The Right AR-15 for the Job with Navy SEAL Mark "Coch" Cochiolo

Hey, it's Coach with Tactical Hive. I'm here on the range today, and I got to thinking about civilian AR-15s. I mean, I worked with military equipment for a long time, but for the civilian, you know, we can start with just your out-of-the-box, bog-standard AR-15. It's lightweight, functional, reliable these days if you use the right ammunition, and it's just an effective gun. But from this, it's real easy to move to something else. You can build for exactly what you want. So this one here weighs just a little bit more, but it's got a free-floated forend. It's got a telescopic sight, a red dot sight, and backup iron sights on there. So no matter what happens, this thing's going to work and gives me a little more capability than just iron sights on the old AR-15. Who would need this? Well, if you're going back country, you want to shoot a little bit farther, I wouldn't really call this a home defense gun, but you could press it into service for that if you had to. It has a red dot sight on it after all. You want to go full sniper, again, this is pretty much the same lower. You could take this lower off of here and put this, you know, 1970s version right on it. It'll fit just fine and work just fine. Now this one's got a fancy trigger in it, a telescopic sight, and then what we've done here is, you know, backup irons aren't going to really matter for this one, but I put a little backup red dot here. So in case I'm all lined up for something that's far away and the target closer in, you know, shows itself, I can just roll over and, you know, put the red dot on them and get a good decent shot on them. Okay, so bipod and everything else, this sucker comes in at about 12 pounds. So again, a little chunky, but again, we're looking at shooting farther away and, you know, you need more glass. Glass waste, there's no way around that. So then at the other end of the scale, we've got your short little CQB gun. It's got a 12-inch barrel, free-floated. This is what we developed early on, I'd say in the mid-90s. This was a precursor to your Mark 18, you know, short-barreled CQBR rifle. We put these things together. It's got just a visible laser on it, flashlight, and your good old aim point, because that's what we had. And of course, backup iron sights that are co-witnessed, so there's no difference. You don't get any magnification, but for what this is used for, it's perfect. So, I mean, we rolled from this. I mean, this one's set up as a pistol, so I can have it as a civilian, but this is what we started from. We turned in our MP5s, picked up not this one, but the next generation, which had the CAC rail on. Lately, I've been experimenting with the Ultralight, and this here is your What Would Stoner Do that the guys over at N-Range, Carl and Ian, put that together. And I built this one to my spec. I used their lower. I didn't want to spend the money for the carbon fiber, you know, tube, so I just went with, you know, good old aluminum, you know, with the least amount of Picatinny rail on there as I could get. And it's got just your basics. It's got your red dot sight and a flashlight, dressed up as it is right here. We're at about just over six pounds, six and a quarter pounds-ish. So, it's real handy, nice lightweight. I could take this in the backcountry, not even know it's on my back. So, as a civilian, that's, you know, you're not expecting anybody to be shooting at you, so that's a good thing. The other aspects of the AR is you can go into the pistol caliber. So, this is a nine mil, and it's set up with a mag block, so it takes Colt magazines. It's a 10 rounder. You guys know why. And again, this was competition for the MP5 back in the day. Of course, everybody went with MP5 because, you know, if you're a cool tier one counterterrorist unit, you had to have the MP5. But the way you work the weapon was a little bit different from the AR, and it might have been a better idea to actually go with this, even though it's not quite as cool. It's just straight blowback, not delayed, roller delayed blowback, you know, magic, but it's a good functional weapon. And again, something for home defense, almost ideal here because you've got a red dot, you've got a nine mil, you can use hollow point, you know, limited penetration ammo if you're worried about that, and you should be, you know, bullets go through walls like that, so you want to dump all its energy on target. So keeping the penetration down, and because it's nine mil, the report is a little bit less, and the recoil is a little bit less. So if you've got somebody who's, you know, recoil or noise sensitive, this might be a good option for you. And then the smallest one here, it's not really the smallest in length, but this is a little 22 conversion from CMMG. And so this one's set up, if you want to train kids and women that are, you know, or even guys that are real sensitive to recoil and noise, this is a good place to start. Plus, I can shoot this all day long for the cost of what a magazine of ammo costs for these other ones. So I mean, it's good practical, plus you get some good malfunction drills in there with the rimfire, just because. And you don't need expensive stuff to put on it. I mean, these sights here are those, you know, probably $20 sights off the internet. Just a cheap flashlight, because this is not going to save my life. This is just something to train with, something to have fun with. It's just a load of fun. We had some guys shooting it earlier, and this is one of the favorite guns out here, just because it's not loud, it's not noisy, it doesn't kick much, and it's fairly accurate for what it is. And so I started my career back in 1986 with the M16A1 version of this in .223. And now you can get calibers all the way up to .50 BMG with a, you know, bolt action, everything in between. They make them for the AK round. You can, there's a couple of companies that make lowers that will take AK mags or, you know, proprietary magazine that shoots 7.62x39. 9mm, .45, .300 Blackout is real popular these days, 6.8 SPC. There's just so many different variations, you know, you name it. You can go up to, you know, .50 Beowulf, I think, is the biggest thing that'll actually eject out of one of these uppers. You know, correct me if I'm wrong, guys. I go up to .458 SOCOM, and then that's as, you know, as big as I want her to go. And then, you know, of course, its cousin, the AR-10, you know, now you've gone into a longer caliber and you can shoot .308s and 6.5 Creedmoor is like real popular these days. Just a quick look at everything, knowing that you can take the upper off any one of these and put it on any other mix and match, you know, and you don't have to re-sight it in. It's already sighted in. The barrel and all the sight systems come with it. So you can move it between lowers, you know, legality in your state is up to you, right? You know, but it's possible mechanically, right? So anyhow, quick overview on the versatility of the AR-15 system. And as always, if you like this content, like, subscribe, and in the comments, let me know how you've modified yours. You know, there's a lot of guys out there doing a lot of good stuff and, you know, hey, I didn't make this up. You know, I copy guys too. What's good is good, right? So leave me a comment, tell me what you've been up to.