Today on Rifle Roundup, it’s something that harkens back to the past, a retro-styled Stag Arms AR-15 with a Trijicon prism optic, and some that’s new, namely the 3-D cardboard targets from Target Nation.
Stag 15 M4 Rifle: MSRP $1,099.99
It’s hard to imagine that in today’s world of highly adaptable AR-15s, there was a time when people bought an AR-15 and then added nothing to it. No M-Lok fore-ends on which to attach a light, laser or tactical aquarium bubbler. No 55-position adjustable stocks with adjustments for an operator’s beard length. It was just a gun. No more, no less.
The Stag 15 M4 rifle scratches this itch for “just a gun” in a most satisfying way. Chambered in 5.56 NATO, it has a 16-inch chrome-lined barrel with a 1:7-inch, right hand twist. Surrounding that barrel is the classic two-piece thermoplastic handguard, and at the end of the barrel is an A2 birdcage flash hider. Inside, you’ll find a mil-spec, manganese-phosphate-coated M16 bolt carrier group and a trigger that breaks at slightly more than 5 pounds. At the rear is a standard A2 grip and a six-position stock, and at the front is a front sight on the gas block, something not often found on today’s AR-15s.
You might be asking yourself, “Why would anyone buy this gun, when for the same price, they could get an AR-15 with a free-floating barrel and enough rail space to mount the entire SureFire catalog on their gun?”
The answer to that question is in what you want your AR-15 to do. The AR, in some ways, is like a playlist of music on your phone. Some people use playlists to discover what’s new in the world of music, while others use playlists to remind them of the past. This rifle is definitely the latter, and that’s more than okay (and so is the rifle).
Trijicon ACOG 4x32 BAC Optic: MSRP $1,698
The upper receiver of the Stag 15 M4 has a detachable A2-style carry handle with a flip-up peep sight, which we’ve removed and installed a Trijicon ACOG 4X prism optic. The ACOG, or Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight, is one of the first optics in wide use in the U.S. military. One of the reasons for this is that it has an illuminated reticle, but doesn’t require batteries. Long before other companies decided to stick solar cells on top of an optic to recharge the battery inside, Trijicon was using fiber optics to illuminate the reticle in the optics, lighting up the aiming point in anything short of total darkness. For those times, the ACOG has a tritium backup, allowing you to engage targets in even the blackest night.
The ACOG is a prism sight, which means the reticle is etched onto the glass itself. This means that you can have more-sophisticated reticles on your rifle This means that you can have more-sophisticated reticles on your rifle than just a dot, and that’s what this optic has. The chevron reticle inside the 4x32 BAC is designed to be zeroed on the tip of the chevron inside the reeile at 100 meters. The width of the chevron at the base is 5.53 MOA which is 19 inches at 300 meters, which allows range estimation for silhouette targets. The hash marks below that point are calibrated to compensate for the bullet drop of 5.56 NATO rounds out to 800 meters.
Target Nation 3-D Target Backer: MSRP $3.89
A casual glance at the people around you will reveal that everyone does, in fact, have three dimensions. However, this important feature is missing from just about every target we use on the range. The vast majority of targets used in practice and training are two-dimensional sheets of paper or specially-shaped pieces of flat cardboard.
This is where the 3-D Target Backer from Target Nation comes in handy. It ships from the factory as a flat piece of cardboard, but literally seconds later, it gains a third dimension. Inside, you can put in your flat paper scoring target of choice, and Target Nation also makes plastic 3-D representations of our internal bits to help shooters understand how target facing can affect shot placement.
