“1600 feet”
3 feet = 1 yard
1600 feet = 533 yards
I don’t know anyone who can accurately use an AR-15 to hit something 5 football fields away. I’m sure it’s doable, but why would you want to?
Part of USMC rifle qualification is just that. Shooting from the 500-yard line.
The “why” is simple. So we can kill people 500 yards away.
***1600 feet = 533 yards***
Elmer Keith claimed he shot deer at 600 yards, with his .44 Mag handgun.
I’ve taken 7 1/2 and 10 1/2 inch 44 mags out to 500 yards when we had ties in our silhouette matches. Normal course is 50, 100, 150 and 200 meters. In the division I shoot you better be able to hit more than one out of five at 500. This is with open sights.
“I don’t know anyone who can accurately use an AR-15 to hit something 5 football fields away. I’m sure it’s doable, but why would you want to?”
I don’t know anybody who can’t. Heck, that’s just a standard military qualification distance.
Skill, maybe? 533 yards with a 1:9 twist, 20” barrel and 70 grain round with an optic is not that hard. The round doesn’t come subsonic and begin to destabilize until about 575-600ish yards.
Much more fun with a non specific handgun at 1600 ft. 1500, no sweat. 1600 a little more of a challenge.
I know more than one local shooter(s) that can nail that shot with an AR-15.
That’s not real difficult to do, but there’s far better calibers for that job.
500 yards is “doable” with an M-16 or AR-15. The drop for a standard NATO 5.56 is around 50” to 65” at that range and the energy is down to about 200. Not really a take down option, more of an injury type shot.
Like you said ... doable but why?
I successfully sighted in my AR-15 at 600 yards about two weeks ago. Well, more correctly, I hit the steel target at that distance, my farthest. 400 yards was much easier. Using 62 grain, 5.56mm ammo. Satisfying.
Using DH logic a hand gun can’t be use for self defense because it shoots farther than a shotgun.
most of my shooting buddies can do just that, paper plate at five hundred yards, iron sights, if not the plate, certainly in the nine ring.
To graduate basic training in the Marines you must hit man sized E silhouette targets aka ivans at 500 meters with open sights. so every US Marine can hit a man sized target at 533 yards without precision optics. Even in my 50s I can still ring steel at 500 with a 4x holographic with any one of a dozen AR 15s I own.
Actually it is pretty easy to do. The Marine Corps rifle qualification course requires you to shoot at the 500 yd or meter range (Camp Lejeune has a 500 yd range and Camp Pendleton has a 500 m range). As long as the wind is constant it is pretty easy to stay in the black. Now don't think that is anything special. Rifle teams shooting the M1 or M1A (civilian M14) shoot on a 1000 yd range.
Just my personal experience here. YMMV.
When I joined the USMC in 1969, we fired the M-14 at 200, 300 and 500 yards.
A few years later we replaced the M-14's with M-16's (the full-auto version of the AR-15 - though we never fired it in full-auto mode).
We fired the M-16 on the same KD Course at 200, 300 and 500 yards.
The scores did not change. The M-16 was just as accurate at 500 yards as the M-14. Without the same stopping power, of course.
I fired Expert ten years in a row - some years with the M-14 and some years with the M-16. Incidentally, my highest score was with the M-16.
I don't see why a civilian AR-15 would be any less accurate at 500 yards - unless they are intentionally built to less exacting standards.
The 600-yard stage of the National Service Rifle Match competition, held annually at Camp Perry, Ohio annually, and replicated in many states elsewhere, is routinely shot with a match-tuned variant of the M16A2 rifle, usually on an AR-15 lower receiver.
I've generally shot it with the M1 Garand rifle of WWII since my first try in 1962. But I've used the M16 version, the M16 or a version thereof being the standard Army rifle since 1967, and for the last 15 years I find my scores get higher with the lighter and lesser recoiling rifle. I'm getting older, but not so old I can't run my Garand; it's just that I shoot the course a little better if I do it twice in the afternoon with the *little rifle* after twice in the morning with the 11-pound Garand.