M&P 15 and M&P 15-22 Quick Range Report

[namonline]

The last rifle I shot was a R4 during my military service in South Africa (R4 assault rifle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) which was over 20 years ago so excuse the newbie details. I bought myself a M&P 15 OR and a M&P 15-22. I took the twins to the range totoday and I thought I would share my experience with you all.

M&P 15
After experiencing a few jams hand cycling the weapon with snap caps - trying to familiarize myself with the system – I was concerned that I had made a mistake with the AR platform since I had never experienced this with my R4. It just worked and never jammed. After hours and hours of reading, I came to the conclusion that it must be the magazine so I decided to dump the 10 round metal magazine (I live in Connecticut) and bought a new 30 round magpul magazine. Once at the range, the rifle did not skip a beat and cycled all but one round very smoothly – the one round was struck by the firing pin so I will chalk it up to a dead round. The rifle was shooting way to the right but the grouping was good. I spent most of the day pulling it in and I am very happy with the results. After firing 200 rounds, I stripped the rifle and it is surprisingly clean.

M&P 15-22
After reading all the negative reports about failures, I was rather nervous. The first shot fired no problem. The next two jammed. I was convinced I had a dud and I was not looking forward to waiting a week or two to get it fixed. I took the magazine out, hit the spine of the magazine against the heel of shoe (just like the old days) and popped it back in. I ended up shooting 450 plus rounds with only two additional jams which were the result of me trying to load the magazine quickly. I was very surprised how accurate this rifle is. I was able to get a very small grouping without much effort. No recoil also helps.

 

[Skidder]

I just got my 15-22 the other day and took it out. My dad taught me to hit the mag. against my hand too. Ran 200 rounds through it without a failure. Was hitting a beer can at a paced 75 yds. consistantly.

 

[TxShooter2k9]

Congrads fellas, Love my 15-22 aswell, i always hit my mag on the palm of my hand, etc. So much fun to shoot. I went out in the backyard couple days ago, shot 2 mags full, 1 mag of Winchester Wildcats, and 1 Federal Bulk, it was flawless. I was suprised the Wildcats went flawless. The federals always do good, so for the wildcats to do well too, i was really happy with hat, cause i got alot of em, lol.

 

[raveneap]

We were taught to hit the mag against the palm of our hand when we were first issued semi autos (Beretta 92's) 22 years ago when I was in LE. Helped to insure that the rounds were seated. With the 15-22 it seems that the most important thing is to be SURE that the rounds are staggered when loading the mag. As the manual says, pull down the loading assist knob only far enough to load the round you're inserting each time.

 

[chuck s]

Your Kalashnikov-system R4 is certainly a different beast than the M16.

I'm not sure why you're feeding "snap caps" into the rifle. Their only use is to simulate failures to fire. Have your buddy stick one in a magazine at random so you can familiarize yourself with clearance drills.

The M16/AR15 uses a floating firing pin that will dimple every primer upon chambering. A dimple doesn't mean a light strike, it could mean no strike at all.

The M16A2 operator's manual is probably a better manual than the S&W M&P15 manual and is available many places on line. Just download it. CLP is all ya need to clean and lube it.

-- Chuck

 

[cal1]

We were taught to hit the mag against the palm of our hand when we were first issued semi autos (Beretta 92's) 22 years ago when I was in LE. Helped to insure that the rounds were seated. With the 15-22 it seems that the most important thing is to be SURE that the rounds are staggered when loading the mag. As the manual says, pull down the loading assist knob only far enough to load the round you're inserting each time.

I think this is probably a dumb question but exactly how are you doing this e.g. smacking the magazine so the rear of the bullets go flush with the back of the magazine or seat the nose of the bullets with the front of the mag?

 

[jakatan]

I think this is probably a dumb question but exactly how are you doing this e.g. smacking the magazine so the rear of the bullets go flush with the back of the magazine or seat the nose of the bullets with the front of the mag?

smack the rear of the magazine against something, so the rounds are flush with the back.

 

[TxShooter2k9]

yeah, i hit the bottom of the mag while loading aswell as hitting the front of the mag, helping the bullets fall back to be flush with the back of the mag. Works great for me.

 

[ChattanoogaPhil]

Belt_Fed threaded my barrel so I was interested to see if there would be any negative impact on accuracy due to threading. I'm happy to report the rifle shot just the same threaded as it did before -- (nothing impressive there). On the down side, the UTG carry handle didn't work out. It leans forward enough that I couldn't zero the scope. So I spent most of my time at the range screwing around with snips of cardboard from the ammo box and snips of cleaning patches trying to shim it. What a waste of time. So..... UTG handle goes in the gun parts closet... and back comes my Tapco riser and red dot..... ahhhh.... all back to normal.