What is the Ultimate Urban Rifle? ["How to Win The Fight" Series Ep. 2]

[Music] every single one of you eaten how to run a a our load it unload it hit a paper plate 25 yards happy meal every single one of you right now need to know how to shoot a ak-47 pick it up load it unload it paper plate 25 yards why would I want that Cline out on the one well it doesn't mean you won't fight with one hey everyone James with tfbtv welcome back to the how to win the fight series this is a series that I filmed in summer 2019 at Thunder ranch with living training legend Clint Smith essentially this series focuses on using the ar-15 or any carbine for that matter but primarily the ar-15 for personal defense the foundation of the series of videos is on thunder ranch urban rifle course in episode one we kind of win over urban rifle what it was the purpose of it and in episode two we're going to talk about the ultimate urban rifle now before we start fighting with each other about what the ultimate urban rifle is let's kick this [ __ ] off with a drinking story trigger con you guys know it it's a convention that we go to tfbtv has gone to the past couple of years takes place in Bellevue Washington two three blocks away there is a Marriott that Marriott if you go there after trigger con everyone who was working trigger con will be there boozing I was walking around there last year and I am like pretty much after every show you've got vendors walking around you got guys from the press there's this dude there who's really cool his name's Chris Kosta you may not have heard of him but he's huge in Japan but I'd see these guys in Lobby the dudes from arrow Clint Hansen from ballistic advantage barrels and you know what happens after you had like 19 beers with your buddies you're like dude I got a great idea awesome idea for a video man we're gonna go to the top of Mount Everest we're gonna take Jeep up there a bunch of hookers we're gonna get a hot tub up there and guns and we're gonna shoot it we're gonna piss all over Instagram we're gonna do a video it's gonna be awesome and we do that every year and it's like dude arrow you guys need to do an event I'll cover it I'll go I'll go do the event and that's what you say right you're chatting with your buddies after you've been drinking all night you come up with these grand plans with zero intention the next morning to follow through you wake up you're like god damn I hope they don't call me low and behold last spring I get a phone call from the guys at arrow and they're like dude we're putting on that event you know that thing we've been talking about and I'm like god damn it and they're like it's gonna be at Thunder ranch like I'm in and I'm kidding of course those guys they could have had it in the Denny's parking lot and I still would have shown up because I loved those dudes arrow knew I've never owned one of the rifles so the entire purpose I think was to get me up there build an arrow rifle piece by piece under their supervision and with their help and then run the absolute [ __ ] out of it during Clint Smith's urban rifle Corsa and that's what I did we ran this exact rifle that you've seen on a few of the videos from this series already ran this rifle around a thousand 1,200 rounds through it over the course of three days without cleaning it after it was assembled needless to say I was incredibly impressed and to be fair at the end of the course they let me keep the rifle but at no point did they say James we fully expect you to make a video about this rifle and to pump it up so I'm doing this of my own accord because I learned a lot and we're not going to be talking just about this arrow rifle we're going to be talking about the ultimate urban rifle or urban carbine generally although this is going to be geared towards the ar-15 before we start talking about why this is the ultimate urban rifle build why should you take my word for it I'm just some dumb idiot on YouTube that's true but as it turns out I had a lot of help from very experienced people that is Clint Smith of course at Thunder ranch he kind of put together the entire concept you had Clint Hanson a ballistic advantage and you had the guys from arrow and they came up with kind of a package they said James this is kind of where we think the ultimate urban rifle is and here are some components we think that work why don't you pick them out figure out how you like to configure your rifle but stick with this general concept so how do you define the ultimate urban rifle you do not have to fight anyone confident today in a fight to get hurt really bad if they have any what you and I would call contemporary cartridges for example five four five Russian 76039 308 30.6 okay all those calibers our military calibers those calibers are basically simple the reason I want 100 yards zero is I know that when you shoot at 200 yards your bullet only grappa nominal to four inches okay with your two to three and I also know when we go to 300 you're going to drop a nominal 13 so that means the average size of the average