The Great Col. Jeff Cooper coined a fascinating and useful term, PII, ‘Preoccupation with Inconsequential Increments.” To wit, in his own words:

Years ago we coined the appellation, “Preoccupation with Inconsequential Increments,” or PII. This peculiarity lies in attributing importance to measurable deviations so small as to be meaningless. You see it in the people who shoot test groups in rifles, awarding a prize to a group which is only thousandths of an inch smaller than those unrewarded. One sees it in speed records awarded in one-thousandths of one mile-per-hour. One sees it in basketball scores which, nearing the century mark, are separated by less than three points. In all such cases Score A is “better” than Score B, but who cares?

An increment may be termed inconsequential when it has no significant relationship to the purpose of the exercise. Of course if the purpose of the exercise is in itself inconsequential some may not think this to be foolish. A very distinguished general at Quantico once caused the sign to be placed over the exit door of every office asking, in brilliant scarlet and gold, “What are you trying to do?” There was a man who knew more about human nature than most.

The Colonel knew what he was talking about. Know what one is trying to achieve. Beware the obsession with minutia that don’t really matter.

The enumeration of specific examples of PII is an exercise that I shall leave to the reader, who will no doubt find it enlightening.

On pistols, I know many trainers who’ve had very good experiences with visible laser sights on pistols. The late Todd Green was a big fan, for example. Laser sights work well for target-focused shooting and shooting problems involving unusual shooting positions. They also reduce time to first shot, which is big from a defensive standpoint.

Do they make sense on a carbine?

Clearly, the answer is yes if one is using night vision devices. IR lasers are tops at night, if you’re hunting hogs or scum.

What about visible lasers? Visible lasers can be had for a lot less than IR ones. That much is obvious. Also, the nature of the laser means that a red dot or low power variable optic will make the most sense as the primary sight for most. If one had a gas mask on, the laser would be a much better choice as a primary sight.

This points to some of the use cases that might make lasers helpful. The laser will naturally make shots from nonstandard positions easier, because we don’t have to get all the way behind the gun to get a good sight picture. The laser can help.

We might also expect the laser to help on getting faster first shots, because we don’t have to get the rife all the way up before getting our initial shot off. I would love to test this in match conditions. And yes, this is a very gamer reason for a laser. Yeah, I’m a gamer.

Another thought for the laser is as a backup sighting device. We love backups. Normally, people mean ‘backup iron sights’. But iron sights are very different from a red dot or other optical sights. Lots of people have backup irons on their guns, but don’t practice with them. I’m pretty sure plenty of people don’t even zero them. Or, you could use a laser, which is going to give you a similar ‘colored dot in a tube’ as your red dot.

A brief word on sight models. As usual, there are some high end military type models available for quite a bit of coin. For experimentation purposes, I’m not going to be getting one of these. I’m going to start with a Crimson Trace Railmaster, which is a bit cheaper than a high-quality BUIS set. It’s not as durable as an ATPIAL, but it’s a lot cheaper. And it should let me evaluate the concept fine. Given my expected use cases, I’m not concerned about the relative lack of durability.

Near the Many Words HQ is a monthly (at least from April to November) two-gun match. Both Fishbreath and myself have found it tons of fun. There are lots of great other competitions out there, including USPSA and IDPA and IPSC. They’re lots of fun too.

Do these competitions have some training value? Sure! They get you out of the rigid, fuddy rules you find at most square ranges. Here you can move and shoot and apply your firearms skills to various problems. Excellent! Plus, you get to talk to other shooters about approaches and gear. All of which is highly valuable.

Further, matches introduce a stress component, which will cause little things to become a problem. Little things that you would not have noticed before. And it helps you to become inoculated to stress to practice having to deal with it. Note that I am not claiming that match stress is the equal of combat stress. I haven’t been in combat, and the comparison is probably disingenuous at best. They are different animals, but some work under stress is certainly better than no work under stress. Giving you some stress to work under in a safe environment can do nothing but help.

Now, there are those who complain about gun games. They will tell you that real targets don’t always present themselves in convenient normal silhouette orientations, they don’t stand still, they do shoot back, and (at least the clever ones will mention) that for the concealed carrier the decision to draw or not to draw is the hardest part. I would respond that all of these complaints are completely true. But what would you have us do?

Well, you could not have fun and not go to a match, and ignore all of the helpful things I’ve mentioned. That’s an option, and you’re welcome to it, if you’re an idiot or if you hate fun. You could also insist on MORE REALISM! but that way can get dangerous. Remember, a competition needs to be safe. And it needs to be accessible. And it really ought to be fun, or else people won’t come and then you won’t have a match. So let’s think critically about these complaints.

Targets should shoot back? How, pray tell, should we do this? Force on force? Fair enough. It’s the most dangerous kind of training, and most people don’t have simunitions guns, and have never done it before, and you’ll need lots of supervision, and you’ll have to use a specialized shoot house since you’ll need to contain any errant rounds, and it’ll take a lot of setup, and you’ll need to find people to be the “bad guys” and get shot a lot all day. I wish you all the best of luck in this. It’s a lot easier to set up an ordinary match with ordinary steel and cardboard targets on an ordinary range.

