M.A.D. Hook Up

New sling attachment option from the guys that brought you the BAD-ASS.  Being a fan of Magpul's ASAP, I'm liking it.  Looks perfect for guys that can't really modify their stuff, or for the M&P15-22.

Snowy Carbine Day

Nothing warms you up like a hot barrel and 40lbs of unnecessary gear and armor.  My wallet said I needed to use the M&P15-22 today though.

 

That is the awesome benefit of having a sub-caliber training analogue of your primary weapon systems.  I didn't have a whole lot of .223 laying around, and I can't afford to go out and get a couple hundred rounds to burn off.  Thankfully I have a few bricks of .22lr handy, and the little Smith & Wesson rifle is set up darn close to my go-to full-size rifle.  Still got valuable training, and didn't have to spend a lot of money.

Cro, on the other hand, has stockpiled it for years, and he's breaking in a new BCM rifle.

My feet are still cold.

Morning Recoil Therapy

Some range time and coffee time with Cro this morning.  Also finished off all the photo ops needed to take a good look at his Egyptian FN-49 (so if that interests you, should have that up towards the end of the week, a crapload of photos to edit...)

Also, RRA NM AR-15A4 is all sorts of sweet.  And ringing steel at 100 yards with the M&P15-22, standing, offhand, is too much fun for my own good, even if I only hit the target 1/3rd of the time.

Follow that up with lots of gunny talk in the very hippie-vibbed coffee shop... hehee...

A Few Range Shots

.22lr For Self Defense?

Every now and then (less often lately, thankfully...) I notice the search term "M&P15-22 for home/self defense" (or something much like that) pop up on the site tracker.  Every time I kind of cringe a little at the thought that someone is seriously thinking along those lines.  Then I see stories with lines like this-

Police say the men did not know they had been hit and began chasing Garcia down Mussey on foot.

A guy pulls a .22lr handgun of some flavor and starts shooting at a couple other guys on the street, and hits the two a combined 5 times.  They didn't even realize they'd been shot until they had been hit until well after the adrenaline wore off.  They were still able to chase the guy down and detain him until the police showed up.

Granted, one of them is still listed as being in critical condition due to chest and abdominal hits, but they were still able to effectively function after being hit, and those hits were so insubstantial that they were not immediately noticed.  Combine that with the flaky reliability inherent to trying to cycle dirty, rimmed ammunition with mediocre QC (necessary to the amount pumped out) and you're only setting your self up for failure.

I know for over 90% of you guys this is like preaching to the choir, but it still seems like it needs to be addressed every couple months or so.

M&P15-22 Stubby Mag

I don't know how I missed this, but S&W is offering a short 10 round mag for the little AR clone.

I'll probably snag one or two for bench shooting.

Gun works

Ran about 300 rounds of Federal Bulk through the M&P15-22.  Only a handful of feed failures, but they were all due to me not loading the mags right.  (I tend to do it on purpose... failure drills!)  Looks like it's all good to go again.

M&P15-22 MkII

They rebuilt him, they had the technology...

As mentioned, I got my gun back the other day (in case you missed, it blew up.)  I've been pretty busy (work and school started again today, so full credit load plus 20+ hours of work a week!)  Today I got the chance to pull it apart and see what they did to it.

After putting all my accessories back on-

Externally; not really much to see, but if you look close you can see a little nub that keeps the Extractor Spring Retainer from rotating.  Supposedly (at least from what a couple hours of scrounging the interwebs has found me,) this helps reduce the chances of an OOB det with sensitive ammo.  There's also an Extractor again.

As soon as you field strip it, you notice that the main recoil spring is the new style aptly named "blue" spring:

I can't feel any noticeable difference in the strength of the spring, but I guess they're supposedly a pound or two heavier to make sure the bolt gets home to prevent an OOB det.

There's also a new "blue" hammer spring:

Same thing, supposedly lighter to ease in cocking and reduce the likely hood of the rifle doubling.  It also reduces the trigger pull weight and smooths it out a little, which is nothing to complain about!

The sneaky one was the mag though.  I thought it was the same one I sent in with the gun, since my markings were still on the baseplate.  However I realized the one I had put on the body was gone and there was the telltale "25 ROUND" under the "22 LR" mark.

Seems they swapped out at least the body, and possibly the spring (follower and baseplate are from my old one though.)  I gather the newer style may have some improvements to smooth feeding, but they may just have the markings to denote they're not 10 rounders.

If anybody has more concrete evidence of why the changes are what they are, that would be fantastic.

Hopefully I'll get out to the range tomorrow or Saturday and see if it doesn't blow up or go full auto or something on me.

Hooray!

The prodigal rifle has returned.  The very persistent FedEx guy pounded on the door long enough to get me up (been working weird shifts...) and had a nice long brown box for me.  The paperwork only says "updated to current specs," but most importantly there's an extractor once again and everything looks good to go.  That was a pretty quick turn around too, FedEx says they received it last Wednesday.

