S&W M&P15 (AR-15) review with Jerry Miculek

hey guys the footage you're about to see is done by a professional I've been doing this over 25 years this footage is for entertainment value only please do not try this at home so you want to shoot fast huh finally waking up today a lot of people ask me well how do I get to the next level well you get to the next level by being the first one on the range and the last one to leave hi I'm Jerry Mitchell and welcome to this episode of shoot fast at Mitchell ENCOM what I have today is the AR series of rifles I've got some examples here and we're going to go through them relatively quick and give you an idea of what they are and why they evolved into what they are so what I have here is an early coat AR is the semi-automatic version of the a1 coat issued back take in 1963 they would start they came into circulation and they were officially issued in 1968 so they've been a while they've been around quite a while the idea this whole system was to give the soldier on the ground a lightweight firearm with a lot of horsepower a lot of firepower lightweight ammunition lightweight gun even came with the carry handle this is kind of unusual for a military-style carbine or rifle actually have a carry handle it it's actually smart when you stop and think about it a soldier a soldier's life is extreme boredom followed by moments of extreme terror so he's going to be carrying this thing a lot more he's going to ever shoot it so you have a handle doesn't sound like much and tell you out in the woods toting this thing around for weeks at a time so it was a good design lightweight lot of firepower a really good design and aspect that it had minimum parts give you a quick overview of how this particular system works it uses a direct gas in payment so we have an empty firearm here if you notice this little silver tube inside the handguard the idea of this tube it captures the gas right here under the front side assembly it circulates back goes into the bolt carrier it opens the bolt carrier and what that means for the soldier very minimal ports easy to maintain so with a system like this field maintenance was pretty much that easy break that brake the whole thing down and get it going we needed to service it need to take apart clean it daily routine maintenance was easy as you can see access to the insert to the trigger group is just that easy do the push pin so lightweight a lot of firepower a very good design actually had a chance to talk to Eugene stoner for quite time back in Vero Beach some years ago and he told me the ins and outs and how the government actually screwed up the ammunition on the first issue rifles and made them mouth malfunction prone but now it's probably it is the most proven battle rifle out there so it's a very good system if you stick with the right admonition so that's just a basic a 120 inch barrel lightweight fixed handle we go to the next evolution of it which pretty much issued now to most military groups law enforcement would be the m4 style it's basically an upgraded a1 you notice has a brass deflector for left or right-handed use it has a forward assist assembly this came in later in Vietnam so should you encounter a malfunction basically you could bump the forward assist drive the boat home fire the problem out so it offered some some added reliability to the package they had a different barrel contour shorter barrel 16 inches this one has a free-floating handguard you notice it does not touch the barrel it attaches to the receiver what this does for the whole system is it makes the gun a lot more accurate free-floating barrel of course when it's hot is not influenced by any contact whatsoever with the handguard so this would be an m4 style adjustable buttstock you have body armor in or you just want to make a hole the whole system compact you're no automobile you're an armored vehicle you can shorten it up they added them the a to pistol grip got a little bit of finger groove to it textured on the back so that would be basic basic m4 now this would be the modern sporting rifle this is my competition smith & wesson pc 15 is made by the Performance Center it's a forged upper and lower as a match grade barrel are totally free-floating handguard you notice his handguard is set up in segments I can add picatinny rails bipod sites whatever you also notice on this one I haven't Hogzilla out on the side close quarter shooting I can flip over to the red dot if I need to go out and touch something at long range I have a 1 by 6 power optic here with the lint reticle should I need it so it offers a lot of flexibility in a small package there again the firepower is only limited by the size of the magazine using my competition package I'll have anywhere from a 20-round to a hundred Ron beta mag so this thing will run with just about any good quality magazine that you have that you need at the time so this is my competition guns you can see the evolution the evolution of it from the a1 quite a different horse there same basic platform different furniture another good thing about this whole system is you really don't have to be a gunsmith to work on them you get a few action wrenches anybody can change