A good sling is a vital accessory for a hunting or tactical rifle. Along with enabling over-the-shoulder carry, a good “tactical” sling will also provide support for shooting from hasty or improvised shooting positions. In fact, in many tactical/practical precision matches there will be at least one positional shooting stage or a stage where only a sling may be used for support (that means no bipod, no tripod, no sandbags, and no shooting sticks). The 6.5 Guys, Ed and Steve, recommend tactical slings that allow quick set-up and easy adjustment. The best slings allow shooters to quickly slip into them and then make rapid fine-tuning adjustments to build a stable shooting position.
Six Tactical/Practical Slings are Reviewed in this Video:
In this episode, Ed and Steve provide an overview and compare/contrast different designs and the functionality of six popular slings from these suppliers: Armageddon Gear, Tab Gear, Rifles Only, Hard Target Interdiction, Short Action Precision, and Accuracy International.
To learn more about tactical/practical shooting disciplines, or to access more shooting gear/accessories reviews by Ed and Steve, visit 65guys.com and subscribe to the 6.5 Guys’ YouTube Channel.
Video Tip from Boyd Allen. We welcome reader submissions.
Hail the Rail. If you are looking to put multiple shots through one hole, the Unlimited Class benchrest gun, aka “Rail Gun”, is the firearm of choice. These heavy Unlimited rigs are the most accurate benchtop shooting machines ever created. Campaigned by ace competitors in the 100/200-yard benchrest game, rail guns are capable of delivering the ultimate in rifle accuracy — multiple 5-shot groups in the ones and zeros.
Watch Video to Learn More about Rail Guns and See Them in Action:
In this video, YouTuber “Taofledermaus” takes a look at high-tech rail guns on display at the Visalia (CA) shooting range. He says: “The Unlimited Class rail guns are indeed the epitome of precision shooting. [These rifles] resemble something out of a ballistics test laboratory. Each [rail gun] weighs about fifty pounds…”
One-Hole Accuracy with Rail Gun
What kind of accuracy can a top-of-the-line rail gun deliver? Check out this target shot by our friend Lou Murdica in January 2015 in Phoenix. Sometimes superlatives really aren’t necessary. Just look at that target. Yes that is FIVE shots (although it truly appears like one hole). And it is centered! This remarkable group measured at 0.039″. Lou drilled this group with one of his 6 PPC railguns. Rounds were loaded with Accurate LT-32 powder and Berger 65gr BT bullets. The target was submitted to the NBRSA as a potential new 100-yard Benchrest record in the Unlimited (Railgun) Class.
This is a file photo with Lou Murdica with a different rail gun (not the one that shot above target).
Story/video tip by Boyd Allen. We welcome reader submissions.
Halloween is less than a week away. Our friend, trick-shot ace Kirsten Joy Weiss, did something special for this week, “carving” a pumpkin using her semi-auto Volquartsen .22 LR rifle. Kirsten had to send a lot of rimfire rounds into her orange friend. It turns out the little .22-caliber bullets worked better on exit than entry — Mr. Pumpkin’s posterior side was more impressive than his front. But overall, the effort turned out very well indeed, as you can see. Nice job, Kirsten.
On inspection, Kirsten found that the most impressive Jack ‘O Lantern face appeared on the reverse side of her pumpkin. The “exit wounds” were better than the entry holes.
They knocked it, tossed it, even hammered with it — but they couldn’t kill a Nightforce NXS. In this remarkable torture test video, past Nightforce Exec Kyle Brown (with help from NF employee Sean Murphy), absolutely brutalizes a Nightforce NXS 5.5-22x56mm scope. Brown bangs the NXS on a concrete bench-top, throws it 50 yards downrange, knocks it on a hardwood beam multiple times, and then heaves it back again. We kid you not. To our eternal surprise, the Nightforce scope survives all that abuse and shoots fine. What did Timex once say — “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking”?
Video is Continuous — No Tricks
You’ve got to watch this video — it was shot with five cameras and runs with no “time-outs”, cutaways, or video tricks. What you see is what you get. This is one tough NXS. Thank you Kyle Brown and crew for taking the time to prove the durability of Nightforce Optics products.
Here’s a true “Blast from the Past”, a video featuring our friend Stuart Elliott of Brisbane, Australia. This 2011 video has now racked up nearly 680,000 views, making it probably the most-watched long-range benchrest video ever uploaded to YouTube. The video shows Stuart shooting a 10-shot Heavy Gun string at the Brisbane range, Queensland, Australia, in July 2011. In this example, Stuart elected to “run a condition” with his big, .300 WM Heavy Gun, shooting fast with slight hold-off adjustments as the wind increased during the string. The cartridge is a .300 Winchester Magnum, loaded with moly-coated 190gr Berger VLDs. Stuart has an unusual bolt configuration. After each shot, Stuart removes the bolt completely with his right hand, and then uses the bolt to “shuck” the fired cartridge while loading the new cartridge with his left hand. That sounds awkward, but Stuart makes it all look easy. Stuart runs BRT Shooters Supply, a leading vendor of precision shooting equipment (including March scopes), in Australia and nearby regions.
Nightforce Optics has just launched its own YouTube channel. It’s worth a visit. You’ll find many informative videos worth watching, including Product Intro videos, Nightforce In Action clips, and the Torture Test video. On the Liked Videos Playlist, you can also watch related product reviews and field tests from Extreme Outer Limits, the 6.5 Guys, and AccurateShooter.com.
