Triggers Matter

I have been working with ARs in .300 Blackout for several months now. After finishing a project where I tested the accuracy and terminal performance of a bunch of factory loads and some hand loads – See an upcoming issue of Shooting Illustrated – I’d had about all I could stand of the horrific trigger on one of the test rifles. So, I switched upper receives to one of my lowers which has a Timney AR 15 trigger installed.

I went back to the bench and fired a few more 10-shot groups using the factory loads I had already tested.

One load showed a 19% improvement. Another load showed a 16% shrinkage and the third load’s group size was reduced by 9%. On average that’s an improvement of 14%. What does 14% amount to? Well, if you are shooting a two-MOA group and it shrinks by 14% it will be about 1/4 inch smaller at 100 yards or about an inch smaller at 400 yards.

No, its not significant but it could be depending on what you are shooting at.

But here’s the point: A lot of shooters do a lot of things trying to make their rifles shoot more accurately. An easy fix can be the installation of a good trigger. If you have a bad trigger in your rifle you could expect this 15 minute fix to yield an accuracy improvement of as much as 20%.

For what  its worth, you can install a Timney trigger in an AR 15 in about 15 minutes. it won’t make your rifle any more accurate but it will help you shoot better. Sometimes the problem is not the ammo.