Rogue Elite

There are many things you can do to mess up the balance of your M4 Carbine.   Most people I know that own an AR15 rifle now are toting an M4 Carbine variant and it is rarely an A2 version.   Just about everyone know has  a fore grip on their guns, but in all honesty most of those never seem to feel right.   I have always been use to the traditional AR15 rifle and never felt the need to put a vertical grip on them but I have recently become a fan of the Mapgul Angled Foregrips.   Sometimes it take a good training course to really test your gear out and many times it means adjusting the stock you have or moving the foregrips forward or back.

I have seen numerous times that guys ended up with failed gear or ended up taking some gear off of their Carbines by mid-day.   Some of best training I have done was by a teacher that told us that we could not drop gear or take it back to our car, we had to leave all of are accessories and even magpul pmags with us or in a bag.   It was an important lesson about not over packing and thinking about what you really need to use.   There is no reason to load up 13 pmags when you probable won’t need that even if you’re going to shoot that many rounds, 6-8 magazines is a lot and speed loaders and boxed ammo is an easier way to pack.

One thing we really need around here that we don’t have is a ton of Loctite.   Too many people get caught up with the fact that their guns have better mounts than another when much of that has to do with “how” something is mounted.  I’ve seen guys put scopes on rifles that look like they had one shoe off when they mounted it or the scope rings made the optic look cock eye.   Spending $500 on a mount didn’t help them out at all.  You don’t always need some fancy leveling took either.   Just put the rifle on a flat surface and level the crosshairs to the gun.

When it comes to putting accessories on your AR15 or M4 Carbine variant.   Magpul Accessories gives you a very broad array of grips and stock options.  Every shooter might have a different role to fill for  his or her firearm and Magpul’s product line will get your gun in CQC or DMR roles in no time.  It always takes a little patience to get your gun customized because using Loctite and minor stock adjustments may be necessary.   There are difference in quality of firearms but I’ve had very good luck and little complaints from customers about Magpul products.

We’ve pruned some of gun magazines accessories down a little bit in 2011 based mostly on which products sold, and secondly on which products we got the least complaints about.  Breakage and fit issues is something we really don’t like dealing with because many of the times it was the customer breaking the part while trying to put it on the gun.  It seems to be better these days because quality control in machining has improved but its not a battle we want to deal with every week when people come back with the same products and tell us the part was broken when they got it, when we know that it wasn’t.

Magpul makes some really nice gun sights for the M4 Carbine and they are in the top 3 category with Troy sights.  There are differences in optics sights and having folding sights vs fixed sights is something that comes up fairly often.  Magpul pmags are in their own category and there is very little reason to think about using anything but these gun mags.   You can actually help camoflauge your firearm by picking certain color variations that help break up the look.  Foliage green, OD green an Flat dark earth as well as Black are available for all of the Pmags.

At first thought many might think that to be a stupid thing to do, but for anyone that has taken a carbine course, lighter firearms don’t wear down an operator the way a heavy one does.   For all of the people that are bench rest shooters, a heavy AR15 barrel is something they want, but in a real fight, the difference between sub-moa and 4 MOA is pretty much a none issue.   I have never shot an AR15 that did worse than 2 MOA and most of them were about 1.5 MOA or better.  Rifle slings can make a bigger difference in comfort also so research that before you alter your firearm too much.

Once you have to get down in the dirt and fire from behind cover, you can really feel how well your firearms balance is.   If the stock doesn’t fit you right it can royally suck to shoot proficiently.  Magpul pmags are the best gun magazines I have ever used for my AR15′s but I have been using 20rd magazines more and more because of the balance it gives me with my firearms.   Sure I’ll use the 30rd magazines if I really need to, but for urban environments gun magazine capacity over 15rds is good enough for anything but a zombie attack.

There are so many configurations and variations with the AR15 that I don’t think the gun is anywhere near going away.   For years people bashed the M16 and AR15 for it’s well known drawbacks but improvements on manufacturing and metal designs has improved the direct impingement design that it’s way above what the M16A2 has been.   Ambidexterous bolt releases and magazine releases has helped keep the gun viable for left handed shooters and now those south paws don’t have to worry about getting more gas blown in their faces than a right handed shooter.

Stocks that are adjustable and can be adapted to left handed and right handed shooting means a more proficient operator.   The Magpul pmags are just a small sample of the extensive magpul product line.  Their gun sights, stocks, and grips are very different and you can easily have 3-4 AR15 rifles that have multiple roles.   Even though the 5.56 round has it’s limits the firearm is completely capable of being a DMR rifle if you have a good shooter and use the right kind of ammunition.

