Equipment

Fellow blogger Sunshine Shooter competed in Desert Brutality 2019, a match that emphasizes physical toughness of you and your equipment. In this post, you'll get a sense of what Desert Brutality is all about as an event, and some tips for competing in future iterations.

During our series on load carriage, we've gone over all of the most common methods available. Now it's time to talk about where to put all that extra stuff: the assault pack.

The Vedder Light Tuck holster has been my go-to CCW holster for over a year. I thought it was time to do a write up about this great American-made holster.

For whatever reason, I don't think the Trijicon battery-powered LED ACOGs have gained as much traction as they deserve. The classic combat optic paired with an efficient LED emitter is a great combination, and I want to take a deeper look at it. In particular, I'm going to review my TA-110 ACOG with the horseshoe-dot reticle and green LED illumination.

If you are very particular about the way you clean your rifles, then you probably take great care not to damage the crown or chamber of your gun. A cleaning rod guide, or bore guide as they're often called, is a very effective way to prevent that kind of damage.

Salt Bath Nitriding/Nitrocarburizing is a surface conversion process for metal. With gun barrels, it produces a very hard and corrosion-resistant casing. It's gaining a lot of popularity, so let's take a look.

Like rifles, there is a knife designed for just about any situation. Also like rifles, we must also be considerate of what we are actually able to carry with us into the field. With that in mind, most of us are served by carrying one or two "general purpose" blades.

The Precision Armament AFAB is a killer muzzle device for making any AR-15 shoot smooth and flat. I've used it in competition and training courses, and it's been flawless.

The Vortex Solo R/T 8x36 monocular is a handy piece of kit. It is lightweight, compact, and useful for daylight spotting. Its mil-hash reticle and silhouette-based ranging tools are an added bonus for competition and tactical shooters.

I've touched on the magic of angular measurements before. Typically, you're going to run into one of two flavors: minutes of angle or milliradians. The quick version of this is to understand that a radian is another way to measure rotation around a point. A milliradian, sometimes called a mil or MRAD, is 1/1000 of a radian.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I have a strong distaste for internet and gun store lore. That's especially true if that lore isn't much good for anything other than burning a hole in your pocket.

Next to barrels, AR-15 trigger selection is the most contentious issue for enthusiasts. It’s actually frustrating, because so much of it is personal preference, yet everyone will tell you unequivocally that you should get whatever model they like.