Category: Uncategorized

Constitutional carry is having the ability to carry a concealed firearm without paying for a permit from your state of residence. There are currently 25 states to go to constitutional carry. I don’t know about you guys but anytime I do not have to give money to the government, I chalk that up as a win.

Permitless carry means more people are open to carrying a firearm and that means more people in the shooting community. As a result, it makes carrying a concealed firearm less strange, and less scary to the average person. This also opens up more new gun owners who will need/should take classes and instruction. Overall a really good thing for the industry and community.

This does come with some “drawbacks”. I would say there are 4 big ones.

1. Lack of legal knowledge. There is going to always be a place you can’t go, things you can’t do, and a big one: situations where you are not justified to use your firearm even though carrying it may be legal.

2. Lack of state reciprocity. Traveling creates an issue. You may live in a state where permitless carry is allowed, but crossing a state line into a state where it is not allowed and having your firearm creates an issue where the law is being broken.

3. In my opinion the biggest one, is lack of training. Most CCW courses require instruction to obtain that permit. Permitless carry eliminates that. I think taking classes to make sure you are proficient is the best thing you can do. Everyone talks about if SHTF, I will fight! Cool, that’s awesome but if you haven’t trained with your firearm the last person I want fighting next to or behind me is someone who has no idea what they are doing.

4. Another “drawback” is if you no longer feel the need for a CCW when you go to purchase a firearm you will have to do a background check at every purchase of a firearm. Not a huge deal but if you go to buy a firearm during a busy time, you are going to wait for that background check to go through. Could be instant, could be an hour, I know in the showroom when it got busy cause a law was passed or something happened to get gun control attention, things got really busy and you would see people who purchased with instant approvals all the time now get delays.

I personally will continue getting my CCW, I came from a state where I had to wait 10 days from purchase to pickup. I do not want to wait anymore, I am impatient. Another perk, that I am not sure is true or not but have heard from friends that are cops, having a CCW when you get pulled over tends to put law enforcement at ease a little. They take it as yeah this guy isn’t a criminal I can relax a little. Who knows, for sure it is up to the officer to decide but it’s no skin off my back to maybe get a free pass.

As always do your research for yourself and decide what is best for you.

-Cano

Last week we dropped an in-depth video on our AimSurplus BCGs, spending a little more time on why you should run ours and even some install tips. We take great pride in our BCG offerings and we stand behind them, not just because they are made in America by hard-working Americans, but because it has our name on them and that means something.

We have multiple offerings on them with the most popular being our ar15 bolts for AR/M16 5.56/.223/.300 BLACKOUT. We get them in TiN which is the gold color you see above. NIB which is a nickel boron coating and a silverish color, and DLC which is the black version. My personal favorite is the TiN, the color gives you a nice break from the standard all-black rifle, but the best part is that coating. The coating improves the maintenance, cleaning, edge retention, and corrosion resistance of the bolt. The majority of the time, wipe it down, and it’s clean as if it wasn’t used yet. Use a cleaner on them and they look like you just took it out of the package.

Check out the in-depth and see what I mean. Hopefully, you learn a thing or two!

If you are local, stop by the showroom and check the bolts out, we have them in several of the wall guns for you to play with.

-Cano

Our LEO trade in firearms are a hot item. Working in the showroom people would ask almost daily if we had any trade-ins, mid pandemic it was hard to get them. There is also a crowd that is against LEO trade-in or used guns, thinking “Oh I don’t know, the previous owners could have beat the gun to death and never maintained it.” Sure that could be the case but it’s doubtful, these are from police departments, they want their guys to make it home so firearms and maintenance are pretty important.

I will make this statement and sure some will get mad: Cops do not shoot their guns. Most cops train when it’s time to qualify and then that’s it. I wish more of them did, your life is on the line as well as your brothers, why wouldn’t you want to be as proficient as possible. We are lucky to train with some local PD who have become friends, pushing us to get better, pushing them to get better, all of us putting in the work to become better shooters. This being said, you see a police trade-in at a great price, chances are it’s barely been fired, a barrel may look untouched or internals are not even scuffed up. Most batches of trade-ins, slides have some scuffs from seat belts, sometimes down on the grip, you will see wear and then mostly its faded night sights and scratches from its former life.

This is probably your average-looking trade-in we get. This is a Detroit PD marked M&P. A couple scratches on the slide and trigger guard, but nothing outrageous. I randomly picked this one out of the group it was in.

Glock. Sig. M&P. FN. All the best of the best for our LEO, traded in because of budget increase or departments switching to 9 from .40, could be any number of reasons. Occasionally we will get unissued firearms, less common but it happens. The only major downside to picking up a trade-in would be no warranty but more common worries would be maybe you don’t have a box to go with it or only one mag. These guns were either unissued or a duty weapon that was fired a couple times a year so you get a broken-in gun that works like it’s brand new and just is not as pretty as it was when it was brand new. It’s a tool, not a showpiece. Save a couple hundred bucks on that Glock 19 you wanted to get, chances are it has been shot less than 200 times. That’s nothing, most of us shoot more than that in an hour at the range.