Gun parts wear  out and anyone that does a lot of shooting has to accept that.  You can keep your guns pretty forever if you plan on shooting them.   I remember seeing guys show up at amateur band nights with $3000 guitars and treated them like jewels but couldn’t play for  shit and got upset if they got so much as a scratch on them.   I remember watching a video where David Gilmore from  Pink Floyd was using Fender Telecaster that looked like a dog just got chewing on it, but it sounded incredible.

All firearms can be useful tools or for hobby shooting, it’s up to the user and owner to think about which guns should be rack queens and which ones will get run like a vehicle.   Magpul Pmags are so  inexpensive today if you compare them to what rifle magazines cost 10yrs ago and the Magpul Pmags are 8 times stronger.   We are selling lots of them with the windows although I personally don’t think it matters all that much to have them.   What really counts the most is having plenty of them.  For all orders over $100 we’re giving Free Shipping.

The news coming from LWRC this Fall is that the new Lightweight Stretch upper has replaced the older M6 LWRC rifle.   There is very little different about this upper than the M6.   The LWRC Lightweight upper comes standard with the Magpul MOE Handguard.   It took me awhile to figure out what the big deal was when all of the MOE stuff started showing up.   Sometimes it’s a royal pain to have to research all of the new products that come out around this time of the year because we know that people are going to call about them and we try to look as smart as we can.   If you haven’t know it by now, gun accessories, primarily for the AR15 fill the void for the guys that grew up and stopped playing with LEGOS.

Some of this stuff really does improve the fit and feel of a firearm and lightening your Carbine without weakening it a great thing.   As anyone in the military if they could change something on their M16 to take off 8 oz and they will tell you it’s a good thing.   We recently got in the new LWRC uppers for sale that is the lightweight stretch upper.  This gun comes with the New Magpul MOE stock which is all stock with rail attachments.   There is an aweful lot of un-used weight on many M4 Carbines and the Quad rail thing is great if you are using it, but most people don’t.

Sometimes it really bothers me when people want to argue about everything without really making conclusions about what gear is better.  Yes, I know there are plenty of debates out there about which firearms may be more reliable than others, and there is an answer to that depending on the conditions they operated in, but there is absolutely such a thing as stronger and more durable.  Some people have the lack of critical thinking where discussion about t-shirts preventing bullets from expanding falls into the same argument about how Second Chance body armor is junk, either way your screwed because your bullets won’t expand in one situation and you’re bullet proof vest is going to fail when you get shot.

Well here’s the reality about AR15 magazines….. The M16 is the highest maintenance firearm that has been put into Military Service, but the guns reliability has been dramatically improved by Mapgul Pmags.   There is not argument unless you are total moron, that the Magpul design is stronger and feeds more reliable than any USGI magazine.   USGI magazines are meant to be thrown away and throwing things like that away all the time is a waste of production and resources.   If you can run  your magazines over with your car and then defend your life with them, they are better.

There was a transition away from the high capacity or should I say, Standard capacity firearms back in the late 1990′s after the AWB of 1994, but it was mostly because the cost of a gun magazine might have gone up 200% or more.   You could easily spend $1000 for a firearm and magazines depending on what it was.   Once thing that I will that will never change is balance and speed.   I think we have recently witnessed the pinnacle of the M4 Carbine accessorizing craze because now we are seeing more and more that people are wanting lighter carbines and 15 lbs AR15 variants is something that really doesn’t help you out in close quarters gun fights, speed does m ore than what optics you have in close up fighting.

When it comes to caliber and capacity, you really need to put some thought into how much weight you want in a firearm especially a handgun.   I’ve shot some double stack 45acp handguns that were so heavy that taking them in and out of  holster felt like I was wielding a ball and chain.  Throw in spare gun magazines and the bulk and weight can quickly become extreme.  The Springfield XD is a nice 45acp gun, but the balance of a 1911 or even the Sig 220 seem to handle better.   And lets not forget, the reason for a handgun is to fight your way back to a rifle, so why bother trying to carry all that handgun ammo.

I am a FAL owner and I have gotten more out of my DSA STG58 than most people have gotten out of an M1A.   I have never felt like I needed to go out and get the M1A because I am in the minority that can get MOA out of my FAL and I really don’t feel as though I need to get it better than that.  From my experience with Semi-auto rifles, the more you push towards accuracy, the less reliable the gun is after all of the fine tuning.   The best way to get a 308 into gear is to turn it into a DMR.

LWRC is once again the leader in better designs and moving away from the direct impingement design is one thing, but getting an MOA gun with reliable magpul pmags and making it lighter than an M14 or FNFAL is a fantastic thing.   I was fortunate to be able to get to test a few of the new LWRC REPR rifles out and I did not feel like I was firing a 308 rifle.   The REPR feels like an AR15 and the lighter weight really means something for a gun in this caliber.  $3500 + optics is steap though, but hell, everyone has a second mortgage these days.