All posts tagged Afghanistan

Price points and warranties on Original Swat Footwear

There are huge differences in the types of footwear that you can wear while working in the Law Enforcement Community and the wrong footwear means discomfort and unwanted stress.  Foot support is something you won’t get  out of sneakers even though most people are probable more comfortable wearing sneakers all day than boots or dress shoes.   There are always periods of break in and sometimes your foot might get a little sore when you first wear them.   The Original Swat 1232 air have a great reputation for support and comfort and is by far our lightest tactical boot.

The Original swat footwear company has a 1yr warranty on all of their boots and in over a year of selling the product we have had less than 3 returns on the product line.   With a warranty like that it’s less stress on a dealer on selling a product and much easy to support a product line.  There is so much competition in the tactical boots market that price points and warranties is a great combination.    The Original Swat 1150 are the Classic 9 inch boots and the 1152 is the side zip version.   If you want full ankle support and all leather size zip combo, try the Original Swat SEK9000.

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One of my favorites from Trijicon

There are a great many combat optics you can float on your boat, but much of what I like is the dressed down versions.   I still have pretty good eye sight for my age and I find many of these red dot and reticles to blur or obscure  targets and that just pisses me off at times.   I’ve done enough steel plate shooting to know that you can’t see steel plates at 200yds unless they are in broad sunlight and or have a strong contrasting background.   I learned this while looking forward to a day of shooting with my primary firearms instructor when he took me to his Class III friendly range.

I get bored shooting handguns and moved over to the steel Carbine range and starget plinking.   I couldn’t ID a 6″ plate at 100yds with an Eotech and the Red Dot I had on a 10/22 was just as difficult.   I recently picked up a few Trijicon ACOGS and have various Carbines with the Trijicon TA01-NSN.  These optics give you 4×32 visibility and also have backup iron sights mounted on the top.  I believe Trijicon is re-thinking the way they mount sights for CQB on the top of the Trijicons, but the NSN works well.  The drawback to the ACOG is that it isn’t as good in close up fighting, but you can’t beat iron sights for short ranges.

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The reality of gunfights is you rarely need magnification

I took a Carbine course at a western, PA gun club over the weekend and I did it just because I like to take them to observe the students progress from novice shooters to the next advancement.    Many of the Carbine classes I have taken were what I considered to be somewhat below my level of shooting, but since I often get asked to sit in on instructors, I get more than a few  opportunities.   Having the right attitude is something I look for because being in the business world, it is something that I often see lacking, I’ve seen students remove themselves for classes because gear went down and they were so ashamed of the malfunctions that they walked off.   It makes me think these individuals really lacked will power and i wouldn’t want to be in a crisis situation with them.

There is such a thing as a more durable firearm, but there are many things that I have seen people do to less expensive firearms to toughen them up.   Replacing extractors and working parts can give you a good leap forward.   The Trijicon rifle scopes that use to see on the range don’t seem to have the authority that they  use to.   They are still one of the best accurate shooting combat optics, but now that we are 10yrs into close quarters gun fighting in the Eastern part of the world, close quarters combat rarely needs more than iron sights, a red dot or an Eotech.  Taking a step back from the 4x optics is something that should be considered.

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Knock down power some range results

Sometimes ballistics testing can get too complicated and there are so many variables when it comes to testing a bullets performance that people really have to look at the results under realistic conditions and and realize that getting a hit is more important than which caliber, but when you compare hit to hit, there are differences in performances.    I’ve seen ballistic results where 9mm ball ammo was said to have hit with the same energy that a 45acp had, but I have seen multiple times that steel plates would not go down as frequently with 9mm ball ammo.   There were times when we heard  hits and nothing would drop.

Now that so many criminals are getting a hold of body armor, bullet penetration is coming more of an issue.   Even for those that are service over seas, 9mm ball ammo doesn’t penetrate a suicide bomber vest.  M855 is not very good for soft targets but against body armor it is.   We’ve been selling more Wilson Combat magazines to troops doing security detail because in their opinion 45acp worked better on soft targets and M855 was still necessary for penetration against suicide bombers and taking on cars.

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Aim, hold and squeeze only gets you so far

Everyone learns to shoot at different levels, and we all basically figure it out at some point, but the fundamentals for shooting will always be the fundamentals.    There always little add ons that we can do when trying to improve our shooting skills and for those familiar with competitive shooting, without using a sandbag or a bipod, a good rifle sling can give you far more stability than just a good grip.   You have to learn the positions you need to get into and how to adjust your sling to the correct length, but I have watched people improve their off the bench accuracy dramatically.    You will get very good windage control if you are setup properly.

 
A new era of rifles are upon us, the M4 Carbine is probable the most commonly accessorized rifle out there, but there are some really well thought gun slings for it.  Blue Force gear rifle slings are probable our biggest sellers and have lots of good references from those in the sandbox.I always suggest quick detach slings because being that the M4 Carbine is meant for CQB, you may get in a situation where you are getting snagged or someone gets a hold if you and detaching yourself from your gear may mean getting away.   You may have to do some slight modifications to your AR15 when  you switch your traditional rifle sling over to a different configuration.

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