Basic AR15 Rifle

This is a two-day course of instruction that is usually conducted on a Saturday and Sunday at Red Brush Rifle Range.  Each day is 8-hours long and when you finish this block of instruction you will have gone through the exact same training an Evansville Police Officer has to go through to carry an AR15 rifle on duty.  The first day is spent in an intensive classroom setting and it takes the student through nomenclature, field stripping the weapon, proper cleaning and maintenance, and the principles of basic marksmanship with the AR15 weapon platform.  We also cover positional shooting in the classroom.

The AR15 weapon system has been the mainstay of the United States Armed Forces since the 1960s and it still serving our country and our military personnel well in Afghanistan and Iraq.  After you learn the ins and outs of the AR15 in the classroom, we will then move to the range on the second day for zeroing exercises and then we delve into the gunhandling skills necessary to be able to operate the AR15 proficiently.  At the range we will cover the combat stance, combat mounting the rifle, positional shooting, shooting from cover, shooting while moving, speed reloads, tactical reloads, and stoppage drills.  Each student will receive five dummy .223 rounds to keep and these rounds will be used during the training exercises.

The AR15 is highly accurate and highly reliable when cleaned and maintained properly.  The .223 round causes devastating wounds in the human body and is a real man stopper when shots are delivered to the right areas of the body.  Most people are totally unaware of this little known fact, a .223 hollow point round is less likely to over penetrate the human body than a .45 ACP round.  No, this is not a misprint, but is fact.  The LAPD tracked all of their shootings involving .223 hollow point ammo and they found that not once did the round exit the human body.

In fact, the Evansville Police Department’s first shooting with a .223 hollow point round involved the bad guy pointing a shotgun at the wrong EPD Officer and that Officer fired one round from his AR and struck the bad man in the forehead just above the right eye.  The .223 hollow point round slammed into the brain and fragmented as expected, but surprise, surprise, it did not exit the head.  Obviously, the round dropped the man with a shotgun like a bad habit, but believe it or not, it did not kill him.  As far as I know, he still up and walking around.

The equipment needed for this class is an AR15 rifle, as many magazines as you can bring, 300 rounds of ammo, cleaning gear, and lube, eye protection, hearing protection, a ball cap, and a high neck shirt.  You will also need some sort of ground cover for prone shooting and knee pads are recommended.