barrels bolt assembly sets check the headspace it's a it's a porch gun it's a ticklers gun if you can you can bar apart you can pretty much retrofit it yourself with just a little bit of common sense than just a little bit of know-how you can make this into whatever you see on the table here relatively easy so also have mep 1522 very logical evolution of the modern sporting rifle 22 long-rifle guys it's just fun to shoot cheap also has a 25 round mag or a 10 round mag the same adjustable buttstock you can put any optic or sighting system you want on it just a good good platform and this is this is what the a or replaced guys this was the m14 this is an m1 a which is basically a semi-automatic this is a 30 caliber use a 20 round magazine it's a pretty heavy firearm what they found was that the average soldier didn't need to reach or the limiting factor of a 20 round magazine for his job so when he started issue in the ARS the guy could carry a whole lot more ammunition and within a couple of hundred yards it's just about as effective as a full 30 caliber round so you had a lighter lighter weight package more ammunition easier to carry so it was a win for everybody another interesting aspect of the area our systems of firearms is where like we talked about earlier with the direct gas in penguin with the gas tube this is a 20 inch barrel so the gas port is here if you see how far it is from the bolt assembly compared to an m4 this has a 16 inch barrel and the gas assembly would be right here so it's considerably bit closer if you put them overlapping and look in that probably five about a five inch different difference where the gas port is so what that means to them to the manufacture of the firearm and the end-user is that the gas port pressure has to match the ammunition and has to match the boat weight and the buffer assembly in the stock so this platform looks very close to the original AR but it's a vastly different design on the interior the buffer assembly and the stock is totally different the gas port is located different the way the receiver is cut the feed ammunition out of the magazine is different anytime you affect the standard AR system the gas ports both weights buffering weights it really starts to affect the cycle time of the gun so so when it's something we're going to get into with the competition gun here competition AR has an adjustable gas block so what that allows me to do I'm not shooting NATO spec ammunition in my firearm but if I choose to I can regulate the gas system so there's an overpower the bolt assembly I also run a lighter weight boat and a lighter weight buffer assembly in there and there in the buffer assembly here a different spring a different return spring a different trigger trigger mechanism so even though it looks the same on the outside the internals of the rifle or setup to play games I'm not going to use this thing in really harsh conditions I'm going to baby it I'm not going to shoot a thousand rounds in between cleaning a standard rifle like this and set up for extreme conditions so the way the gas assembly is it it's actually over powered it'll run the gun dry it'll run it dirty this gun is made for minimum amount of recoil so I run just enough gas to operate the system and lock the boat back whereas a military-grade or a standard AR is set up to cycle in very harsh conditions these little plant guns like we have them set up here but totally different ball of wax so we have a different outcome of what we want to rifle to do so we tweaked them for that for that extreme so they look similar but on the inside there there are a lot of differences going on there so we're going to talk about ammunition next and give you some insights into what ammunition high not affects the gun you notice from the earlier examples of the rifles that they our system was considerably bit smaller and lighter than the m14 so let's even go back another step what we have here is in a m2 round standard m1 garand oh three Springfield round back from World War 1 World War two all the way up until the 1950s five of 1958 this was standard military round using the light machine guns it's relatively big it's a full 30 caliber that's 150 grain ball round let's look at the evolution of that and this is a 308 of 760 to about 51 NATO that's what the m14 used is still the full 30 caliber 150 grain bullet doing the same velocity it's a little bit shorter the invention of ball propellants allowed that cartridge to be smaller and the whole idea behind that was same performance smaller package the whole platform that fire this cartridge could be smaller and you can carry more ammunition it with more compact so the evolution of this as the service rifle went would be the five five six round first introduced in the Colt ar-15s m16 round was a 55 grand full metal jacket bullet specified at about 30 to 50 I think or 30 to 20 feet per second so it's just a 55 grain bullet it's a third to weight but you can see the whole idea behind the cartridge was make it smaller so the soldier could carry more ammunition off so make the firearm lighter through the years the amount of equipment that the soldier has to carry has increased so the least amount of weight