Author: Josh Vance

Ohio Range Day is a Northern Ohio event that happens every year for the past 4 years. It started out as a group of friends getting together and shooting and training and growing better together. We all know how hard it is to get tot he range with friends when you have to plan around jobs, school, kids, sporting events and angry wives that want you home.

The best thing about ORD is that it entails the best of the best. Each year they grow and expand and get more and more cool things for the attendees. They invite out instructors, vendors, food and about 100 like minded guys and gals in the shooting world to get together and have a weekend of training and networking. Events like this are what help make the gun community stronger. This year you could train with 2 of 4 different instructors, there was night shooting/training and equipment to rent. There was catered food. Live fire demos of guns and products from various vendors. Competitions for giveaways and just overall a ton of fun to be had.

As a vendor, events like this are cool because you get your product, brand, whatever it is you’re trying to sell. Into the hands and in front of the faces of lots of people with various amounts of influence in the gun world. There were people there from all over the country with some large followings and plenty of chances for them to see what you had to offer. You get to hang out and make new industry friends and contacts and get to know guys that you maybe have only ever seen on the internet.

Since the start of ORD, we have seen other states take this concept and start their own versions of it. While we all know the OG one was started in Ohio, I love knowing that lots of more people are getting to experience this event in their own capacities.

If you aren’t near a “range day” of this caliber. It would be super cool and easy to start one of your own in your area. It will take a little bit of work on your end to get the ball rolling. The amount of payoff that you would get would be insane though. The impact an event like this can have is crazy. We had fun and we will continue to go and support this event anyway we can. I’ve tossed in some random pictures of our guys partaking in some of the shooting from this weekend. Have some fun, get out and shoot!

A few weeks back I made a post about how we got in a bunch of the Lancer mags in almost all available colors….. Except Red. Low and behold, a mere 6 weeks later, we have Red Lancer mags back in stock!

We talked about the cults that follow around the magazine world when it comes to one-off colors. You can join facebook groups that are devoted to ODG magazines and AR15.com posts that compare the slight color differences of FDE mags between each shipment and manufacturer. Its a weird magazine world we live in.

The red lancer mags just seem to have a cool factor to them. Unless you are using cheap Chinese made airsoft parts, you don’t typically see red on a rifle. Same thing with the purple magazines Lancer sells. It is also a slight “Flex” when you show up to the range with magazines that are hard to get or difficult to find and make all your friends jealous. Everyone knows that anytime you can show off that you’re better than your friends or that you have something they don’t, you should take advantage of it.

The real reason these magazines are so popular is just because Lancer makes great magazines. Typically when people shoot multiple different calibers, its nice to have an easy way to tell them apart. If you only load .300Blackout into your Red Lancer mags and you see somebody loading a red mag into a 5.56 gun, then you can easily identify and stop them from making a mistake.

We got in several hundred of these Lancer mags in stock for the first time in a long time. I would say if you have been trying to track some down, now is the time to head to the website and grab yourself some. They tend to show up for a short time and disappear for a long time. Don’t miss out and show up to the range and all your friends have red Lancer mags and you don’t.

The Vortex Razor HD Gen III 1-10x24mm is a scope that we have been trying to get our hands on for months now. It came out late last year and the reviews right away were fantastic. The older version the Razor 1-6 was such a popular optic that giving us 4 more magnifications was just going to make things better.

There aren’t many places offering a 1-10 in the first place. Typically the greater the high end magnification is, the worse the low end magnification is hurt. So a 1-10 might really end up being more like a 1.5-10 or something similar because of the slight distortion. I’ve used many LPVO scopes from many brands. The Vortex 1-10 gets it done very well. The distortion on the low end is unfortunately there, but because of the amazing glass clarity, its actually pretty hard to notice. The scope is a FFP so depending on the reticle you get, its a simple crosshair at the 1x and when you dial it up to 10. You start to see your tree and all the hold overs and leads. Thats why FFP LPVOs are so nice. You have access to the information when you zoom in and need it. Then its out of the way when you’re on the lower magnifications not making the reticles super busy.

The body is a 34mm tube so it lets in tons of light. The reticle is super clean and with 11 brightness settings, you have plenty of options to see the reticle nice and clean. One thing I like about the brightness knob, is that it has momentary stops between each number. So you don’t have to dial it from 0-8 every time. You can go to the off stop between 8 and 7, then only have 1 turn to go to the “ON” position instead of 8. Plus that turret is lockable. So you don’t have gear accidentally turning it on and wasting/draining your battery.

The scope is actually shorter than the previous generation and it has that same cool “Vortex Brown” anodized color. The Razor line from Vortex has been great all around. If you are looking at getting into the LPVO game and wanna go straight to the top, then this is something to consider. There are plenty of options above this for the same price, but the Vortex lifetime warranty is nice. You never know when you’re on a hunting trip or hike and your rifle/ you take a nasty spill and next thing you know, you’re out $3,000 worth of scope. Knowing you can send them in anything at all thats broken and or damaged and it will get fixed, is a nice peace of mind to have.

