First things First!

Remember the Cardinal Rules of Firearms Safety:

1. Treat every weapon as if it is loaded.
2. Keep you finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
3. Never allow your muzzle to cover anything you are not willing to accept the responsibility for destroying.
4. Be aware of your target and what is around it.

Now that we have the basic safety rules in place we can get to the actual clearing of the weapon.

Be mindful of the workspace.  Loading and unloading procedures occur in the workspace where we have better tactical and visual control of the weapon.

You will also notice that at no point do we clear by “firing”, that is Rule 2 -  Keep your finger off the trigger until you make are ready to fire. There is never the need to press the trigger during a clearing procedure.

Carbine clearing steps

1. With the weapon in the workspace rotate it clockwise 90 degrees to visually inspect the safety and make sure it is in the SAFE position. If the weapon is on released hammer, the weapon fired and not cycled, then on an AR style rifle the safety will not move to the SAFE position. If this is the case go ahead to the next step and continue to be mindful the weapon condition.
2. Depress the magazine release and allow the magazine to fall free of the weapon. If you have a full or partial magazine you want to maintain control of the magazine as you would during a tactical reload.
3. Maintaining the workspace rotate the weapon counterclockwise until you can clearly see the ejection port. Do not over rotate the weapon so you are staring directly at the ejection port or any brass, live or spent, may eject into your face.
4. While observing the ejection port, use your support hand pull the charging handle fully to the rear and hold.
5. At this point you should look at three spots for a live round or spent brass while looking through the ejection port:
   • observe the magazine well and make sure there is no brass or live ammunition;
   • observe the bolt and make sure there is no brass or live ammunition attached;
   • observe the chamber and make sure there is no brass or live ammunition.
6. If you are training, have your training partner verify step 5 and verbally agree by saying “clear.”
7. Release the charging handle.
8. Finally,  rotate your weapon to visually inspect the safety and make sure it is in SAFE position

If you followed these steps your weapon is now safe, but remember we ALWAYS follow the Cardinal Rules of Firearm Safety, so even after clearing your weapon continue to follow all Cardinal Rules of Firearms Safety. The life you save may be someone you care about.

Happy (and safe) shooting!

Gear Overview

I was provided five Magpul™ PMAGs magazines to test and evaluate. These magazines are designed for the AR-15 family of firearms. They are made of modern polymer/plastic and as a result they weigh in at 5 oz, bit heavier than standard mil-spec magazines. They are noticeably longer and slightly thicker than traditional magazines so you will have to loosen your ammo pouches; this creates a little bit of a problem if you are running mixed types of magazines. They are available in black, tan and olive in either 20 or 30 round configurations.

Competition

Various Manufactures – mil-spec aluminum M16 magazines, 3.9 oz, $17 to $25 online

How and where we use Magpull Magazines

• On the range

What we think

I have used these magazines on the range and in training classes extensively and have found them to be sturdy and reliable. Additionally, the base plates are much wider that the magazine body; this causes some minor difficulty when doing “L” type tactical/retention reloads. They seem to resist heat well, as I have loaded them into very hot weapons and have not had any warping, melting or sticking problems. Since the Magpul magazines are polymer they are corrosion resistant and do not tend to dent. The followers are designed well and do not bind or tilt. Additionally, the magazines can actually be loaded with thirty rounds and still be seated into the magazine well with the bolt closed. The magazines come with pretty cool dust covers that snap into place over the lips and provide protection from the elements as well as assist in maintaining the integrity of the magazine body when storing loaded magazines.

I have been very impressed with the quality of the product and have purchased several of them for my own use. They sell for about $15 most places that you find them and they are certainly worth the money.

Feel free to leave your comments with your experiences with Magpul PMAGs magazines.

Troubleshooting

 I spoke to him on the phone asked a bunch of questions and ran through the typical troubleshooting steps.

1. Brute strength. (that didn’t work)
2. Break-Free and more brute strength. (that didn’t work either)
3. Sharply striking the butt against the ground while holding the charging handle. (Caution: this is not normally recommended unless all else fails. You could break your stock or worse bend your buffer tube. Also, it is important to strike the stock in line with the buffer assembly to prevent putting excessive torque on the buffer tube.)

Our friend is quite adept and was relieved that he had already done all the quick tricks I could have him try over the phone so, I had him bring the carbine over and I quickly ascertained:

While the bolt carrier would not come out of the upper receiver, the bolt carrier did not appear to be binding or stuck. You can determine this by wiggling the back of the bolt carrier and checking for movement due to the “slop” in the AR systems’ tolerance.

We could get the bolt carrier out of the upper about 1/8 of an inch using brute force. This happens to be the length of travel of the bolt in the bolt carrier before the carrier key forces the bolt to rotate. So, I assumed the bolt and bolt carrier were not seized together.

Using the bolt-over clearing drill (see number 3 above) I was able to get the bolt carrier out 1/4 of an inch and could see the bolt beginning to rotate by observing the chamber. At this point I was worried that if I was wrong and the issue was not just the bolt binding in the chamber then I would get the bolt carrier stuck inside the buffer tube thus creating a whole different problem.

