Clint Smith urban rifle class: AR-15 offset and movement

Key points: Clint Smith urban rifle

• Sight offset drives the whole class: the bore sits below the sight line, so inside 25 yards where you aim is not where you hit, and Smith says the last thing you hear from him crossing a threshold is offset, offset, offset.
• On zero, most American law enforcement runs a 50-yard zero — about the width of a street — while Smith recommends a 100-yard zero for civilians, where a 223 or 308 drops roughly 4 inches at 200 yards and 12 inches at 300.
• Prone is built on natural point of aim: settle in, close your eyes, breathe three or four cycles, then look, and if the sights have drifted move your body instead of muscling the gun back on target.
• Trigger work is reset and follow-through — press, hold, then let it out the nominal eighth of an inch to the click — under the rule to let the gun fire rather than make the gun fire.
• Group shape is a diagnosis: vertical stringing means the shooter is breathing and shooting at the same time, and a diagonal group almost always means the position is bad.
• The X drill runs three or four rounds center then one round on a 12, 3, 6 or 9 o'clock slice, forcing a deliberate downshift from center mass to a surgical hold — the 12 o'clock shot is taken by holding on air above the head.
• On the stair-step barricade the rifle rests on the wall and the body stays behind it, but the muzzle goes through the opening, because firing past an edge shreds plywood into secondary fragments that come back at the shooter's face.

About this Tactics and Training video

Clint Smith urban rifle class, filmed in Wyoming: Classic Firearms host Ryan runs a full day of AR-15 training under the Thunder Ranch founder, shooting the new US Palm CAT4 ambidextrous rifle. Sight offset is the spine of the class — the bore sits below the sight, so inside 25 yards the aim point and the hit are not the same. From there the day moves through natural point of aim in prone, trigger reset, the 12-3-6-9 X drill on partial targets, Smith's stair-step barricade, and lateral movement off the X. AR-15 offset, positions and movement from five decades on the range deck.

Transcript: Clint Smith urban