AR-15 Shooting

[steve1 5]

I was watching Gun Talk on the boob tube the other day. It showed some experienced police and swat troopers training with their AR-15's. It showed them taking cover behind a car, and returning fire by shooting underneath it. They were shooting by laying on their side, and shooting with their rifles side-ways. I've never seen this done before.

I was always taught to keep the rifle straight up and down for best accuracy. The path of your bullet will rise up to cross your line of sight at around 25 yards. The bullet will rise up above your line of sight to reach a mid-range trajectory. Then the bullet will begin dropping due to gravity.

So, this has me wondering....will this sideways shooting only work at fairly close range? I would imagine you would have to aim left or right (depending on which way the rifle is tilted) to hit at longer ranges.

Has anyone ever experimented with this kind of shooting. It looks interesting...but possibly too complicated for my simple brain.

[AggieDave 6]

I've trained doing that sort of stuff.

Works best using something like an EoTech for your aiming. The accuracy is something you have to really put some thought to if you're out past about 50yrds (depending on how you have your rifle sighted). From around 50yrds in it really isn't that big of deal if you're just going center mass.

With the training I've done the "crunch over" method where you ball up sitting on your knees and keep the rifle tucked in the shoulder pocket (which is super uncomfortable). I've done variations of laying prone on my sides and on my belly. I've done stuff where I keep the rifle on my shoulder and some where I flip the rifle over and use the red dot to get the aim (since recoil is basically non-existent).

It is fun training and useful for urban environments, just watch the ejection port!

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[randompoints 0]

don't know anything about sideways shooting, my thoughts it would be ok for super short distance, but you would be shooting low from the start. you also need to adjust your thoughts on bullet ballistics to figure it out, the bullet never rises out of the barrel gravity starts working instantly and starts sinking immediately. Now your aim adjust as you said, dead on at 25, then your high, then zeroed again, then low. That because your sights sit high on the riffle and are slightly tilted down to the zero mark.

http://www.chuckhawks.com/bullet_trajectory.htm

So working out sideways shooting with that in mind I would say if your riffle was 90degrees on its right, your bullet strike would be low and ?left? of target til 25 and low and ?right? after 25. haha intresting thought

[steve1 5]

I'll bet ejection could introduce some problems. I remember in the army they wouldn't let us shoot with our hoods on. Left hand shooters sometimes caught hot brass inside their hoods. Then they would forget which direction was down range, and things could get dangerous. I never saw that happen, but I suppose it could. If you were on your left side, the brass might go up, and come back down on you.

It's been about 40 years since I've shot an M-16. An AR-15 may be something I need to put on my wish list. There's so many different varieties and add-ons now days, that it might be hard to pick which one to get.

I noticed all the shooters on this show, did have some type of new fangled scope, (probably with a red dot). I don't know a thing about that type of scope. I see where most soldiers are using that same scope, in the middle east, on their m-16's. It would probably beat a peep sight, particularly in low light situations....

[Andy9o8 2]

Gangsters shoot sideways all the time, and they're badass.

[rushmc 23]

Here is a link to an newsleter on different AR optics

I learned much from it

http://www.mdtstraining.com/AROptic.pdf

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[JohnRich 4]

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They were shooting by laying on their side, and shooting with their rifles side-ways.

With the gun laying sideways to the left, the bullets will go low and left - to compensate, aim high and right. With the gun laying sideways to the right, the bullets will go low and right - to compensate, aim high and left. How much, I don't know. You would have to set up targets at different distances, test fire, and see what the offsets are.

Some competition shooters intentionally shoot with the gun canted to the left, usually in the sitting position, because that brings the sights over to your eye more naturally. But then you have to know that when you go from prone with the gun straight up, to sitting with the gun canted, you have to crank in some windage and elevation to compensate for that. Once you figure out what those adjustements are, you just have to remember to do 'em.

Even the best shooters sometimes forget such things. Last weekend one guy forgot to change his elevation when he went from 300 yards to 600 yards, so his first shot at 600 was barely on the bottom edge of the target. Oops. In the target pulling pits, we could imagine him cursing himself on the firing line, over our laughter at his mistake.

Ejection of hot cases with the gun sideways might be problematic. With the ejection port facing up, the cases will fly up and back, possibly landing on your legs, and they'll burn you through fabric. With the port facing down, they'll bounce off the ground and go who knows where. Maybe roll underneath the edge of your body, where once again they'll burn you.

You can trim the length of the ejector spring and alter the ejection characteristics, like making them fly forward instead of sideways. But I don't like messing with manufacturer engineering.

I made a brass deflector (see photo) for my shooting matches out of an old roadside sign, consisting of a piece of plastic "cardboard" with heavy wire stakes to stick it in the ground. My AR kicks the brass out to about the 4:00 position, so as a courtesy to the guy laying next to me, I stick this in the ground at that position. My hot brass ejects, hits the board, and drops to the ground. It keeps the hot brass from hitting my neighbor and distracting him from his own shooting, and it also makes it easier to pick up my own brass because it's in a nice neat pile, instead of scattered all over hiding in the grass. Sometimes if someone to my left is popping their hot brass on me, I forget about courtesy to my neighbor to the right, and I set up the board to catch the brass of the shooter to my left and protect myself. I could actually use two of these. I painted a camo pattern on it because the raw white color would reflect too much sunlight into my eyes and force me to squint. And most important of all, I painted a lucky shamrock in the center to improve my accuracy.

[AggieDave 6]

I've seen stovepipes from brass bouncing off the ground or not having enough room to fully extract.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[steve1 5]

I'm learning a lot from you guys. That was an interesting read on AR optics. That's something, how you can mount another sighting system, on your rifle. By canting your gun slightly you can use this other set of sights or optics. Proper training could make all this work effectively. Things are getting kind of complicated these days

Keeping things simple is important though.... Particularly when buck fever sets in....

[AggieDave 6]

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Keeping things simple is important though.... Particularly when buck fever sets in....

You don't rise to the moment, you fall back to the level of your training. So train it, train it often and train it hard.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[Creep0321 0]

I have done limited shooting (so take it for whats is worth, nothing scientific) with my M4 sideways, mostly laying on my back and other baricade shooting, and a few times in actualy firefights, creating as low of a profile as possible. The times I did it at the range though, had no problem at 50 yds and in hitting an 8" circle on a shilouette target. so the offset isnt to great at those distances.

Jack of all trades.
Military Free Fall Jumpmaster.
USA Static-line Jumpmaster.

[DaVinci 0]

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So, this has me wondering....will this sideways shooting only work at fairly close range?

Yes, but you can adjust. But if the target is far enough away, you can find a better shooting stance. The laying on the ground sideways thing is only for very close distances where you need good cover.

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Has anyone ever experimented with this kind of shooting. It looks interesting...but possibly too complicated for my simple brain.

Yes, and no. I have done it and you will have no issues.