AR-15 Pistol Use

All right, I wanna talk a little bit about AR-15 pistols. Now, AR-15 pistols are getting a real research in popularity. There's a lot of different companies building the pistol uppers. There's a lot of different people doing different things with the backend of the pistols. And there's a lot of interesting things going on as far as people training with them and using them and realizing that there's some huge benefits to the compact AR platform, the ability to fire it an AR-15 essentially the same exact thing that's going on with the bullet. As long as you're getting enough muzzle velocity out of your shorter barrel. This is very much like the SBR is a Short Barreled Rifle ballistics that people talk about. When I talk about either the six inch seven and a half inch 10 and a half inch, 11 inch, 12 inch anything under 16 inches here in the US is considered a short barreled rifle. So as soon as you put a stock on this, this becomes a big issue as far as the law Now it's not illegal quote unquote but you do have to jump through a lot of hoops, you gotta pay a little extra money, you gotta wait a long time. And there are some States where that option isn't even exist. So for a lot of people, the AR pistol makes a lot of sense because it gives you a lot of the benefits of a compact platform shooting that 5.56 round out of a barrel that is shorter than we would normally get out of a car being with a collapsed stock. So that's the advantage. Now here's the thing. As far as SPRs go, I don't own one. I've never bothered to jump through the hoops of any of the NFA, the National Firearms Act type suppressors short bowed rifles, fully automatic firearms. I just don't see a big enough advantage for me from a defensive standpoint to go through the hoops, just to have the novelty just to have it in my collection, AR pistols on the other hand is something that I've been dealing with since the 90's, since during the original assault weapons ban, looking at how to build an AR 15 platform pistol, that was reliable. That was the big issue. You know we used to have the little short three inch buffer tubes. Sometimes you had an over the top kind of situation. We couldn't have any breaks. We couldn't have any kind of muzzle break flash depressor anything on the end during the assault weapons ban period. So there was a lot of things that made it just not really a viable option, not to mention the fact that there weren't a lot of reliable systems as far as the combinations of the gas system and the buffer tubes that we could rely on so that we could have a gun that we knew was gonna work for vehicle defense, personal defense, home defense. So it wasn't much of an option. Fast forward in the 2000's actually did a big write-up in SWAT magazine about AR pistols and particularly focusing on one that was offered, made out of carbon. So it was actually a polymer gun and it was a short barreled six inch fluted barrel very rigid system. And again, not much going on as far as a long buffer tube. Well, the new thing that's happened now in the last let's say five to six years is a resurgence in interest in the air pistol with extended buffer tube. So these longer buffer tubes obviously with some padding back here and barrel length of 10 to 12 inches, making sure that we're still getting the velocity that we want to get the bullets to perform properly, perform like rifle bullets should either reliably expanding, or tumbling when they hit the person that we're shooting at trying to stop them from hurting us around our vehicle, inside of our home. That's not very likely that you're gonna be carrying this as a personal defense tool under a jacket or something like that, but where we get into trouble whether is some confusion is in the proper use of the AR-15 pistol. Now, if you go back and look at that SWAT magazine article what you're gonna see is some pictures of me talking about using this as a personal defense tool, or especially like an executive protection team setting where you're extending and pushing this gun out against the sling against whether it's a bungee sling or a standard sling like this one, pushing out and getting some tension there so that you get some stability as you reach out to full extension. Now that's certainly a viable method and it works really well with these that originally I was shown to be with the old M the H and K series, MP5, the cavers and the very small version that has the pistol grip, very short version. And you could drive that out that MP5 against the sling and shoot it very well. And obviously set up with a red dot optic like this. It gives you a great option. So that's the primary way that people are taught to shoot these. And it's the primary way that people have shot guns like this for a long time. So let's take a look at how that's gonna work. We go ahead and load and chamber and I'm just gonna stand here. I'm gonna drive out. This is a typical home defense maybe around the vehicle, kind of defensive distance. In fact, this is further than it would be maybe across my bedroom if I had to defend myself with this type of firearm, I'd drive out. I see my dot. When I get my dot, I fire a shot, no problem Shot . I drive out, I can manage multiple shots. You can see not bad grouping and it relatively fast drive out again. I hit a magazine change. I come back in the same as I do with a regular AR, I insert, I reach back and pull and you'll see that this time what I've done is I've switched to a smaller magazine. Obviously a big part of this gun is the compactness, right? So a smaller magazine, a 20 round magazine as long as your gun works reliably with them, it can be a great option for this pistol especially if you're keeping it for vehicle defense. If you're securing one inside of a vehicle this can be a great option. The smaller magazine. Now here's where it comes to the interesting moment, the padding, the different things that you'll see different configurations back here can make it awfully tempting to take this pistol and put it up against your shoulder and get a good cheek weld and shoot it just like a rifle. And that's where the gray area is. And honestly, it's something I'm concerned about for our community, for the industry as a whole because while the different attachments and different patterns and different buttstock looking things are absolutely coming from the BATFE with letters that say, you can attach this to a pistol and not be in violation of law. My concern is that in US code and in many state laws one of the descriptors of a rifle includes the intention to shoot the firearm from the shoulder. So if I, all of a sudden were to say to you, Hey here's how you shoot this thing, You push it up against your, your shoulder, your chest you put your cheek down on it and that's how you bring the gun up and shoot it. Well, essentially, if this is why you buy it if you buy it to do that, and you go out and train with it, and I'm telling you as an instructor, this is how you do it. Then I think that clearly changes the intended use of the firearm from being a pistol, something that you shoot out from your body to something that you shoot up against your body. So until I see a letter from the BATFE that says, no, no, no it is not constructively create a rifle If you intend to shoot this thing from your shoulder, that's not something I'm willing to teach. Now, that would be four points of contact. That would be the traditional rifle. One, two, three, four points of contact, when I come up to my cheek. However, pistol shooting can involve maybe three points of contact. So if we look at the letter of the law and we realized that we can't take this and put it up against our shoulder or our chest area, I'm sure it would be an extension of shouldering this device. Maybe I can put my cheek on this and get three points of contact. And I've seen some other instructors do this as well. And there are some devices that attach to the chin, which have not a big fan of it. It doesn't seem like that's a great idea. Obviously, if I'm breathing my chin, my mouth is moving but I can put this up to my cheek. Let's say that I wanted to take a shot at the head. And I put my cheek up on the gun. Now, I can take that shot with a little more stability. So as opposed to just kind of hip shooting this thing or free-floating it, or taking it off this sling and then just driving out and holding it like this and this kind of a situation, which certainly could work, I could fire a shot into the chest this way and get a good hit. This way I can pull the gun back in put it up against my face, obviously stopped talking fire that shot into the head area. So that's one way to get a little more stability without having to worry about the shouldering issue. So AR pistols absolutely I think a modern, good viable option for home defense, maybe for a good vehicle gun but be careful how you train with them, be careful how you build them. Make sure, obviously you're complying with all the laws that you've got to lower that can be built as a pistol that you aren't taking something that was sold to you as a rifle and changing its configuration completely to make it a pistol. A lot of things to worry about when it comes to the AR pistols, but I think they're worth worrying about *cause it absolutely is a viable defensive system.