Targets don’t move? Well, nothing says we can’t make steel and cardboard targets move. It just takes a little effort. Lots of matches I’ve been to had some moving targets. And usually, people in a fight won’t move all of the time, because they might want to shoot back, and shooting on the move is hard.

As for the decision to draw, ok, you got me. To do this right, you need those simguns again, and experienced roleplayers to set up scenarios. Those people can be hard to find, and they have to be willing to get shot with simguns (read: paintballs) a lot. Plus, it’s a shooting match. Spoiler alert: there’s some shooting involved.

Really though, matches are fun. Go shoot them. You’ll improve your skills.

A couple weekends ago, I went to a Carbine 1 class. I had a great time. Classes are a great way to build skills. And, also a good place to test equipment and compare notes.

I brought Bridget, with a couple modifications. Bridget is admittedly a competition gun, but that’s my primary AR-15 use case. When I do drills, she’s the carbine I’ll be grabbing, so I figured it was good to get a baseline with her. I swapped out buffers, moving to an H2-weight buffer, and switched to a Springco Blue buffer spring, which is heavier than standard. These on the recommendations of Mike Pannone, who has an excellent treatise on maximizing AR-15 reliability.

I also decided to switch triggers. I love the Geissele SSA-E, but I happen to also have an AR Gold laying around, and that trigger is the trigger of choice for a ton of high level multigun competitors, including Kalani Laker, Daniel Horner, and Jerry Miculek. The AR Gold claims to duplicate the feel of a well-tuned 1911 trigger, and I’d say they’ve done their job. Other than the geometry being different, with the AR-15 trigger having a pivot. There’s a very, very short take up and then a light, crisp break. And then a very short reset. It feels a lot like the trigger in my Springfield Professional.

I also brought a more traditional Colt 6920 as a backup gun. Always bring a second gun to class, just in case your primary goes down. Then you can keep right on learning.

Pretty quickly, I learned that I had done a really good job when I built Bridget. I had no malfunctions. She ran great. Everyone who picked up my rifle commented on how light it was, how easily it pointed and transitioned. Being a four-person class, we all got to try each other’s rifles. Bridget got top marks for weight, and top marks for lack of recoil. Even with mediocre technique, the muzzle really doesn’t rise at all. And with good technique, you can shoot as fast as you like and keep your rounds on target.

Of course, all of this comes at a price. Bridget was the loudest carbine by far. Angry SBR loud. .308 loud. Wear your earpro.

Also, light weight has its downsides too. Bridget is less stable. She’s easier to disturb accidentally, which was a bit noticeable in some of the marksmanship portion. She really forces you to focus on a good prone position.

The trigger was also really good. On the one hand, the light, short reset means you do need to focus if you’re trying to let the trigger out to the reset point and stop. But just like a good 1911 trigger, it was basically impossible for the trigger pull to disturb the rifle sights. Even when I tried to go fast and slapped the trigger around. The slow point in drills was transitions and my fatigue, not trigger control.

I added a sling attachment point for the purpose of the class. I also got some keymod rail covers. These were welcome. That aluminum-magnesium rail got very hot to the touch. Note to self next time: wear gloves.

Of course, I never come out of a class not wanting more stuff. One of the guys had some Crye Magclips. These are a really great way of easily adding a few extra magazines to your loadout. They’re not super secure, but they don’t have a big footprint, and they’re pretty cheap. Perfect for carrying a little extra out to the firing line.

Also, for probably the millionth time: knee pads. Very helpful for kneeling and prone. Very, very helpful. If your instructor is wearing kneepads to class, you should too.

New though would be elbow pads. Pistol classes don’t do a ton of prone shooting. Rifle classes do. It’s nice to have something to protect your elbows from errant rocks or recently fired spent brass. Ask me how I know.

My equipment was not all perfect. I found that my Elcan 1.5x/6x was noticeably slower on drills than my Aimpoint Comp M4s. The Elcan was also kind of obnoxious for switching between standing and prone shooting. Another shooter had time on an Elcan in a class setting (and had also brought an Aimpoint to this class) and we both figured it was a combination of a smallish eyebox and relatively short eye relief that makes the Elcan a little more awkward for this type of transition-heavy shooting. On my list of optics to go for next is probably the Swarovski low power variable, because it has a much bigger, more forgiving eyebox and better eye relief. I’ll report back here with my findings.

One more lesson, this from observing another shooter. If you’re going to use an adjustable gas block, be sure you can access it without removing your handguard. Removing handguards is a pain, and it can be very difficult in the field. We had a shooter who noticed his gas block was coming unset from where he wanted it, but was unable to access the adjustment valve with the handguard he had on his rifle. And he wasn’t able to remove that handguard with the tools he brought with him. He switched to his backup gun for the remainder of the class.