Shooting the Housefire Aimpoint

Published by
Recoil Staff

…and checking out other similarly damaged-but-operational Aimpoints.

You probably recall the Aimpoint Patrol Rifle Optic that survived a damn house fire that we reported on last year. To refresh your memory:

Paul Riddell had a shitty winter. He lost his Minnesota home to a fire one night this past February.

Thankfully, no one was hurt in the fire. The house was a total loss, though.

“I lost pretty much everything,” he says.

Aside from all his family’s other possessions, he lost three firearms in the blaze. But, he reports his Aimpoint PRO mounted on a Spikes lower/BCM-EAG lightweight upper frankenrifle somehow survived the fire. That’s it in the inset photo of his rifle above, red dot glowing defiantly. Aimpoint found out about it and already swapped it for a brand new optic and with a plan to display the survivor in its museum.

“Here’s a picture of my AR after it was recovered from my house fire after being exposed to the elements for over a month in late February to mid March,” said Riddell. “The rifle was at the core of the fire.”

Today we have an update (and also some more dicked up Aimpoints that have been through hell). Recently Larry Vickers sat down with Andrea from Aimpoint USA at their Sportsmans Shooting Center to go through some details. There's an ML2 that was hit by an IED–shrapnel actually went into the optic and is still present (if you shake it you can hear it). But it still functions. Another ML2 that got run over by a semi-truck. One that was shot. Yet another IED blasted Aimpoint.

Then of course, they pull out the PRO that went through the house fire.

Larry Vickers takes this optic and sees if it still can be properly zeroed and run. Check out the full video for more.

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