Let’s say you get one that isn’t the best shape, usually, they are cheaper anyway. let’s say you didn’t get it from us so they never went through it to make sure it worked properly. Gen 3 Glock 19. new parts kit and you are shooting a brand new Glock aside from the barrel and still cheaper than buying a brand new firearm. replace the barrel with one of our AimSurplus barrels and you are all brand new for a fraction of the cost.

Don’t let the words trade-in scare you off. If it’s a good deal get one, especially if you can see it first.

-Cano

Carrying a concealed firearm can be a nerve-racking thing at first. If you haven’t had much time to wear the holster it could be uncomfortable, so much so that you don’t want to carry it anymore. I personally dealt with this by wearing a holster around the house in the appendix position and when standing at the showroom counter. This was the easiest way for me to get used to the pressure of the holster pushing against me and after probably 4 or 5 days it was fine. 2 weeks in I didn’t even know it was there anymore. Appendix carry is the fastest draw but it may not be possible for you to do all the time, maybe a uniform or wearing a suit or dress will prevent you from doing so. That is wear off body comes into play.

For women, I usually am not a fan of purse carry for a couple reasons.

1. If you are approached by a bad guy who wants your money, where is the money? Your wallet…in your purse. Where is that firearm? In your purse. They can just take the whole purse and you are defenseless.

2. The other reason is, that most people who do so just toss a gun in the purse without a holster. That’s a very easy way to have an accidental discharge. A pen or keys or anything really can go in the trigger guard and bump the trigger back, or you go to grab something out of the purse and it gets tripped up and pulls the trigger. If you want to purse carry use a holster, or a dedicated CCW purse with its own compartment is an option.

They make so many cool bags for concealing a firearm: backpacks, fanny packs, slings, computer bags, gym bags, purses. Some look tactical and definitely telegraph there is a firearm in that bag, most look like a regular old bag. CCW-specific bags will have a dedicated compartment for the firearm to be separated from the rest of the items you keep in a bag.

Now carrying this way doesn’t mean you should toss a gun in a bag and think you are good. Train. Train to get that gun out of the bag when you need to get it out. Practice getting to your weapon, drawing it, and getting it in the action. It’s no different than practicing your normal draw during dry fire. Practice drawing from the bag sitting down, standing up, from the seat next to you in the car, and kneeling down with the bag next to you. There’s never a time when you will say I practiced too many scenarios. Find something that works for you and practice, practice, practice.

-Cano

This past weekend a couple of us participated in Pistol one at the Impact Shooting Center in Cleves, Ohio. Normally Shane Cardwell with the help of recent Impact Shoot 2 patch winner Bryan Flannagan. Due to outside circumstances, Shane was not able to instruct this class, so Bryan and our USPSA Master Class shooter Peter Woolard took over for Shane. Peter has been wanting to get into instructing so this all worked out for him and he crushed it. Bryan is always extremely helpful in getting people comfortable on the range, having Peter there as well just made it even better. Both guys have helped me go from shooting maybe 3-4 times in my life to 2 years later being pretty confident in what I can do now.

The class itself was your bare-bones pistol 101. Getting people comfortable with a pistol and getting people ready to carry a firearm safely and responsibly. Grip. Sights. Trigger. Reloads. Very basic but very important things to know. I think fundamentals are one of the most overlooked things in any discipline. In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the fundamentals are key, sure there are fancy moves and super high technique moves, they are all based on a fundamental base. When I started at AIM, Shooting was just something you did, when I started actually shooting with these guys, shooting was no different than learning jiu-jitsu or any other martial art. You have a strong fundamental base you can do anything else the sport evolves into.

I have taken this class and versions of it I want to say 4 times now, I made the choice to take a brand new gun to learn and I am very glad I did. The grip on this gun vs my M&P is completely different but also the mechanics of the firearm are different so it was a very good refresher. Had I taken it with my m&p I still would have learned something and further drilled in the fundamentals but that is me, I like going over something again and again. Another person, they may just take it once and be bored taking it again. I don’t mind drilling the basics until it’s automatic, I think I may take a pistol 1 class once a year, almost like spring training for baseball players.

Bryan does a tremendous job explaining things much like Shane does. An expert shooter and someone shooting a gun for the first time will both understand what is being explained. Pete did a great job for his first time, he can shoot like the best of them so seeing him share what he does to get that good is awesome. Whenever there’s something I don’t get or understand I go to Pete or I just copy what he does until I figure it out. I hope he gets the chance to teach more in the future.

I wish I had taken more pictures during the class but I was too into learning some new things! If you have a chance to take classes, do them. There is no reason to not always get better. Skills in shooting perish, refresh em!

Here is a dump of the rest of the shots I managed to get.

