Billy Shears
Member
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2008
- Messages
- 1,020
I picked up the latest issue of the NRA's "Shooting Illustrated" magazine yesterday, and looked at the article therein on the venerable AK rifle. The author, wearing ball cap, obligatory black shades, and shooting gloves may be seen shooting the weapon in a manner that seems to be increasingly common: hunched forward in the "Groucho walk" with elbows close in and pointed straight down, and the support hand around the front of the AK's magazine, rather than on the fore grip.
This is a method of holding the rifle that seems to have originated with the AR for CQB type scenarios, and may have some usefulness there (thought what advantages it offers, I'm not at all sure). On the next page of the article, the author has photos of this grip, and the standard grip, with the hand on the wooden handguard, and even states "Gripping the AK's fore-end offers a greater degree of muzzle control, but those wooden handguards can get very hot after a few magazines."
Really?
Do you know how many magazines you'd have to blaze through to make those wooden handguards too hot to hold comfortably? Especially through gloves. Honestly this sort of thing looks to me like an excuse to be tacticool -- something too many people are doing these days. After all, why take an admittedly less effective grip on the weapon, that offers you less control, especially given the extreme unlikelihood of ever shooting so many rounds off in any realistic defensive scenario that the handguards became too hot to hold?
I'm a former infantry NCO, and current police detective, and I'm qualified on the patrol rifle for my job (my department issues M4-type, semi-auto ARs), and without false modesty, I can say that I am one of the better shots on my department, and I find, while holding the rifle shouldered, but muzzle-down, I am slower coming up and getting the sights on target with this "tactical" grip than I am holding onto the rifle's handguard, as well as slower swinging the rifle around laterally to engage targets to either side. Recoil control appears little different for either grip on the AR, given the low recoil impulse of the 5.56mm round, but in all other ways, this grip seems to work less effectively for me, and I have a hard time understanding how it came to be preferred by so many these days. What am I missing here?
This is a method of holding the rifle that seems to have originated with the AR for CQB type scenarios, and may have some usefulness there (thought what advantages it offers, I'm not at all sure). On the next page of the article, the author has photos of this grip, and the standard grip, with the hand on the wooden handguard, and even states "Gripping the AK's fore-end offers a greater degree of muzzle control, but those wooden handguards can get very hot after a few magazines."
Really?
Do you know how many magazines you'd have to blaze through to make those wooden handguards too hot to hold comfortably? Especially through gloves. Honestly this sort of thing looks to me like an excuse to be tacticool -- something too many people are doing these days. After all, why take an admittedly less effective grip on the weapon, that offers you less control, especially given the extreme unlikelihood of ever shooting so many rounds off in any realistic defensive scenario that the handguards became too hot to hold?
I'm a former infantry NCO, and current police detective, and I'm qualified on the patrol rifle for my job (my department issues M4-type, semi-auto ARs), and without false modesty, I can say that I am one of the better shots on my department, and I find, while holding the rifle shouldered, but muzzle-down, I am slower coming up and getting the sights on target with this "tactical" grip than I am holding onto the rifle's handguard, as well as slower swinging the rifle around laterally to engage targets to either side. Recoil control appears little different for either grip on the AR, given the low recoil impulse of the 5.56mm round, but in all other ways, this grip seems to work less effectively for me, and I have a hard time understanding how it came to be preferred by so many these days. What am I missing here?