man on the [ __ ] planet today is 5 foot 8 inches tall so if you hold Center on that [ __ ] okay we're gonna shoot him here we're gonna shoot him here they're gonna shoot him in the dick awesome I'll take it nutriment tutor okay but it's not personal right so the deal with it is this person that you fight doesn't have to do anything all they have to do is pick up the shitty $40 a K pointed at you and pull the trigger and you're in jeopardy two things happen past 300 that are good things one the bullet mass arts to drop a nominal 30 inches and - based on what bullet it is the wind will start to move it around a little bit so you in your world need to own with your car lengths of your car lot farthest distance you can see in your house and everything else after that is gravy and I would say that you should be able to hit stuff okay on a five foot eight inch man okay you should be able to hit him someplace out to 300 yards and that's what we did in the urban rifle course we started at pistol ranges and by the last day we're shooting man-sized targets all the way out to 500 yards so it needs to be reasonably accurate you want it to be lightweight you want to have the ability to mount accessories to mount optics that are going to maintain zero to have good ergonomics those are the main considerations but primarily you want it to be effective from pistol range all the way out to 500 meters but you don't want it to be too big or too heavy you want to be able to use it inside confined spaces like say your home so that was the concept and one of the most critical elements for that which is what we're about to talk about is the barrel everyone generally agreed that 14 and a half to 16 inches was kind of the ultimate compromise in terms of barrel [Applause] of course you could go longer and you can get something that'll get greater distance but it's gonna be heavier it's going to be a little bit less wieldy if that's word the opposite of unwieldy and you could go shorter but the main problem not only do you lose velocity and lose range but you lose lethality with the five five six round the 223 derives its effectiveness from fragmentation fragmentation is functionally breaking apart inside of a soft target that creates a larger permanent wound cavity and that is where the five five six to twenty three that's where it gets its power in order for a 223 round of fragment and needs to be moving at about and at least 2,500 feet per second with an ar-15 you need at least a 10 inch barrel that's going to put you at 2,600 feet per second at the muzzle you drop below 2,500 feet per second a little bit after just 50 yards so you lose a great deal of lethality after 50 yards if you're using a 10-inch barrel sure they look cool yes absolutely you can LARP around your house like you're a seal or something like you've got your mark 18 but you're looking at a carbine that's going to be far less effective outside of 50 yards and you also have a lot lower range at 375 yards a 55 grain round from a 10 inch ar-15 like say a mark 18 will have dropped 3 feet already let's compare that to a 16 inch barrel you're looking at 3,200 feet per second at the muzzle so 600 feet per second faster out of the 16 inch barrel it's still moving at 2500 feet per second at 200 yards so you still get fragmentation larger permanent wound cavity at out to 200 yards and while out of a 10 inch barrel a 55 grand 223 round has dropped three feet at 375 yards you don't drop three feet until four hundred and fifty yards with the 16 inch barrel a 16 inch gun isn't going to be as light or as handy as like a super [ __ ] cool Navy SEAL 10 inch ar-15 it isn't like you're slinging around an m1 garand either there's several other things that are really important in terms of your barrel but I'm only going to kind of gloss over them I encourage you I highly encourage you to research these topics profile that is what is the shape of the barrel you've got several profiles that are popular some of the most common being h-bar or heavy barrel that's like a thick barrel that's pretty much a uniform diameter the entire length of the barrel up sides of a heavy barrel they tend be more accurate because they're less susceptible to barrel whip or I guess harmonic distortion would be the correct term that is the barrel wanting to kind of flex and whip whenever you're firing if you look at an ultra slo-mo video that does actually happen heavy barrels are more resistant to that but they are heavy to actually weigh a ton it'll surprise you if you pick up like a pencil barrel gun next to a heavy barrel gun the weight difference even if the barrel lengths are the same so number-two pencil barrel I'm a big fan of the lightweight profile that's usually a uniform diameter just like the heavy barrel all the way through the entire length of the barrel but it's a lot lighter it's a lot thinner what does that mean it's going to be more susceptible to barrel whip perhaps accuracy is going to be decreased it's certainly going to be more susceptible to the negative effects of heat