Something we don’t get in enough quantity wise and time wise are Radian Rifles. I have picked up, built, sold, handled, shot and fondled thousands of AR15s in my lifetime with my job position. I have seen/touched all the name brands, the popular ones and even some of the unicorn guns. Every time somebody asks me what my favorite out of the box AR15 is. Its a Radian gun.

The quality out of the box just seems to be so much higher than everyone else. The box isn’t junk. The packaging material isn’t junk. There is a saying with AKs that the better the AK the worse the box it comes in. The Radian comes in a foam cutout box, didn’t waste money on a overpriced case I didn’t need the gun shipped in. The rifle always has a great look to the finish. There’s no excess amount of oil and fingerprints on it. The weight is balanced there are no marks or scuff and the receiver set looks great.

Radian is hands down one of the best looking rifles out there and I don’t think many would argue it. They have great handguards with sturdy attachment methods. The fit and finish is top notch. The ambi lower is the coolest thing in the world. Great barrels and unfortunately, a price tag to match it. They are not cheap rifles. I don’t think anybody could expect them to be. They always seem to be in the hands of the Gucciest of shooters. I’ve seen them run hard and I’ve seen them babied. I think the price tag turns them off to most people.

Out of the box you’re getting some of the best upgrades to begin with. Radian safety, charging handle and BCG. 3 things I run in a few of my own personal AR builds. It’s optic ready to be turned into any kind of setup you would need. We just got in 5 of these rifles and they never last long. The demand is so high and once people notice they are here, they will disappear. We only get shipments from them every couple of months. Because of how well they sell I wish we could get more each time. Only time will fix that. Head to the website and check out what makes these guns so cool for yourself. Or if you think I’m wrong and there is another company out there putting out a more “Quality out of the box” rifle than this!

Primary Arms is known for their budget friendly and quality line of optics. They are also known for giving their customers what they want and making adjustments when they need it.

This time they have released one of their better optics and I think the demand for it is going to be really high. The Trijicon MRO is a widely popular optic for its size and clarity. The downside to it is its price. This New PA optic is the SLx 1x Micro Prism. While this is a prism sight and not a normal red dot, its biggest competitor is the MRO. They are very similar in size and footprint. The SLx being a prism means they are able to put their super popular ACSS reticle in the glass and give you a lot more versatility than a normal red dot would have.

A lot of prisms out there are big and bulky because they have to let in a lot of light to make the fine details of the reticle seen. The SLx manages to do that with a way smaller size. It takes the tradition ACOG mounts so there are a ton of options on how to run it out there for a variety of platforms. While the ACSS is definitely a huge selling point to people that know what it is and want it, its actually the reason I haven’t bought one yet. I would benefit from a prism sight since I do have a slight astigmatism, but I don’t need the reticle. Once they release it in a simple dot or crosshair reticle, I’ll make sure I own one. It is the perfect sized optic for PCC guns and smaller sub guns/ truck guns.

Only time will tell us how well they hold up durability wise. We know that PA will always be around to warranty it if something does go wrong with it. However I’m actually excited to see how this optic is received and how well it holds up. It comes with a variety of mounts and mounting options right out of the box. This is something I would like to see more places doing. The glass is clear and the sight is nice and compact. We were some of the first people to get these in stock and listed on the website. If you’ve been looking for something fresh and new head to the website and make sure to grab one for yourself!

The Sig P320 is slowly becoming more and more popular of a platform for people to pick up and start exploring with. I’ve talked a ton about how I was sort of let down with the platform and the fact that the modularity aspect of it was not being taken advantage of from anyone in the industry. You had some random shops that were selling stippled and cerakoted frames. You have high end custom shops making aftermarket slides. That’s really it though. There was not much else going on for it.

Then almost out of nowhere, the Flux Raider dropped into the market and turned the P320 platform into something besides just another handgun in a very saturated market. The Flux raider takes your standard drop in FCU from your P320. You add your slide and toss on an optic onto the pic rail at the top. Then you’re done. You now have a PCC platform that fits into a bag and in some instances, can even be holstered.

It has the ability to hold 2 magazines, a red dot mount that doesn’t move, a brace that retracts and shoots out to the correct position upon deployment. It gives you that 3rd contact point to take more stable and accurate shots. Lets also not forget, the whole thing is DAMN sexy. It just looks like something you could see the CIA or a Spy in a movie wearing around in a jacket. This is the kind of modularity I always wanted to see for the P320 platform and I think its still not done. They are making updates and adding features to the Flux on a regular basis. I think we will see more and more models added and I think eventually we will see other companies trying to compete with it.

This is definitely one of the competition breeds greatness kind of things and I think its spectacular for those of us that are on the P320 bandwagon already and have been for a long time. While right now we don’t carry the FLUX because he cannot keep up with the demand. We WANT to. It is a product we like and can get behind and I want more people to start competing against it. I wanna see what else comes from a simple idea to a great product. It doesn’t hurt to let FLUX Defense know that you want us to carry this thing too. If you tell them over and over again you want us to be a dealer for the FLUX, when the time comes. We might get first dibs. Which only Helps you guys! Let us know if you’ve got one or had time behind one.