-Cano

Every company is always looking for something to take them to the next level, something to set them apart from the competition. We are no different here at AIM, always on the lookout for a way to take things a step further. This is why we went all-in on new software and a virtual shooting range where we will test everything from accessories to ammo in all sorts of scenarios. We can set the machine up to run all sorts of scenarios and environments so we can truly test each product to its max. Here are a couple screenshots of our standard range setting. Where we have a 100-yard range set upon a farm of gravel.

We call it the A.P.R.L.F.O.O.L system which stands for Automatic Product Research and Learning Fast Occular Optical Liason. This is no joke of a setup. The designer of the system April Foolery said ” This is my lives work all rolled up into one cheesy April fools joke” If you are still reading I am sorry. I had to do it, although I would not be mad if we did get a shooting simulator to have fun with. Happy April 1st ya knuckleheads.

-Cano

A couple posts back I discussed going to the Apex Tactical class for trigger installs and fitting barrels. I learned about the installation and custom work to get their gunsmith barrel to fit and the improved accuracy that comes with that custom fit. Randy Lee of Apex, mentioned the unique barrel geometry these barrels have will deliver five-shot groups well under two inches at 25 yards, whether it is with 115gr., 124gr. or 147gr. factory ammunition.

After class, all I wanted to do was put this to the test. This past weekend I finally got to test it out. Pete from AIM and myself both have the setups I did in the class so we met at Impact Shooting Center and got to work.

The first test we did was OEM Barrels at 10 yards for 5 shots and then the Apex for 5 shots at ten yards. We did not have a sandbag so we used a backpack, we are also not patient so I believe these groups could get even better. The shots were pretty much 3 seconds apart whereas if we waited and took our time for each shot it would have been even tighter groups. Shooting off a backpack with a pistol was also new to both of us and took a couple shots to figure out which is why we did 5 shots for each one.

I think if we exercised patience and used a proper bag to shoot off, we would have gotten even better results than you see here. I am very impressed with how much of an impact these barrels have with very minimal fabrication. I highly recommend throwing one in your M&P!

-Cano

AIM recently purchased a laser to do some in-house engraving and etching. We sent one of our guys to the great state of Texas to do some learning and really understand how to work this new setup. He came back with a lot of cool stuff and the potential to do some really really cool custom items.

We have experimented with using the laser for stippling and even engraving mags with cool designs and logos.

Here are some of the things we have done in-house for us.

It is pretty cool to have a laser we can use to customize some gear. Currently, we are offering a couple designs on some mags on the website in limited quantities. Check them out while they are still around and keep checking here or our social media pages to see what and when we release something new!

-Cano

A Couple of weeks ago I wrote about some drills to push your training further. One of these drills was Shane Cardwell of Impact Shooting Center’s Shoot 2 Standards.

During a cold and wet Saturday, someone finally passed the standards: Our very own Bryan Flannagan. We have all run this test countless times and failed. Shane himself has failed it multiple times and passed it just as many, your standards should not be able to be passed all the time. World champion shooters and top instructors have tried and failed. Seeing it happen outside of Shane doing it was awesome.

Bryan’s gear for this run was his trusty STI DVC-P with a Trijicon SRO red dot, sitting comfortably in a Tier 1 Concealed Axis Elite holster.

It was really cool to see someone finally get it outside Shane. I look forward to seeing who passes it next!

-Cano

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to participate in the Apex Tactical M&P Armorer Course taught by by Master Gunsmith Randy Lee of Apex Tactical. This class was really cool, I knew the basics of breaking down the 2.0 to clean but understanding the why was awesome. We went over the design and interaction of parts, inspection of parts for excessive wear, proper maintenance, modification and customization to fit items like the Apex Trigger and Barrel.

For this class I purchased a semi drop in barrel to custom fit on my m&p as well as another barrel and apex trigger kit for a coworker.

I had a good understanding of how to do the trigger install myself but this was cool to see little tips to get it done smoother and faster, plus they gave us free bench blocks to use where as before I used whatever I had laying around, like rolls of duct tape, to prop my gun up enough to hit pins out. Randy was awesome, explained everything super clear and had good tips on getting stubborn pieces to work.

We started by completely stripping the frames and Randy gave a cool insight on the development of the trigger and what they wanted out of it.

Trigger install is pretty straight forward. I was one of the only people setting it up as light of a pull as possible.

After a quick lunch break we got into the custom fitting of the barrel. This was really cool. Getting better accuracy out of these pistols by a little fabrication peaks my interest. I love building things and using my hands so once we got into this part of class I was loving it. Theres a couple locations that need to be filed down, or milled down if you have the tooling, to achieve that perfect fit. A file and a jig with a little bit of patience gets you that perfect fit that gets you that improved accuracy.

At the end of the day, I had installed a new trigger kit on a 2.0 and two custom fit barrels for two 2.0s, great success!

Overall a really cool class, if you get the chance to take a class from them I highly recommended it. Very informative but not overwhelming to get discouraged.

-Cano