accumulation whenever you're firing so you got the pencil you got the heavy in the middle you got the MEDC on or the medium contour this is primarily seen in stainless steel barrels you also have perhaps one of the most popular profiles out there the m4 profile which I think for civilians is generally useless with the m4 profile it starts out thick near the chamber which is good but then it gets thinner towards the middle of the barrel there's a shoulder there that's primarily used for mounting an m203 grenade launcher which unfortunately I don't have and you probably don't either then it gets thicker again towards the end of the barrel I went with the Hansen profile which is named after Clint Hansen he came up with it very simple design it's a shoulderless design it starts out thick at the chamber where the most heats going to be so that makes a lot of sense and then it kind of tapers out to a medium contour as it moves along the length of the barrel so this is hands-down my favorite barrel profile should I say Hansen down that was bad that was a bad one I'm sorry sorry about that guys barrel materials you've got primarily forty one forty forty one fifty forty one fifty is what you're going to see in most mil spec guns then you've got your stainless steels for 10 stainless for six tene stainless i will let you guys look into that I used a stainless steel barrel I've heard scuttlebutt is that stainless steel barrels are softer than the forty one forty or forty one fifty Steel's I'm not sure if that's true anymore with modern machining and modern heat treating maybe it's the case maybe not I guess go ask somebody from ballistic advantage but I do know that stainless steel tends to be a lot more accurate than your standard likes EMV barrels then you've got twist rate you've got faster twist which is in milspec gun so like military m4s are going to be using one in seven that's used for stabilizing heavier grain weights of ammo you've got one in nine that's a slower twist that's very common in the commercial market that's better of course for stabilizing lighter rounds like forty five grain 55 grain then you have what I selected for this barrel and what I select as often as I can for all my barrels one 1/8 twist which is like God's twist like why the [ __ ] is anybody [ __ ] around with 1 & 7 & 1 & 9 when you've got one in eight that's right there that can stabilize everything from 45 grain up to like 77 grain like the entire range I don't understand it and for some reason it's super popular in stainless steel barrels but nothing else I went with a mid-length gas system this is a 16 inch gun it's not a 14 and a half inch gun so I can extend my gas block out like another inch and a half have a softer recoil impulse and it's still gonna work just as well as 14 and a half with a carbine length or even better than say the 16 inch barrel with a carbine length gas system I can further elaborate on that point but it's really boring so I suggest if you're really if you're into it you want to know more about mid length vs. carbine I would say hit Google there's a wealth of information out there finally for barrel you need to decide about your muzzle device you've got a flash hider which is going to do nothing more than suppress the flash the muzzle flash from your gun you've got muzzle brakes now muzzle brakes I this is my first muzzle break I never had a muzzle brake on a 223 because I'm like look these things don't have a ton of recoil but holy moly I use the VG 6 epsilon 5 5 6 when I was shooting Thunder ranch couldn't believe how little recoil like you wouldn't think that the 223 could have less recoil it certainly can with a muzzle brake but your drawbacks are these things are loud as piss nice and they throw debris and shrapnel and crap and 90-degree angles so that's your major downside I am truly terrified to fire this thing in my house Clint does a great job of explaining why muzzle break is awesome it's it basically Wells the stunning recoil of the two to three rifle they're cool but they're loud now imagine shooting that [ __ ] in that Hall it would not no ear Pro look like Elmer Fudd and a Bugs Bunny movie smacked the tree we could to be good to you here's what happens like if you shoot that [ __ ] this is what happens immediately after you pulled your back for about two weeks handguards will handle us quickly even though it's a very important component get a free-floating handguard free-floating means that the handguard doesn't touch the barrel at any point so if you were to rest this handguard on a barricade you don't have to worry about shifting point of aim point of impact get one that's lightweight if you get one that's too heavy you're going to be miserable make sure you've got accessory mounting options em lock which is what this Atlas s1 from arrow that's what it comes with em lock was invented by Magpul it basically won the format Wars it is the VHS to the keymod beta cassette tape so keymod that was introduced by BCM that did not pan out so well people found that they liked and what more em luck