These days, everything is “tactical”. Along with tactical rifles, there are tactical shoes, tactical lunch-boxes, tactical seat-covers, and yes, even tactical bacon. So we guess it’s no surprise that the tactical community now has it’s own pay-to-play talkline, 1-900-TAC-TALK, modeled after those “adult” chatlines where you pay by the minute for a little aural stimulation. With the new Operator Hotline you won’t hear sexy girls talk. Instead the “operators standing by” are, well, “operators” in the tactical sense. For just $3.99 per minute you can talk about tactics, weapons, and gear. On special request, the chat hosts will even work the actions of real weapons. The Operator Hotline claims that all comms are secure so you can reveal your “deepest, most secret tactical fantasies”.
Preview the Operator Hotline in this Video (No Charge)
The Operator Hotline is a pay-per-minute interactive phone service. For just $3.99 per minute you can “talk tactical” with real operators decked out in full tactical gear. Why anyone would want to do that is beyond us. But this new service has proven very popular with young American males.
Tactical Products — Why They Appeal to Men
Tom Clopin, a product designer for a major outdoor company, wasn’t surprised that a fantasy chat-line has been launched, given the fact that tactical products are sold to fulfill macho role-playing fantasies. The designer told us: “You have to understand something. Most products are sold on image not function. Tactical gear is no different. In fact this market is more about costume play and gear fetishism than it is about function or utility. Make something look sort-of milspec, put a bunch a useless loops on it and call it tactical, and it will sell. Selling Molle gear to wannabee operators is just like selling leather chaps to Harley-riding, wannabee land pirates.”
Werner Mehl of Kurzzeit.com produced a 10-minute video for the 2010 SHOT Show. This amazing video became a huge hit on YouTube, with over 45,600 “likes”. With the 2015 SHOT Show coming up, we thought you’d like another view. This super-slow-motion video has been watched over 10 million times, making it one of the most popular shooting-related videos in history. Employing cameras recording at up to 1,000,000 (one million) frames per second, Mehl’s bullet flight video has been called “astounding”, “mesmerizing”, and a “work of art.” If you haven’t seen it yet, sit back and enjoy!
LINK: Kurzzeit.com Video System and BMC-19/PVM-21 Chronograph
Click the link above to learn more about Werner Mehl and his super-sophisticated camera systems that can record at 1,000,000 frames per second. On the same linked page you can learn about the advanced PVM-21 chronograph (now sold as the BMC-19) designed by Werner. Operating “all-infrared, all the time”, the PVM-21 is the best optical chronograph we have tested for very low light conditions, or very tricky light conditions.
Want to watch some very cool super-slow-motion videos of projectiles drilling bugholes and blasting through stuff? Then check out these videos from Remington’s R&D Center. We guarantee you’ll be entertained. You’ll find some truly amazing high-speed videography. Many video sequences are captured with ultra-high-speed cameras running hundreds of thousands of frames per second. This allows stunning slow-motion playback.
You’ve no doubt heard the term “tack-driver”. Are there rifles that really drive tacks? Well Remington has given us something just as good — a “nail driver”. In the video below, you can see a bullet “hit the nail on the head”, driving a nail into the target. Very cool indeed…
Driving Tacks — Hitting Nailheads with Bullets (Slow Motion)
Remarkable High-Speed Photography Shows Bullet Performance
You can see some amazing things — bullets busting concrete blocks, smashing through wood, drilling ballistic gelatin, and tearing through skin and gel (so you can see how bullets would perform in game animals). Our favorite sequence shows five shots forming a nice, clustered group — you can actually see the bullets fly into the paper target one after another. Here are some of the video highlights.
Five Shots with .30-06 into Paper (Slow Motion)
Busting Concrete Blocks with Bullets (Slow Motion)
Bullets Penetrate through Skin and Gelatin (Slow Motion)
Dances with Gel (Slow Motion)
Story tip from EdLongRange. We welcome reader submissions.
Chris Cheng, Top Shot Season 4 Champion, has launched a new weekly series of YouTube webcasts, The Second Scoop. Each week Cheng will provide a timely mix of Second Amendment news, gun-related gear reviews, and marksmanship topics. Cheng’s Second Scoop commentaries offer insight, a bit of humor, and “first looks” at new shooting sports products.
In this Thanksgiving week edition of The Second Scoop, Chris focuses on the Ferguson, Missouri Grand Jury decision which spurred violent riots. Then Chris explains the impact of a court decision on California’s waiting periods for firearm purchases. In his “gear talk” segment, Chris talks about the brand new Taurus Curve, an innovative .380 ACP compact carry gun. With a distinctive curved frame, this little “equalizer” is the first-ever production pistol with integrated LED lights and a targeting laser.
Chris releases a new Second Scoop video each Tuesday. Watch all of Cheng’s Second Scoop webcasts (as well as his gun review videos) on the Top Shot Chris Cheng YouTube Channel.
These days, everything is “tactical”. Along with tactical rifles, there are tactical shoes, tactical lunch-boxes, 
Want to watch some very cool super-slow-motion videos of projectiles drilling bugholes and blasting through stuff? Then check out these videos from 