that you can burden him with the more he can do so this round was to address the problem of size and also effectiveness of the cartridge the 55 grain Buddha in the original design was made to where when you fired it it was marginally stabilized so we have a 55 grain Full Metal Jacket bullet here if you marginally stabilize this round as the original m16 was when it when it hit a target of any sorts it had a tendency the term tumbled and if it got sideways that was pretty effective if it totally inverted will basically had a soft point bullet 22 caliber hitting to directly backwards so a lot of terminal ballistics here with a smaller projectile what they will find it in combat was the 30 caliber ROM was great an 800 to 1500 meters most engagements especially vietnam-era well most within a hundred yards or less so the small around you could carry more less recoil more on target performance so it was the evolution of the small arms for the for the individual soldier so this is a 55 grain ball round it evolved into what we use now is the green tip as they call it as a 62 grain it has a hard and penetrator in the nose it's a five five six pressure and that's something else you want to consider guys even though that even though their cartridge looks exactly as this 223 round it's actually loaded to a higher pressure also if it's a true NATO round if you look on the head stamp this little circle with the X in it designates NATO so what that means to the cartridge is the nato primer is harder than a standard commercial cartridge it's also loaded to a higher chamber pressure and also the big difference in what you want to concern concern yourself with is actually the radius of the projectile you'll notice if you see it here on camera but if your barrel is not correctly throated and what the what a throat means in a rifle barrel is how far the rifling is from the case mouth a five five six round the way the radius is on a bullet it's actually a longer basically shoulder sticking out of the case so if you if your barrel is not directly throat it for for the five five six round this bullet could actually contact the rifling and if you were to fire in a 223 platform it could cause excessive chamber pressure so you want to be aware of the five five six round harder primer different bullet contour higher chamber pressure the commercial 223 round softer primer totally different contour on the bullet and less chamber pressure so when you fire these torque these cartridges in a mixed in a AR star or a modern sporting rifle that's where the adjustability of the gas port comes in I can tune my match gun to shoot either one of these I have a five five six chamber and not overpower the platform so that's just some of the differences between the 223 round and a five five six will take it on to the next one this is a frangible projectile this is actually a copper and polymer bullet you can shoot steel targets with it pretty much point-blank and it's totally safe to do that so pretty interesting cartridge another interesting fact 22 long rifle bullet diameter is 220 mm five five six diameters 224 only to thousands of an inch difference from the 22 long-rifle actual bullet diameter so let's take a look at some of the projectiles themself we'll start off with the standard 55 grain ball load go to a 55 grain soft point and here is a 40 grain - $24 in a hornet's bullet this is a 35 grain non-toxic Hornady bullet here is a 52 grain Hornady a max bullet very hard gold by the way this is 68 grain Hornady match bullet you see they're getting a little longer more aerodynamic and higher ballistic coefficients this is a 6 this is a 75 grain Hornady match wrong with the cattle or this dell this is their latest match projectile I was actually shooting some of these this morning out at 400 meters and they were pretty much shooting two and a half inch group so out of my competition or I felt pretty excited about that and this is a 70 grain now I take it back this is 75 grain a max Hornady bullet so so that's some of the projectile is available in that bullet diameter that will fit and you can safely fire in an a or platform so very versatile even in 22 caliber til NATO green tip all the configurations there and then a 5 5 6 55 grain NATO around quite quite a quite a bit of flexibility there ok I got my trusty PC MFP 15 I've got my timer here I've got a bag of ammo and some loaded magazines let's go out to the range and make this thing sing a song ok we finally made it out to the range again this evening - look it's getting a little late it's a little overcast which is just about perfect shooting conditions today so I have really no excuses but what I have here today is my M&P 15 this is Performance Center 15 I've got all vortex optics honor to scope the red dot it's all vortex American gold trigger what I'm going to show you here is reaction time and rate of fire so on that first target in the middle I'm going to try to react and shoot five shots on target with the reaction time in about a second so we'll go ahead and load it up one thing you want to consider guys when you're shooting on a range with the rifle like this anything with a compensator on it this happens to be a Mitchell leg