has been more successful and you're seeing fewer and fewer keymod handguard x' be introduced you also have the Old Faithful Picatinny rail which is still used by the military you can get that quad rail right but that's gonna be heavier and I'm a big fan of the M watt because it allows you to have a narrow in diameter easier to hold easier control handguard so M lock in my opinion is hands-down the way to go I am going to absolutely 1000% shill for the Atlas s1 hand I will tell you factually this is probably my most favorite handguard the Atlas s14 goes full length Picatinny rail you only have a little bit of rail up front for your front sight and then you've got a little bit of rail here in the back to lengthen your upper receiver Picatinny rail to give you more sighting options having QD sling points like this one is also nice I've got two QD sling points at the base here and I added an M lock QD sling point at the muzzle end the worst thing about a tactical sling is if you bend over the muzzle has a tendency to go over here the end of your muzzle okay and a penis that's something in common if you don't know where they're at all the time you're gonna get in trouble regardless of your gender what is the best optic for an urban rifle something you're going to be using close up and far away in LP vo a low-power variable optic vo-tech sent along Voodoo's the EOTech voodoo this is the 1 to 6 X I thought it was absolutely fantastic I believe they make a 1 to 8 X but it's got this little thrill lever here so you can quickly drop to a true 1x so that means you can shoot both eyes open I can see my reticle right now with both eyes open great eye relief very clear glass and if I want to I can chuck it all the way up to 6 X which made it very easy to shoot at 500 yards don't just run it up to 6 and be a happy meal with it run that thing halfway through the day ok down to 3 then 1/2 for an hour run it down to 1 learn what that looks like ok understand what's going on there's also a little set of buttons over here that allow you to illuminate the reticle which I thought was cool it'll turn the whole thing will turn red I could not be more impressed with this optic for that matter and I absolutely treated this thing like straight up [ __ ] we were banging it against barricades using it like in our one-handed malfunction clearing drills and one-handed reloading drills you know you're using it to jam against an object to get tension on your rifle so you can manipulate it if you have to and it did not lose zero it stayed in place we use yo Tex quick disconnect mount it were flawlessly I mean I don't know what else I can say about this optic and I've got several LP videos this one's got to be one of my favorites it's a bit pricey but I think it's worth it you guys I mean you have to understand you got to spend money on good glass as a guy who absolutely hated that like my philosophy is why am I gonna spend money on glass when I can just buy another gun it makes your life so much easier it's truly worth it and like my days of buying cheap glass Chinese iam way behind me another very technical aspect of the air 15 and I'm just gonna gloss over but please don't ignore it is the bolt carrier group the bolt carrier group is like the soul of your ar-15 is it going to drastically affect the performance the way a barrel or a trigger would or an optic absolutely not however if your bolt breaks you are [ __ ] I highly recommend before you purchase a complete upper or a bolt carrier group instead of just buying the cheapest one you can find or one that just says mil spec look into what bolt carrier groups are good and what makes a bolt carrier group good you're looking at composition like carpenter 158 steel which is mil spec you want your gas key you want to make sure it's staked properly you want to have a bolt that's high pressure tested magnetic particle inspected if the things I just said made absolutely no sense to you instead of me spending ten minutes explaining it in this video which is already run kind of long trust me just look it up on Google do the research it'll take you 3045 minutes of reading and you're gonna be caught up just like that for trigger I use the rise armament apt I like nice triggers I have very rarely spent additional money on nice triggers the guys with rise armament supplied it for the class I was super impressed and I think everybody else was too really helps you send the shot if you know what I mean I weighed this in at between three and a quarter three and a half pounds whenever ever screwing around with it the trigger is heavy enough where you have to intentionally pull the trigger to send it you know it's not like a two-pound trigger but it's also light enough where it's not going to disturb your shot whenever you actually pull the trigger I've never understood people paying like 200 bucks for a trigger I did whenever I shot this thing out at Thunder ranch backup iron sights are very important you should know how to use your iron sights if something happens with your optic your optic