General
Practical Shooting The AR-15 Vol. 6 with Matt Burkett was kindly sent us for review by Matt Burkett himself. The Practical Shooting The AR-15 Vol. 6 includes 2 DVDs and the total running time is a healthy 275 minutes. Like with the How to Shoot Faster! With Matt Burkett - Practical Shooting Volume 4 it's beneficial to the viewer to have some experience with AR-15 type rifles and action shooting to get the most out of the actual shooting part of this DVD. That being said especially the interviews with J-P are good stuff for beginners and veterans of the AR-15 system alike. Like with any instructional videos or DVDs the DVD alone will not make anyone a good shooter, quality instruction is always required. If you have no experience with an AR-15 seek quality instruction before trying out the techniques in this DVD.

Disc 1
On "The Equipment with J-P Enterprises" section J-P goes though his history with the AR-15 rifle and the evolution of the AR-15 to a "race gun". J-P goes on to explaining versatility and the advantages of the AR-15 system in the tactical rifle competition. John Paul also explains the improvements and modifications he has developed for the AR-15 system regarding composition shooting. During the introduction, J-P also explains the actual operating principle and mechanism of the AR-15 weapon system. SOme of the other topics covered are tuning the gun to the ammo used, differences between a single stage and a two stage trigger system, differences between .223 chamber and 5.56 chambers, choosing the right barrel/twist rate and breaking in a barrel.

During Cleaning and maintenance J-P and Matt go through the disassembly procedure and show all the parts that need to be cleaned and the proper techniques and equipment to do it. Again valuable info if you have not disassembled and/or cleaned any AR type weapons before. As the weapon is disassembled and cleaned J-P also talks about which parts check to ensure the weapon functions reliably.

On the Tips & Tricks section Matt goes thorough different competition classes and weapons setups for different classes from open to tactical. Matt also addresses including setting up o´optics and accessories.

In the chapter named Gear & Equipment with 3gungear.com Matt talks with Mark Buchanan from 3gungear. The topics addressed are gear placement, gear selection and preparation for a match. Especially a the part about barrel, lengths, bullet weights and muzzle velocity is good stuff. The ammo selection is also discussed in depth. Matt and Mark also talk about the effects of the environment on bullet trajectory and how to compensate for it. At the end of this chapter Mark demonstrates some the gear that he has designed specifically for 3 gun matches including slings, mag pouches, dump pouches,

Disc 2
After a short safety intro Disc 2 starts with "the basics". In this case the basics meaning stance, correct eye relief, bringing up the gun, cheek weld, trigger finger position. Matt and Kevin quickly move on to practice shooting drills. The second DVD proceeds on a pretty straight forward fashion as Matt and Kevin go through each topic in a pretty similar way. Matt explains the things that need to be taken into consideration an Kevin does most of the shooting. Matt steps in from time to time to demonstrate how he does things and what a correct execution of technique should look like.

Picture & Sound
The picture and sound quality in this DVD are good and equal to How to Shoot Faster! With Matt Burkett - Practical Shooting Volume 4 and like the How to Shoot Faster! With Matt Burkett - Practical Shooting Volume 4 this one played fine on a European PAL standard DVD-player.

Something that we would have liked to see during the shooting drills were the hits. It would have been nice to see more of the effects of Matt's instruction on Kevin's shooting. Also the editing / filming could have been more varied. now most of the drills and instruction was shot with the same camera and from the same camera angle. Other than that we had no complaints.

The DVD is divided into chapters as follows:

DVD 1
Intro
Equipment with J-P Enterprises
Maintenance with J-P Enterprises
Tips and Tricks with J-P Enterprises
Gear and Equipment with 3gungear
Credits
Out takes

DVD 2
Safety
Practice drills
Shooting Positions
Shooting Positions Practice Drills
Shooting positions Barricade Practice Drills
TRigger control
Transitions
Breathing
Aiming
Reloads
Movement
Secondary Transitions

We are not claiming that we have seen them all, but this is probably the best instructional DVD available for the AR-15 today.

P.S. Our apologies to Matt for taking forever to post this review. We had a hard time getting the DVD back to us, since it went on loan almost immediately and people seemed reluctant to give it back.