coloradokevin
Member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2008
- Messages
- 3,285
Jeff White said:A long gun without a sling is like a pistol without a holster. What do you do with it when you need your hands for something else.
I went through this very argument years ago when my old department first fielded patrol rifles. One sergeant didn't want the policy to allow officers to deploy them indoors because "the slings will catch on things" the answer was that the military and every tactical unit you can find uses slings indoors on their long weapons and has no problem with them snagging. Then it was "the bad guy could grab the weapon while you are slung up and control you with it". The answer was a demonstration of simple retention techniques and the realization that an attempt to disarm you crossed the threshold into deadly force territory and that one would be justified in shooting at that point either with the long gun or the secondary weapon.
The advantages of a sling far outweigh the perceived disadvantages.
We've had the same growing pains with the development of our rifle program in my department. A surprising number of sergeants/lieutenants in my district were relatively opposed to the rifles being used: with a sling, in a building, on a perimeter, etc.
Most of the guys who were vocally against these deployments knew very little about the weapons system, or what it was/was not capable of doing. For at least 6 years we were carrying some version of the 55 grain Federal TRU ammo (55 grain Sierra Gameking bullet, I believe), since the brass was so incredibly worried about over penetration with the rifles. Even then, we constantly heard ridiculous statements about how these rifles would shoot through the bad guy, go through three houses, and kill the grandmother down the block. Anyone who knows the AR platform knows how ridiculous that statement sounds. We finally ditched the 55 grain bullet after an ATK wound ballistics workshop demonstrated how poorly this round performed: roughly 7 inches of penetration in gelatin, thanks to bullet disintegration.
For a while we were hearing suggestions to carry our less lethals with slings, and our rifles without. The opposite couldn't have proven to be more true. We once had an officer get tangled in the sling of his less lethal while trying to engage a suspect who was charging him with a knife. His lethal cover failed to act, and his sling from the less lethal prevented him from drawing his pistol to shoot the suspect. It almost ended really badly; almost.
My way of looking at it is as follows: When in your hands a rifle becomes your primary weapon, and gets a sling. Less lethal devices NEVER get a sling... if I need to lose that device, I need to lose it NOW. And, as you said, retention with a sling is not a problem, and works out better than retention without a sling. Any fight where a suspect is trying to disarm us is a deadly force encounter. Period.