Hopefully I'll be able to get out to the range Thursday or Friday after classes, or failing that Saturday.  Hopefully it doesn't blow up again.

The Countdown Begins

Made the 40+ mile round trip to the nearest FedEx location so I could send off the poor little M&P15-22 after work today.  We'll see how long it takes to get back.

I blame Canada

Apparently karma didn't like me ragging on the Canadian chap who's M&P15-22 blew up on him, and decided that mine would try it's best to emulate his today.  Last round of my last mag, extra loud BANG! and a lot more smoke close to my face than normal.  I'm fine, but bummed that my favorite range toy is broked.

The bullet continued on it's merry way downrange, scored a decent enough hit, and the bolt locked back on the empty mag as designed, however the extractor went on it's own merry way to the FSM only knows where without so much as a "dear John" letter to the poor dejected bolt.

Yeah, it's gross.  That's 1,000+ rounds of .22lr worth of general crud, and to the benefit of the little Smith, it was still running great until the KB.

Ammo was Winchester Xpert22 bulk ammo.  I normally don't like un-washed .22lr, but it was free.  The round does have a firing pin mark.

I've sent an email to S&W, along with the pics, so we'll see what they've got to say.  All I really want is a new extractor so I can get it back out to the range.

I currently do not plan to sue.

For those of you just joining in (I still get visitors over from TFB at least every-other day): It's all been fixed, with a few updates stuck in.

M&P15-22 KB

Not mine, but I'm sure everybody's heard about the Canuk's "blowing up" on him by now.

If you've been reading my stuff for more than a week, you'll know that I'm a huge fan of the little Smith & Wesson.  It is easily my favorite rimfire gun I own at the moment, and one of the best training tools you can get.  So of course my curiosity peaked when I saw the title of that post.

Well here's my thoughts: Yup, it's a rimfire.  It's almost expected to happen at some point, through a whole variety of causes.  There's a reason the system isn't very common on anything larger than a .22, and really it's only used on the diminutive cartridge simply because the round is too small to squeeze a centerfire priming system into.  And that very firing system is probably the most common cause of out of battery firings on the .22anything rimfire auto-loading system.  The rim is completely unprotected, and the freakin' extractor grabs on to that very rim for the gun to work.  Any chunks of crap that are big enough and hard enough to put a decent size dent in that rim that collect on the bolt face or the breach face have to potential to cause an out of battery detonation.  It's the nature of the beast.

Ok, you're gun blew up, some of the parts may have been lost or broken, and that's never a fun thing.  But you've walked away with nary a scratch, and then you mumble something about legal actions against the manufacturer!?  I know there have been enough comments about the retardation of that idea that he's second guessing it, but wow.  Really?  He also has voiced concerns about the lack of a recall since this is apparently "a common problem."  I guess I don't hang out on the right forums, but I haven't seen or heard about enough similar problems to really feel that's really that big of a deal that they'd order a recall.  He also mentions about how he fears that somebody may have bought one for a child, and he'd feel really sorry if that happened to the kid and they received an eye injury.  I'd feel bad for the kid for not having a parent smart enough to pick up a pair of shooting glasses and earplugs to go with the gun.  I'm pretty sure there's a big safety notice in the manual about wearing eye and ear pro when shooting, oh, just about any gun made since well before the kid was born.

Just had to vent I guess.  I just can't stand people with that much of a lack of common sense or moral ethics.

Mag Grumbles

So the Kimber was being a pain today.  Wouldn't get through a single mag without a fail to feed of some sort, until I downloaded the mags by 1 (two 8 round and a 7 round Kimber mags.)  Guess Wilson Combat may be seeing some of my hard-earned moneys in the near future.

On the other hand, the M&P 15-22 is running strong, other than a handful of mag/mediocre ammo feeding issues (maybe every-other mag;) I've put about 700 rounds through it in the last couple days without even as much as a squirt of CLP through it.  My 10/22 rarely goes 50 rounds without needing some attention.  Although when switching between the irons and the red-dot, it's important to put the optic back on the correct rail, otherwise you get slightly frustrated when it suddenly start putting the rounds six inches high and right.......

Nice Pair

Although I do intend on picking up a GSG-1911 in the near future... but for now the P22 makes a decent match for the M&P15-22.

Huh... that was fast...

The one downside of having an M&P15-22 and a decent amount of mags is that a 333 round box of Winchester .22lr disappears awful fast.  I don't think I was at the range more than 45 minutes before my box was empty.

But, weapons qual coming up for Uncle Sam, so we'll turn around and do it all over again at the next chance. And again... and again...

M&P15-22 Pics

Hit up the range before the eventual thunderstorm and ensuing flash-flood and tornado warnings, got a handful of pictures.

