AR-type .22 rimfire conversions and trainers have flown off dealers' shelves by the thousands, with shooters looking to mimic the appearance, form or function of their service carbines. Some of these shooters didn’t grow up on a steady regimen of rimfire shooting, while others are now shooting the .22 in volumes not encountered before.
For our purposes, mechanical offset relates to the difference between the line of bore and the line of sight. This distance will vary from one gun to another. Additionally, the sight and mounting system will also influence the difference. All handheld firearms have a certain amount of mechanical offset. It may be negligible in the case of a pistol, or significant in the case of certain rifles/carbines.
Every so often one finds a training experience that recalibrates the measurement of what is possible and pushes the student past all self-prescribed limits. This is advanced training—and what a group of police, military, and dedicated civilians received at the inaugural Viking Tactics Night Fighter class outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina recently.
The explosion of interest in the AR platform and the rising cost/scarcity of 5.56mm ammunition have generated unprecedented interest in sub-caliber training solutions for serious training and skills development.
My days of not shooting because I’m in a wheelchair are over. Recently Magpul Dynamics (the training arm of Magpul Industries) conducted their Dynamic Carbine 1 course in Houston, Texas. Chris Costa and Travis Haley were the course instructors and I was one of their students.
Viking Tactics is one of the foremost contract trainers used by elements of our country’s special operations forces. I had been aware of VTAC’s reputation for some time, but had not been able to match up a time against one of their few annual classes that are not exclusively contracted to SOF units.