What we know about the Las Vegas shooter’s guns: The EOTech optic

There is a ton of anti-gun bias in the media and even more so when an event like the most recent shooting in Las Vegas happened. Immediately people who have never owned or handled a firearm other than grandpa’s hunting rifles or shotguns became experts. When the reports first came about what type of firearms were used first came out there was, like in the Dallas shooting of last year huge amounts of errors in reporting. We had a chance then to analyze the photos and figure out what was used, and unfortunately we have been asked again to give a look at the facts of the firearms that we have seen in press photos.

The optic on the rifle appears to be a non-magnified EOTech 500 series holographic optic. You can tell it’s one of the 500 series (511,512,558 etc.) because it has the longer nose on it for the two AA sized batteries it takes. Newer EOTech’s take a CR123 battery that are mounted sidewise in the optic rather than lengthwise.

EOTech optics utilize a 1 MOA dot surrounded by a 65 MOA ring. The 65 MOA ring will cover a human torso at a distance of 50 meters making this optic ideal for CQB (close quarters battle) or confined space operations. The optic is not magnified on it’s own making it difficult to use at distance. You can add a magnifier behind the EOTech for magnification, but that is not what the shooter in Vegas used. He utilized a stand alone EOTech 500 series sight mounted to the rifle.

In the following video Loadout Room writer Garand Thumb talks about the new and improved EOTech optics.