works really well. I chose to put a vintage Weaver K4 on the gun as it is more evocative of the time period this gun had its short heyday.

The machine work Inland put in on this is kinda of amazing. My friend and partner in crime when it comes to our more insane long range shooting ideas is an experienced machinist and when I showed it to him, we both at first thought the base was part of the receiver and machined into shape. It took a surefire light and a closer look to see that it was indeed not part of the gun. It really is a beautiful job.

One of the things that sticks out on the M3 was the cone flash suppressor. Inland did not forget this iconic attachment. And it is attachable. As you can see above it is a simple system. You can chose to put it on or leave it off. I found it did not really impact accuracy any amount I could determine while on and shooting at ranges the 30 carbine round was meant for. There was slight changes when shooting with our without though and depending on the mood or whichever gun you may have, the amount of re-zeroing could vary. I did not bother to re adjust the optic as it was less than 3/4 inch impact change and I was shooting for groups and location on the target did not matter to me.

As expected, being able to use some magnification helped with group size at longer ranges. The Inland M1s have been accurate for me over years since starting to test them.

Group above was shot off bags from bench at 100 yards. The group is a 10 round group and the one flyer I offer no excuse for other than I just touched it off without being ready. The group below was fired at the head at 150 yards.

All groups were fired using federal soft point LEO ammo. I have no idea where I ever got this ammo from but it is pretty accurate. Unfortunately I used all I had left for this test. Target below was fired at center body of target from 300 yards. With the optic it was pretty easy. It is still a carbine meant for combat but I can’t imagine anyone with any sense really having much to complain about its performance at this range. But I am sure some one will in the comments.

Hey, what more could you ask for considering the limitations of the round? Pair the optic with a Korean era 30 round magazine and you got one heck of a neat little carbine for something. Walking around the farm shooting ground hogs or maybe short range coyote gun. With proper bullet selection maybe even white tail at shorter ranges. I don’t know, your imagination is the limit. It doesn’t need justification if you want it. if you think it’s neat then buy one. The quality won’t let you down, nor it’s looks.

I apologize for not having a full glamour shot of the gun with optic for this review. Something went badly wrong with my camera during the uploading process. The camera decided to die after 9 years and it took the remaining pictures with it. This includes the rest of the groups shots and the glamour shots of the gun posed with period militaria collectibles and all that crap you are used to seeing when I do these. That is also why this review seems shorter than normal. It’s not just your imagination or my laziness. I have been trying to recover those photos and if so I will update this review ASAP. To add to that this was the first time I didn’t bother to back up every picture by taking the same pictures with my Iphone just in case.