compensated by the way it's very effective and anytime you have an effective compensator it really makes a lot of muzzle blast if it's going to work good going to be loud so I always wear a double protection here so I'm will go ahead and plug in put my headset back on and let's see if we can react and shoot five five on target in a second target in the middle here we go I got a little bit excited I actually fired six rounds let's go ahead and count back I'm a revolver shooter by trade so I work in numbers of six at a time so that was five rounds in a 108 not quite when I was shooting for but not a bad warm-up run let's go downrange take a look at the paper right quick and see what we're doing that was six rounds like I said I'm a revolver jockey so one two three four five six they're all in the a box a little bit low so what I have to do is the shooters remember that that scope is actually looking here but the rounds are going to be about to Center that board which is about two inch difference so I'm gonna tidy this up a little bit see if I can crank out five and under a second with with the reaction time and that's what's going to be important with reaction time five shots on target one of the things good about this timer I can go back and look at my performance so what I'm looking at my first shot was the point 55 that's a little bit sluggish but the actual split times in between shots was really good so we had a 14 or 12 over 13 a 14 and a 10 so all I need to do to make this time happen is to really get off that timer and jump in the center-of-mass a little bit quicker the 55 is kind of slow at this range so I'm going to listen really good for that timer get in the center and punch out 5 see if we can make it under second here we go now that was a little bit better he saw how I was punching out right on the timer there let's take a look at it a point 96 made it that time pretty easy so alright 96 we had a 15 a 12 a 13 to 12 so we're running good splits we made the time pretty easy go back and look at that again total time of point 96 hundreds let's go downrange take a look at it okay god we live over five yards here I punched off five rounds and 0.96 hundreds of a second let's take a look at him one two three four and five I got a little bit excited here on the last one I started raising my head up so but the only a box there alright Center center the a box but I know you're not happy with that I'm not either we're going to make it a little bit harder we're going to go ahead and put three in a and tune the head and try to keep it under a second so I'm going to react three and a body to the head in under a second okay there's our point ninety six hundreds at about six yards to react and put five on target so we're going to make it a little bit harder I don't want you guys to go to sleep I'm going to react put three in a body to the head we're going to try to do the same 9602 maybe a little bit better so it's a lot a lot more work on my part here because I got more gun motion going I got my double protection back on remember guys when you learn these things you want to point them toward the berm where you drop the boat always safety first here we go three two body two in the head with reaction time and under second here we go alright didn't make it at a 106 we're going to do it again we're going to tape it up okay guys this is going to be three in the body to the head we're going to try to do this in under second so it's very important that I get off to get off the timer really quick again coming through the target start to trigger press pay attention to my shot count it moves it moving it when I need to let's see if we can do it again here we go three the body a 102 not too bad 45 first split kind of walk them in there I got two now for one right above the day box and then two in the head that was kind of sloppy so we're going to tape it up and see if we can dress that up a little bit make it look right okay bring the party to the head with reaction time in about a second here we go now that would look pretty good let's take a look at the timer point ninety eight hundredths of a second three in a body two and a head ah that's pretty stellar right now pretty excited about that let me clear out we'll go take a look at them clear chamber alright magazine ah let's go take a look at what we did and kind of look at it on the timer okay we've got first shot was let's take a look at the actor was forty four hundreds of a second to react and make the first shot second shot was fourteen hundreds of a second later and then another twelve hundred but what's important here is this one came in 1500s and this one came in 1300s so I didn't take me but basically a hundredth of a second more to move on the target just about almost a foot so good vision techniques good trigger technique do you ever move around on target make it sound really sharp but I can see you're not happy with that at all so we're gonna move on to something a lot harder I've got a video set up here and this is going to be pretty good give it a whack well show you a real fun drill to practice this is actually five targets but the way we're going to shoot it is going to be 