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Beware The Barrel Gang



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We recently had the opportunity to attend a unique firearms lifestyle event put on courtesy of Rosco Manufacturing. After touring their factory a few months back to get behind the scenes on their 100% in-house blank-to-barrel manufacturing process, we’ve been keeping a close eye on Rosco and looking for every opportunity to put their tubes to the test. To that end, Rosco has devised a firearms and adventure lifestyle movement that they’ve branded with the hashtag #barrelgang. The Barrel Gang is made up of manufacturers, media professionals and trainers from all walks of life who had the chance to come together and, frankly, beat the snot out of some pretty awesome products.

The event was shepherded by Don Edwards of Greenline Tactical. Don brings several decades of US Army SOF experience to the training market, specializing in open-enrollment classes in the use of night vision and intermediate-range rifle craft, including advanced Combat Carbine and Designated Marksman curricula. He spent two days running us through a variety of drills that drove our test rifles from 10 to 500 meters, with yours truly maxing out on a 12-inch gong at 484 meters.

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The test guns in question were spec’ed out by Don, and embody his vision of a general purpose duty rifle – something that’s comfortable inside a house and capable across a stadium. They are built around Rosco’s 16-inch purebred barrel, which is bore-scoped, air-gauged and made of 416R stainless. They also provided nitride bolt groups, with bolts matched to the barrels, gas tubes and adjustable blocks. This core was dropped into receiver set/handguard combo from American Defense Manufacturing. ADM’s unique lower receiver setup allows completely ambidextrous controls including bolt release/lock-back and mag release.

The sighting setup was a combination of Vortex Razor 1-6x variable optics (in ADM mounts) combined with Dueck Defense offset irons. Burnproof Gear Rail Raps and Sierra Tac slings also helped round out the package. While these rifles were built specifically as testbed guns for the Barrel Gang, there is already some talk of releasing these to the public as Greenline Tactical’s signature rifle. If you like what you see here, make sure to bug Rosco Manufacturing and American Defense Manufacturing on their respective social media to make one for you, too.

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Pushing a 5.56mm bullet out to nearly 500 meters, from a 16-inch barrel, isn’t the easiest feat of marksmanship you’ll ever attempt. In order to help these rifles go the distance, Atlanta Arms contributed some match-grade fuel. Specifically, they sent heaping samples of the load they currently produce for the US Army Marksmanship Unit’s Service Rifle Team. The AMU load is a 77 grain Tipped Match King bullet with a stated muzzle velocity of just over 2700 feet per second. This load with the Barrel Gang rifles turned out groups that qualify as sub-minute from the 100-meter mark. The author printed a five-round group with three holes touching, and two yanked shots that went about three-quarters of an inch to either side of the ragged clover.

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With the rifles dialed in, Greenline Actual took us through a number of drills that stressed multiple shooting positions, transitions between positions and proper execution of marksmanship fundamentals. This allowed us to not only gauge the accuracy potential of these rifles but how well they actually drive. Several exercises included targets at varying distances that required us to either dial the magnification up and down on the Vortex or simply transition to the Dueck irons. Several shooters tried the same drill with both methods, on the clock, to see which method worked faster.

The capstone event was a drill that Don calls The Rifle Man Maker. Without giving the whole thing away, it’s a time evaluation that included barricade shooting (both strong and weak side), prone, kneeling and standing engagements from 50 to 200 meters with 50-meter sprints back and forth between stages. While we didn’t place nearly as high as we’d have liked, this reminded us of just how easy it is to get sucked into the reward of “burning it down” at close-quarters ranges that are overly forgiving of technical marksmanship errors.

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The BarrelGang event was a refreshing and unique twist on product demos. Rosco’s in-house media team will be releasing a full video production of the event. In the meantime, you can search the hashtag #barrelgang on your social media of choice. You can also visit any of the retailers below and use the coupon code BarrelGang for 10% off.

Rosco Manufacturing
American Defense Manufacturing
Atlanta Arms
Dueck Defense
SierraTac

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