Here's Dan and his M&P15-22.  He needs some rail covers something bad.

I picked up a Primary Arms micro red dot a while back, and the dot was quite dim.  I contacted Primary Arms and they swapped it out for a new one for me and it's much better.  Just need to break down and pick up an MBUS rear at least.

It's a good set-up with the front sight on for simulating what the Army issues these days (at least my unit, that is an M4 with an Aimpoint Comp2 or Comp4.)  Still prefer the Eotech though personally.

Impromptu Range Trip

Cro called to let me know he was heading to the range, so I threw some ammo in my range bag and headed out to meet him and one of his coworkers.  Here's some choice pics(more after the jump.)  Aside from the disgusting humidity and mosquitos, it was a good time.  Anyway, pics(as always, click to make full size):

M&P15-22 update-ish

She's still going strong, tried a couple lower end red-dots on it, nothing I'm happy with so far though. (XPS clone that had more glare than... well anything I've seen short of a frozen lake, and a Primary Arms MRD that just isn't bright enough for much of anything.)  Probably end up breaking down and finding a cheap real Eotech to put on there.

7 mags through it on Saturday, 2 mag induced jams.  I've been using Shooter's Choice grease on the action rails and whatnot after just wiping down the components and running a bore snake through it.  So far pretty dang reliable for a .22lr auto (beats the snot out of my 10/22 in that dept...)  Breach face is getting pretty gross though.  We'll see how long that takes to become an issue.

Still undecided on attempting to thread the barrel.  It just looks wrong (especially since Dan's got one with the FH...) but I've never really done something like that before and I'ma skerd to mess up my gun I guess.  It would be fun to throw a brake on it though.

M&P 15-22 for Home Defense

I've noticed this search phrase pop up on the sitetracker a couple times today, so I think I'll be a nice guy and give my thoughts towards the subject.

In short, only if you don't have any other guns.  Or your only other gun is a bolt action .22lr, and even then, you may be better off with that one.

On one hand, .22lr is cheap, and cheaper ammo makes for more range time.  They are also low recoil, so gun-shy people tend to flinch less, and follow up shots can be made much faster.  And the S&W has all sort of rail-estate to throw lights and lasers on, which are good in a midnight home-defense situation, and is endowed with all the ergonomic goodness of the AR platform.

On the other hand... Gun savvy people know that the .22lr is far from a fight stopper.  It can work, and yes, people have been killed by the little 22, but like many other things, why settle for "maybe" when better is available?  The small diameter, 40 grains at most, often just barely super-sonic bullet just doesn't deliver much energy to your target.

More importantly, .22lr is notorious for mediocre quality control.  It's pretty much a given that in any given bulk pack of .22lr, you'll have a handful of rounds with poor primer distribution and fail to go bang.  .22lr semi-autos also tend to be very dirty little guns, leading to more reliability issues, and rimmed cartridges are always an issue with semis.  Every semi-auto 22 I've used has jammed at some point, from the venerable 10/22 to the cheapest Remchester Walmart special.  It's the nature of .22lr semi-autos.  The last thing you want during a home defense scenario you'd want would be any sort off failure.

All that being said, for generally less than the cost of an M&P15-22, you can pick up a decent pump shotgun of some shape or form, load it up with 00 buck, and have a much more reliable fight stopper than you'll find with any .22lr semi.  Just my $.02, and YMMV.  My go to home defense set-up is my Sigpro 2022 with an attached light.  Gives me a hand free to grab my cell phone so they can get there faster and clean things up so I can go back to bed.

More M&P15-22 and Magpul mash-up advice

Another question popped up on ARFCOM in regards to Magpul components on the little .22

The MIAD and MOE series grips are pretty sweet, I like the simplicity and fuller size of the MOE, and since my full size carbine has one, I needed to put one on the Smith.

On the 15-22 the rear take-down retaining pin spring is held in place by the pistol grip since there is no traditional buffer tube or rear plate. No biggy with the standard A2 grip, but the MOE and MIAD grips have some gaps in that area and don't support the spring like the A2 grip. If you're running the MIAD with the large backstrap, all you need to do is get the AR-10 gapper from Magpul, and not only will it fix the retaining spring issue, but it'll fill the gap between the grip and the receiver.

If you're running the MOE, from everything I can find, the gapper isn't compatible. So you need to add a block to the inside of the MOE grip to support the spring. I grabbed some plastic sprue chunks from a Games Workshop kit (hey, it was handy) and glued it in and trimmed it to match up with the top of the grip.



You can't see it from the outside, so I didn't bother coloring the block. I still have the gap between the receiver and the flared top of the grip, but it's purely a cosmetic problem, so I'm not in a hurry to fill that yet, or put much thought into how I'm going to do it, but someday I'll get to it.