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I'll give you a walkthrough on it come on down range with me and I'll give you an idea what we do it we're going to be that same 5 6 yards here on reaction we're going to come up and punch the center target twice we're going to go to the right target twice we're going to come back to the center twice we're going to go to the left two shots we'll come back to the center two shots we're going to go far right two shots we're coming back to the center two shots we're going far left two shots and we're coming back to the center two shots so by the time you finish all this you can have 18 shots it's like shooting nine targets but the secret here to make this really good and and repeatable is to keep your shot splits relatively close so you don't want to have a dead gun in between targets so it teaches your target target transition and also trigger trigger cycle one thing about this drill if you lose attention just the slightest bit you look back you've lost it so you have to really stay focused go for a technique go for go for consistency it looks really good too okay let's go ahead and do this video this is going to be 18 shots a lot of gun motion I have to stay focused on what I want to see and where I want to go and where I've been so it's a lot of fun let's make it happen guys here we go 18 rounds and there is a video ok wait last run was about a 371 or 373 the big the big difference on that left on my first shot was slow the point 71 with all this stuff stuck in my ears it really hit hard to hear this timer so I'm going to try to listen for this time or really sharp get off the first shot really good and keep it running see if we get about a three and a half second run here 18 rounds on nine targets here we go here we go is it going so turn it off yeah thought I was tone-deaf alright guys I look good let me give it a test beep alright here we go here we go boy my dear for what here we ha ha whoa I'm getting old let's try it like this here we go I can barely hear it let's try it again here we go alright that was a little better I could finally hear the time oh I'll just take a look at it 3:29 that's a lot quicker first shot of 58 so let's go down raise take a look at what we did pretty good we've got 10 in the middle that's what we're supposed to have on this target at 10 shots we got out to here one alpha one Charlie close to the a box we got a I forgot a delta I was a little bit excited they're pulling the target pulling off the target we got two alpha and we got a double yeah that's a double well I'll pull one off right there got to do that again this time it's getting harder here alright here we go guys and that right there is a good run 3:46 and now on target so a 49 first shot let's go down take a look now that right that right there was good good good good let's take a look at it this copter hits 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10 we've got two excellent we got two excellent I like this I like Oh got another 2 alpha and another 2 alpha so we had to our 4 2 alpha we only have one Delta one charlie so we did all that whole drill I was 18 rounds on nine targets 3.42 607 second one alpha one delt I mean one Charlie wanted out there I'll take that any day of the week but you did hit your consistency the splits let's go back and try to review that whoo yeah the biggest split time of the whole sequence was a couple of 20s in the long transition so it only took me 20 hundredths of a second getting the set of target to the far right and then when I was there a 17 split to make the shot and then to get back in the center it's a good punching bag drill your vision techniques and your finger has to stay in coordination and I do have to say it beats a double-barrel shotgun any day of the week okay well in the back range guys we got the the reason I brought this along to show you that you know 22 caliber rifle is a great training aid I can shoot it on my steel challenged target that I do but with my handgun so I can shoot a broader spectrum of targets that you probably have on your range now so anyway 22 long rifle and expensive to shoot if you could find 22 ammo that is but anyway just give you an idea I'm a run showdown here Talan stages I'm going to shoot it like I would the pistol and the way I shoot it with the pistol Ben I'm right-handed I shoot the far left target the close left target and I'll swap all the way over to the far right target and then the big one in the back and then the setup plate is going to be the stop plate so I'm just going to run a few runs with the M&P 15-22 and give you an idea what it sounds like and good good way to train already so we had a 185 for five targets total first shot was a 7400 so let's do it again see if we can beat that time a little bit that was a little bit faster that's a 173 so a lot of starting and stop and let's do another one and that's a little bit faster that's the 154 so you can see right there there's a lot of good practice to be here with the 22s and the eben p15 it really a fun gun to do it with okay we're going to play track set up at 50 yards this is an MGM play track it's actually armored plate it has an armored bunker in the front I want to be