goes down you break it or whatever I like having a QD mount on my optic so the co tech voodoo has a QD mount if something happens to the optic you can just rip the lever in the QD mount Chuck the optic and you've got your backup iron sights know how to use them I'm not married to a particular iron sight backup iron sight like I think Magpul makes great ones I think Troy makes excellent sights Brownells sent Magpul m buss pro not the mbus plastic but the mbus pro I've broken plastic sights and I've dinged steel sights too in the past metal sites tend to be a lot more durable than plastic so that's probably the route you should go don't be afraid to splurge on getting nice iron sights if you ask Clint Smith what needs to be in your urban rifle he's gonna tell you good backup iron sights and a white light so right now I've got the surefire x300 ultra I just paid for this with my own money I've also got the surefire Scout series of lights the M 300 C seen in this video has an output of 500 lumens a run time of one hour but it's only four inches long in 1.125 inches in diameter it weighs four ounces with batteries I like those a lot and I believe in my interview with Clint Smith he said that he likes the surefire Scout as well furniture just get what works for you I just use cheapo Magpul mo II just like their basic this would probably be this set for like the grip and the stock would be 80 bucks just find what you like gotta have good magazines everybody knows Magpul makes a great magazine plus the FD blended in perfectly with this derp code job on this arrow now as I said I had not previously owned any arrow rifles and now at this point I have I think two including this one because I was so impressed with how well these ran out at under ranch you had ten people out there taking the course all of them were using arrow rifles I didn't see a single malfunction everybody shot probably in a thousand rounds of ammo so ten thousand rounds through ten different rifles and a mine shot one to two-inch groups with relatively inexpensive 45 grain frangible ammo I shut this rifle three days in a row didn't clean it didn't move it and it ran flawlessly I had no issues with it the entire time and it shot very well I had a preconceived notion about arrow because of how inexpensive they were again I knew they were solid dudes I knew that they had solid manufacturing facilities but I was still reluctant just because of the price like it was it was too cheap and that's stupid and you guys call me out on it all the time it's fair I'm one of those people on the sucker this shot as well as any other ar-15 that I have probably have almost 20 air 15s almost all of them more expensive than this one and this one shoots as good as anything else that I've gotten stable I've had long-standing professional and personal relationships with the guys at otech and arrow and ballistic advantage and Brownells and there are all great companies so I'm really glad that they included me in this little trip if you like this content please consider supporting us at subscribe Starcom slash tfbtv or the slightly anti-gun patreon at patreon.com slash tfbtv I wish everyone from patreon would switch over to supporting us at subscribe star they're very pro-gun platform we are viewer supported the money that you guys send into patreon subscribe star whatever that goes to pay for our expenses pay our personalities and fortunately we don't have to take a check from sponsors I didn't have to say hey arrow where's the money where's the check babe you want me to come do a video for you guys I need some money we don't have to do that because you guys support us because we're viewer supported we could be independent and we can bring you more great content like this so thanks a ton for watching stay tuned for more how to win the fight on 10th from Thunder ranch

Channel: TFB TV

Views: 761,242

Rating: 4.9007206 out of 5

Keywords: tfb, tfb tv, tfbtv, the firearm blog, firearm, 2A, gun, thunder ranch, urban rifle, clint smith, self defense, home defense, firearms training, gun school, gun vids, shotgun, thunderranch, 1911, ar15, James Reeves, Aero, EOTech, Vudu, Assault Rifle, rifle, ak-47, m16, carbine, guns, Brownells, Ballistic, Advantage, how to, win the fight, Aero AR-15, ar-15, m4e1, aero, 5.56, magpul, ar, best ar15, m4, ar15 build, range, precision, aero m4e1, aero precision

Id: vPXSF3mcjc8

Length: 25min 7sec (1507 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

This is why people use .300 Blackout for their short barrel ARs.

[u/Only_Hospital]

The point of the ar pistol is it's versatility. You can always put a longer barrel on if you're concerned about further out targets.

It's just a different tool in the box. More for urban settings than open spaces.

[u/Courtlessjester]

I recall middle eastern insurgents putting a premium on maiming invaders because they're a longer term drain on the colonizers resources. Lethality isn't always a good thing 🤔

[u/BraapTAhTAhTAh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z06pAJciuNI better