Now With Rails on the Memory Hole
Irradiated by Stingray
I present for those who may not have seen it, the cover of this month’s “American Rifleman” from the NRA:
(Click for big)
Thank goodness it has always been tactical to fire your heater from a rotated position, as the alternate sights are installed above. Otherwise there might have been some oddball organization, the name of which escapes me, advocating some unorthodox method of tactical firing, such as a non-canted weapon grip. And that would just be silly.
Update: Since it has become painfully clear from the comments that nobody is bothering to get the joke on this, let me spell it out so you can all stop frothing on your keys. Yes, I know this is real, and useful, and perfectly viable. And since y’all are such experts at doublethink and have made clear just how awesome it has having a second sight canted off the side, I look forward to the next round of “ha-ha, that dumbass in the movie is holding his gun sideways” come action movie season.
April 25th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Yeah, saw that. Went, “WTF?” and then promptly forgot about it until now. Now I ask again, WTF?
April 25th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
Ermmm .. that holosight is usable with a normal grip. I don’t think the American Rifleman staff are advocating silly sideways salutes.
Hard to sight in ( must adjust both screws at the same time, and account for side parallax ), but still usable.
It does look silly.
April 25th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Could it be a left handed setup? Most I have seen were mounted on the left side for right handed shooters. The cant doesn’t matter either, if you can see any part of the reticule on the target, you will be accurate at CQB ranges…which comes to my main question whenever I see these setups, it seems like less trouble just to learn to point shoot at the ranges that mini optic is designed for.
April 26th, 2010 at 4:24 am
WTF is right… Gotta agree with Justin, at CQB ranges, point and shoot makes a LOT more sense…
April 26th, 2010 at 5:37 am
[…] This is actually common among practical rifle shooters and three gunners. Scope for longer range and tilt the gun for close range and faster shots. And you just tilt it for a fast transition. You can see Miculek’s set up here. […]
April 26th, 2010 at 5:50 am
Came here to say what I see SayUncle already said.
April 26th, 2010 at 6:11 am
Don’t shoot much 3-gun or practical rifle, do y’all?
April 26th, 2010 at 7:25 am
Wow, the reaction to the “Homeboy” prank is crazy racist. The police captain had all these legitimate things he could have said about how it’s going to be totally inaccurate and the copy suggests irresponsible use-and he went with “you can’t market guns to black people!” Wow.
April 26th, 2010 at 7:29 am
In my first three-gun match (very small, very local) there was a shooter running this type of setup. For the first stage there were a series of 7-15 yard shots, and then a later series of 100 yard shots. While the shooter with the dual optics did quite well, his success apparently encouraged another competitor who was only running a magnified optic to tilt his gun and attempt to fire looking down nothing but barrel. This second shooter was not nearly as effective, so I can see some validity to this approach.
April 26th, 2010 at 7:44 am
Okay, so they set it up as a gamer gun. Got it. I guess if you got used to it that would come in pretty handy in competition.
April 26th, 2010 at 9:01 am
I see SayUncle and Tam already covered the “why”.
Oh, and RobertM? A lot of stuff filters down from the competition side to tactical side. It would not surprise me to see run similar kinds of optics. A fast and accurate hit is a fast and accurate hit, regardless of how silly or new it looks like…
April 26th, 2010 at 9:39 am
The ‘why’ of it was fairly intuitive to me out the gate, but after years of “Ha-ha, look at that stupid gangsta in the movie! Dumbass holding his gun sideways!” having what amounts to a real life version of the homeboyz system appearing on the cover of one of the most traditional shooting rags out there still tickles my funny bone.
April 26th, 2010 at 11:02 am
I file this under, if its dumb and it works, it isn’t dumb.
Jim
April 26th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
There is a big differance between a “gangsta” holding his “gat” sideways and not even bothering to aim and someone firing a rifle setup to be shot tilted to one side using a dot. I know it LOOKS funny, and at first glance I got a tickle out of it too, but as soon as I saw someone who had trained to use a rifle in this manner shooting I realized just how brilliant it really is. I’ll probably have no use for it personally as I don’t compete, but it sure is a fun idea.
Hmm… If I ever get around to building my “ultimate zombie gun” (purely for personal entertainment I assure you), I might have to add this feature. I wonder if this would even work on a .308? Would the extra recoil make shooting tilted as such too uncomfortable?
s
April 26th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
I’ve used a set up really similar to that. I’ve also used just a folding front sight set on a piece of angle rail right at the end of the float tube and ran it like a shotgun bead. On small plates out to 25 and paper out to 100, it works super fast for me.
You guys can laugh, but it works really well for 3gun. Jerry Mickulek (sp?) runs an Open gun with a micro aimpoint on the side.
Stuart, recoil isn’t bad at all on an AR10 at that angle. Honestly the position of the butt doesn’t actually change that much on your shoulder. It is a quick, slight, shift in your elbow and you’re on the other sight.
April 26th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
“A fast and accurate hit is a fast and accurate hit, regardless of how silly or new it looks like…”
I can’t debate that. Hell, I wasn’t denigrating, just placing it in context. I’ve never seen this setup, and now that I’ve looked into I’ve only seen it on comp guns. I realize ‘gamer’ can be taken that what, but I meant it in terms of ‘something that will make it easier for one to win the game.’
April 27th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Yeah, hilarious joke.
Except for the fact that it’s not a joke.
The US military is using a similar system in combat on M4s, and has been for a few years.
The difference is they stack the holosight on top of the 4x magnified optic.
Something Uncle Sam can do because the sights in question were engineered to stack like that. Whereas someone running a different optic (like a higher power or variable power) that isn’t the milspec one generally has to do THIS to get the same effect.
April 29th, 2010 at 12:38 am
Geodkyt,
that is not the same. Shifting your head position up or down relative to the stock is not nearly as good as simply canting the rifle to bring the sight into alignment with your eye. Shifting your head is the important point. It’s not good for the neck, you loose reference with the stock, it’s fatiguing, and the only good thing about it is it is ambidextrous, which might be a factor in combat situations with a team. Probably not, though.