at least 50 yards from steel when I'm shooting it with us with a center fire rifle I don't have French ammunition this is regular ball ammo so you want to have a safe distance at all times when you try to do something like this and this is quality target so it actually won't shoot back okay I've got my MEP I've got some 55 grain ball let's go ahead and do a couple of runs on the play track and see what we can do here all right we got six targets fifty yards total time 372 first shot was a 147 so actually we were running about a 46 a 44 40 to 41 right around there about 45 hundredths of a second in between targets the shooter played racket about 55 yards so not bad not bad at all that's a little bit more like it total time 351 first shot a 159 so we were Ottoman about a 40 35 we averaged about of 3,700 splits across the board so it's about as good as it gets guys as it seems to be usual with the shoot fast series I have my five bottles of cheap diet drink this time we froze them so this should be a little bit different I've got some Hornady 52 grain 8 max bullets loaded up to the max we got frozen two-liter bottles this should look really good guys pay attention here we go this is part of the shoot path here we go Rene now that was just fun right there as you can see a little bit ice a little bit of fluid makes for a good concussion post up now that right there it's just good stuff on the Rings looky here total destruction dismemberment and a fun way to make a an icy what can I say we've got this person looks like a good five yards easy each way and you can see a little better ice in there with that 52 grade-a max really kicked a hydraulic effect out so I don't know what I was it good that was a good performance okay we're going to continue the saga here we've got melons versus man we've got 52 grain a max we got a Smith & Wesson BC 15 let's see who wins here we go we starting on the Left going to the right game we go never look back at your own work it makes you miss but there you have it three melons four shots I win okay we've got a piece of watermelon way back here looks to be over 20 yards from the actual shot so we were kind of stepping off we're looking for the dispersion radius it's a technical term when you're having fun on a range anyway let's see what we got here we've got one two got about 19 big steps so pretty good pretty good ways kind of expecting the damage here cantaloupe was huh watermelon was good a lot of hydraulic effect cantaloupe man but we got some better stuff to shoot so stick around one moment okay guys we got our test medium down there we have some cans of corn we have some cheap shave cream we've got our 52 grande max let's start on the left target we're gonna shoot it slow with firing for effect that's a good way I say I'm lazy here we go up laughs can I come on here we go Wow we gotta go set them up as you can see our test medium will work pretty good it completely vaporizes I didn't even see a piece of the can leave so i'ma shoot that Center can again that can of corn in the middle fifty two grande max here we go wow that is good stuff right there we got 1 1 can of shave cream still standing let's go ahead and pop him as you can see 2:23 my man is a good thing beat shotgun any day so there you have it guys five five six versus can of corn corn losses every time give you an idea what the can looks like after a direct hit not too much there the other one also just split it right in half guys right down the seam it's it's it's it's pretty dramatic what it does at that distance about 18 yards what you want to remember when you're doing something like this you want to be a safe distance this shave cream also it just flank it all up so if you're too close this stuff and come back and do some harm but other than that it's just fun to get out and range and blast and stuff I see we got one left there we didn't hit this one actually it bounced off the stick so we're going to leave it alone we're going to save this for another show but other than that they are M&P 15 light a piece of hardware so what do you think wicked quick that's all I can say about this platform guys I've enjoyed shooting these in three gun competitions forever I've been doing this they are platformer guys is exactly where you want to be in a modern sporting rifle this PC 15 doesn't leave anything anything that anything to want the siding system the way it handles just just very quick anyway I would like for you to subscribe to Mitchell ENCOM the next episode is going to be on the 1911 pistol and I think I could probably shoot that kind of fast too so tune in and let's see what we can do you

Channel: Jerry Miculek - Pro Shooter

Views: 1,037,164

Keywords: Jerry, Miculek, speed, shooting, fast, quick, draw, reload, reloading, world, record, smith, wesson, ruger, colt, call, of, duty, modern, warfare, battlefield, black, ops, gun, guns, firearms, firearm, weapon, tactical, assault, ar15, ar, 15, ak47, ak, 47, m16, m4, rifle, shotgun, pistol, handgun, ipsc, uspsa, idpa, sport, ar-15, military, marines, mw2, mw3, mw4, bf3, bf4, fastest, xbox, ps3, ps4, 720, 360

Id: Nd3vL6Au7BU

Length: 38min 3sec (2283 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2013