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of the AR Marksman with a knurled knob even larger than the elevationwindage knobs. Parallax is a bit hard to understand. It is the apparent movement of the reticle with respect to the target when the shooter moves his head up or down, left or right behind the eye piece. Parallax is the difference in the apparent position of an object viewed from different lines of sight. In other words, parallax is a defnite sighting error where the reticle is not aligned with the scope's own optical axis. External parallax adjustments are important on scopes of more than 10X power—the AR Marksman runs up to 16X power. These parallax adjustments are also critically important on scopes used at "close" ranges. By the wide spacing of the hatch marks on the external adjustment knob, "close" clearly means anything less than 200 yards. Remember that more than 97 percent of police sniper shootings are under 200 yards. On a police scope, having an external parallax adjustment is a defnite advantage over an internally corrected fxed parallax. The clear need for an external parallax adjustment over an internal fxed parallax will be obvious when you rotate the turret almost 180 degrees to adjust from 15 yards to 200 yards. This is an outstanding feature. Like all high-end scopes today, the AR Patrolman and AR Marksman use multi-coated lenses for clarity and are nitrogen-filled. Coatings reduce glare. Since less light is refected away, multi-coatings increase light gathering and provide a sharper contrast. Multi-coating also increases scratch resistance. These scopes are shockproof, waterproof, and fogproof. Both have a fast-focus eye piece. Both are anodized matte black. lenses and mag ring to clear the barrel and action. Most of the rings are 4-screw designs. A 6-screw ring is available in the Extra High version. The 4-screw version had plenty of holding power for the High rings we tested. In some cases, the Extra High rings may allow for the use of backup iron sights with the AR Patrolman but this depends entirely on the rife. The rings are well-made with smooth and radiused corners; perfectly drilled and tapped; an exact ft on both the 30mm tube and the Rock River's Picatinny rail. The rings are much wider than normal for a sturdy mount. The oversize hex nut is cross drilled to allow the rings to be tightened or loosened two different ways—hex wrench or any Allen tool. Tactical Rings Down on the Range The best description of the Traditions Tactical scope rings is oversize. The rings ft any Picatinny or Weaver rail mount. Importantly, the rings come in three heights: Medium, High, Extra High. This allows them to be precisely mounted low enough for the best cheekweld and just high enough for the Repeatability is the mark of a quality scope. That means you can move the click adjustments up and down, left and right, and when you return the dials to zero, the rife shoots to the original zero. To test the AR Marksman, we zeroed the Rock River LAR-15 Coyote at 100 The AR Marksman uses an Illuminated Mil-Dot reticle hard-etched into glass. You have your choice of non-illuminated black, illuminated red, or illuminated green. yards and then conducted the standard "box" drill. We moved the elevation 16 clicks up, shot a group, moved the windage 16 clicks right, shot a group, moved the elevation 16 clicks down, shot a group, moved the windage 16 clicks left, and shot a group. The fnal group did indeed overlap the original zero. Then we shot a group at 4X, changed the magnifcation to 16X, shot a group, changed the power back to 4X, and shot a group. All three groups overlapped one another. The AR Marksman is an excellent police scope, rivaling those costing four times as much. The 1-4x24mm AR Patrolman has an MSRP of $180. The 3-12x44mm and the 4-16x44mm AR Marksman have an MSRP of $200. The AR Marksman has the most police-relevant features for the least cost of any optic we have ever tested. LaO Post your comments on this story by visiting www.lawandordermag.com www.lawandordermag.com 39