Finally, he put on a lot of break free on the bolt and bolt carrier. The whole thing looked like a muddy mess. This was not nice clean lubrication , but thick, black carbon soaked muck. What a joy to work on.

 The rubber mallet is your friend

 I have an armorer buddy who is fond of telling people, “You may want to leave the room before I hit your gun with this hammer.” I find a rubber mallet makes people a little less squeamish

 Finally, we blocked the upper receiver and used a large slotted screwdriver against the bolt carrier; with just two taps from my rubber mallet the bolt carrier came sliding out of the upper receiver. Note: take care to have the tip firmly against the carrier to prevent chipping or slipping.

Why did it happen?

 It is important to explain the condition of the carbine to ascertain why the bolt was stuck. As I said, the break free was a mucky mess. He was disassembling the carbine to clean it, but it was last fired two weeks earlier. (OK, I will address that in a bit.) He fired approximately 1000 rounds during the training day; in addition, the training was tactical in nature, the kind that gets dirt in the gun. When he was done on the range he put the carbine, bolt locked forward, into his gear box, cleaned up the range and stowed gear. Two weeks later he went to clean the carbine. The AggDefSol staff discussed this incident and we believe the cause of this seizure was the excess of carbon, sand and brass flakes which built up over the course of the thousand round day. This amount of ammunition caused the metal in the chamber to expand, yes, our guns do that and continue to run. The carbon baked on basically turning into black concrete; I confirmed this while examining the bolt and firing pin. After the training day was over the carbine cooled and the metal contracted causing the sand, carbon and brass flakes to be compressed between the bolt and the chamber, making normal manual extraction impossible.

How to prevent

1. Fully clean your carbine immediately after training; especially, if it’s a duty weapon, your life depends on it.
2. Quick field clean. Often we will do a quick internal inspection after class. This requires a quick wipe down of the bolt face to check for damage and a swipe of the chamber to look for damage or metal wear. This check and “cleaning” can keep your carbine running a few hundred more rounds.
3. Don’t store a hot gun on a closed bolt. We can also think safety here. When clearing and cleaning the range leave you carbine with the bolt locked to the rear. It is a visual safety check and it allows the gun to cool without the binding effect.

Any thoughts on how to do it better? Leave a comment and let us know.

First things first, always review the Cardinal Rules of Firearm Safety before loading your weapon, now move on to other range safety controls, proper loading and unloading procedures and finally do a review basic marksmanship skills. Determine how fast you should perform these drills. A good rule of thumb is to base your speed on your accuracy. If you are missing the black you probably need to slow down to work on your accuracy and your fundamentals, but if you are driving every round in the center of target, then you need to speed it up. 

3” DOTS or B3 at 7 YARDS [Get our custom 3 inch dot target] 

• Low ready: one shot 4 times
• High ready: one shot 4 times
• Low ready: two shots, one target 4 times
• High ready: two shots, one target 4 times
• Low ready: two shots, one shot each on two separate targets 4 times
• High ready: two shots, one shot each on two separate targets 4 times

8” DOTS, BODY or B8 at 10 YARDS 

• Pivot left and right 90 degrees and 180 degrees: start at Low ready facing away from the target: turn (each direction), four shots, two shots each on two separate targets 2 times each direction (left and right 90 degrees and 180 degree pivot) 
• Transition drill: start with no magazine in your carbine. Click, transition to pistol, two shots or dry fire once 5 times.

8″ DOTS, BODY or B8 at 25 YARDS 

• Reload drill: from ready, one shot, Emergency reload, one shot. Recover magazine and perform Tactical reload to set up drill 4 times.
• Soft malfunction (fail to fire) drill: start with an empty chamber in your carbine, full magazine, click-tap, rack, engage with two shots 4 times.
• Standing to kneeling to prone: two shots each position 5 times.

8″ DOTS, BODY or B8 at 15 YARDS 

• Shoot on the move (box drill): Two targets, first run with 1 shot each, second with 2 shots each.

Additional tips: 

1. If unable to move at the range, do the static drills both strong and weak side or double up on strong side drills. Practice movement and manipulation at home dry.
2. While doing the 7 yard and turn drills, load multiples of 8 rounds if you wish to do more transitions.
3. Remember to utilize the workspace when performing all reloads and immediate action drills.
4. Remember at less than 25 yards/meters transition to secondary weapon to stay in the fight. At distances greater than 25 yards/meters seek cover and perform immediate action to clear carbine stoppage.

Special thanks to guest author Mark Tiedemann for contributing this series of drills. Feel free to leave Mark a comment here or look for him on m4carbine.net where he is a forum moderator. 

The instructors at Aggressive Defensive Solutions use a variety of different optics and many of these are only used for specific classes. In order to keep all these straight and not blow the zero every time we switch sight systems the instructors mark the underside of the sight or optic with the rail slot number it was zeroed on. For example, my EOTech is zeroed with the locking bar installed on T18 and my ACOG locks on slot T2. The bottom of these sights are marked with a white paint pen, or labeler tape listing T18 and T2, respectively, that way all I have to do is look at the bottom of the sight, align it with the correct rail slot and then I can fire three rounds to confirm my zero instead of having to re-zero my sights. Saves time, saves money! Your thoughts? Comments?