I’ve become pretty well smitten with the Shadow Systems MR918. Last fall I picked up a second with the RMR cut, along with a 507C. Not long before the lockdown I put the 507C on #2, and ran maybe 150 rounds through it pre-lockdown while zeroing and towards merely becoming accustomed to the concept. My plan was to take a course or a few red dot specific lessons before thinking about carrying it, and I hadn’t run any drills with it on the assumption that the results would not provide useful information at my stage of the red dot game.
Today was post-lockdown mega-super-maximux range day. But for a lunch break I was there from about 12:30 to 6:30 and had all sorts of fun. The son of one of my friends is a gun nut (I mean enthusiast). He just graduated from high school and had gotten a new rifle as a graduation present. He texted me mid-afternoon and joined me soon after. I have mentioned before the F*ck You Bloomberg modern sporting rifle I bought a while ago for the sole purpose of saying F*ck You Bloomberg and the Rest of You Freedom Hating F*cksticks, but had never taken out of the box. I was relying on the kid to show me the ropes one of these days, he said go and get it so I went and got it, he showed me the ropes, and he shot several of my pistols. (Pro tip - I recommend having sights on an AR-15. While this is just my subjective impression, the lack of sights seemed to affect accuracy.)
Back to the subject at hand. One of the other fun things I did today, just as a lark, was to run THE TEST a few times with the 507C-equipped MR918. The result?
DAMN! Equal scores to the regular MR918 with lower times (like a quarter to a half second lower), and just so darned easy. As people here have said, like cheating.
Next time I’ll try it with just the circle per GJM’s suggestion, but even with the dot and circle, I found my eyes were easily and naturally drawn to the circle.
I’m still going to get some training before deciding whether to carry with the 507C, but I have to say I was very impressed.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
If a Holosun lasts a week, I think there is a reasonable chance it will hold up. Over the next months and year or two, we will have a lot more data as the Holosun optics get carried more. I am especially interested in the 508T V2 and 509T. With any red dot for serious use, I would make sure you have quality BUIS that hit POA/POI.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
FWIW, Steve Fisher and Aaron Cowan -- both of whom have trained plenty of LE/MIL organizations on this subject matter -- both consider Holosun to be good to go for duty use.
I do think closed emitter is the way to go for duty use, however -- in my experience, it's easier to shoot if the dot fails (has never happened to me but I do practice shooting both with and without BUIS -- the tube effect is helpful here), more weather-resistant when carried openly, and probably more durable overall than an open emitter design. I have a collective round count of about 5K through two Holosuns with no issues, and the only reason I left them was to go to a closed emitter unit. After trying one in class this weekend, I'd personally be taking a hard look at the new Holosun 509T for duty use.
We'll have BUIS, I'm sure, as it'll be optional to have a dot.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
If you reach out to Phoenix PD, they are authorizing the 507C for duty use. I have a contact there and have sold a lot of 507C and 508T optics to their guys. He says the Holosuns outnumber RMRs at least 10:1.