When I first started my career at AimSurplus almost 5 years ago. My first week here we got in a bunch of police trade-in lever action guns. They were beat to heck and back and were still functional. They had a real “battle worn” look to them and they were dirt cheap. They still functioned fine, just were not pretty to look at. The brass receivers definitely needed a nice buff and polish. I wanted to buy one so bad, but I thought it might look bad if my first week there and I was already using a discount to buy guns. So I didn’t. I figured a few months later we would have more, just like all the surplus they were getting at the time. Little did I know that we had 0 more coming in.

Fast forward 5 years and I’m still looking for my first lever action rifle to buy. I missed out on a used deal and pretty much haven’t seen anything like it since. So it leaves me looking for a new gun. While tons of people have a love and interest into the old style wooden lever guns with the brass receivers. I’m not too interested in that. I think there are a ton of new guns out there like this Henry Big Box X that make the old style lever guns look a lot more interesting. They ship with polymer furniture, threaded barrels and an attachment rail. All things that appeal to me being a modern firearms owner. I wanna be able to toss a red dot on, add a light and then shoot it with a can. I can do all of those things out of the box.

It’s really cool to see older firearms getting the modern updates to stay up with the times. I think that is pretty apparent that if you’re not able to keep modernizing your firearms, then they will start to fall out of demand. We got in a bunch of random lever guns this week and as soon as I finally figure out what kind of set up I would like to run, I’ll finally pick one up and start a whole new kind of build!

This last weekend some of the AIM crew made its way up North to Alliance Ohio. We were signed up for Steve Fisher of Sentinel Concepts AK Class. Steve is an old friend and an industry wealth of knowledge and experience.

We have a lot of guys here who run ARs and other types of carbines but the AK platform definitely deserves its own class for just the basic reloads. Its hard to argue how reliable the AK is and it is definitely a viable platform. So our guys definitely wanted to learn how to run it in a way that made it a useful tool.

Steve is one of the few guys actually teaching an AK class in the country. There were people from all experience levels in the class. Some super cool people and some incredibly awesome AKs. Steve is a great teacher and somebody that doesn’t dance around topics. He is very truthful and straightforward about everything. No nonsense teaching and its great. The amount of knowledge you get from even an intro course is great. You get tips and tricks for a finicky platform from a guy that has used and abused these guns for years.

Steve travels a lot and is one of the country’s best instructors. I would say take a class from him if he ends up in your area or even go track him down and take one at a range in a different state. You will not regret it!

There are some things in life that I would say are just so satisfying that are leaps and bounds above everything else when it comes to satisfaction. For instance, people love the feeling of peeling that thin piece of plastic off of electronics and appliances. It’s just satisfying to do. Anything ASMR is the same way. The sounds are just pleasant to the ear. I would put dressing up a brand new rifle for the first time in the same category.

There’s just something about taking a brand new gun out of the box. Inserting that bolt into it for the first time. Getting to go to your favorite parts website and figure out what accessories you are going to run on it. Picking out the scope, the bipod, the suppressor the muzzle device and all the other accoutrements. There’s something about getting it all set up and ready to assemble. Theres this moment of satisfaction knowing that you took a rifle that was bare bones and just gave it the ability to be picked up by you and have a round fly several hundreds of yards away and hit a tiny target.

This Sig Cross came in recently and I get a ton of people that ask about it. So I decided to get it dressed up for some pictures and I tell you what. Roaming the isles of the warehouse looking for a scope and a mount. Searching the bins for mags and ammo. It was all so fun and relaxing even though I know it wasn’t my gun and just for a picture. The pictures we got ended up turning out great. The time I spent setting up was fantastically relaxing. There are very few things that beat it.

With that being said. We have ton of cool guns in stock right now and I want you to be able to experience it for yourself. So go pick a rifle or even a handgun. Browse the website and get you a few new accessories too. Once that gun arrives and you’re setting it up, you’re gonna remember back to this article and just know it was well worth it.

Now is the time to jump back into building ARs if you have been out of the building game for a while.

We have been offering some great deals on parts to get the community back into the swing of things and building again. This time we are offering a SMOKIN deal.

If you purchase one of our 11.5in or 16in AimSurplus barrels, we will give you a free Rave 140 drop-in trigger to go with it. You’re basically spending $200 and getting $330 worth of product. Super sweet deal for somebody looking to upgrade an existing gun or start fresh from the ground up. You get a nice crisp 3.5lb trigger pull and a set of free anti-rotation pins.

The barrels we are offering on this deal are our 2 best selling barrels. They are the 11.5in carbine length gas system with an included gas block. Then the matching 16in barrel with the same setup. These are 2 barrels that we sell a ton of and get great reviews.

So head to the website and check them out while the deal is going on! We don’t offer deals like this very often but the stars have aligned and allowed us to do so! Good luck with your next build!