AR-15 Rifle Slings: Single- or Two-Point?

Most people agree that a sling is a necessity on a defensive rifle, especially one staged for home defense, when you're in a military environment, patrol rifle, anytime that you might need to take your hands off the rifle but you still want it accessible, but not everyone will agree on what type of sling you need. And of course the biggest debate is going to be single point or two point sling. To be honest, I think people that are still arguing about this are a little out of touch. The reality is that most of the best slings on the market today are going to be convertible. There's no reason, if you have a defensive long gun, shotgun, AR-15, whatever it is, that you shouldn't have a convertible sling that allows you to go from two point configuration to single point.

Now, if you have to choose, I'm always going to say go with single point for any kind of close quarters interior environment, around the vehicle, defensive long gun because you want to be able to maneuver the gun as much as possible and the two point sling just doesn't allow that. Now a traditional carrying strap set up actually would have this attached way out in front of the gun. Attach out in front of the gun, I have even less mobility. Most of your modern slings that are convertible, and most of your defensive ARs are going to allow you to choose a lot of different options for where the sling attaches and how it adjusts around your body. This one has an adjustment for length, and as you can see I can barely get this sling around.

It actually has to ride up my body to get into a shooting position the way it is here, while it's very easy to carry here and I know that it's going to be in a stable position, it's not super quick and easy to get into. Well, the easy adjustment here is just to make the swing a little bit longer that gonna let the front end drop down, the toe of the stock is still gonna be high on my body. And I can bring that gun up much easier now to get into my shooting position. But the reality is, if I want to fight in different directions, if I want to transition to my weak hand for some reason, maybe fighting around cover, I get injured. I'm gonna be a lot more maneuverable if I switched to a single point position.

So if I cinch this back up, make it a little bit tighter, take my connector point from here. And I'm going to switch over to the single point. Now in this single point configuration I could probably have cinched that up even a little bit more to get that toe of the stock a little bit higher, we see that the gun isn't nearly as secure on my body. If I'm going to be moving around, that gun is floating, it's bouncing, it's banging. If I'm climbing up a ladder, if I'm trying to carry someone, I can push it off to the side.

But once again, it's just going to float and bang around back here. It's going to hit my leg as I run, and it's going to bounce off of things. But I'm not concerned about an administrative moment when I'm in a single point mode. In a single point mode, I have my hands on the gun primarily and now I am ready to move and fight in a lot of different directions. I can bring the gun all the way back in an extreme close quarters situation.

I could even invert the gun this way if I needed to, I can wrench the gun away from someone if they try to grab it I can even strike someone with the gun much more readily with that single point connection here at the neck, the back of the receiver on the AR configuration. And you can do the same thing at the front of the stock on a shotgun or other type of firearm when you're talking about long gun for defense. Now immediately you realize, well, what about all that banging? What about all that moving? And what if I want more stability out of my sling than I get from a single point?

Again, with the convertible, no problem. I disconnect here. I reconnect here, right? I obviously could use a different type of quick disconnect as well. There's a lot of different options out there for you.

Once I get set up to where I'm back to my two point configuration, now, again, that rifle is much more secure against my body. It's much more, much more likely to stay against my body. I can push it around back and have it even more secure. Obviously I can take it completely off now and I can carry in a much more administrative way. Just looping this over my shoulder maybe in a hunting kind of configuration, slide my hand down, come out, I'm off the sling but it's very easy for me to get the gun back into my hands.

I could take the gun and put it all the way across my back. If I were climbing up a ladder, if I were doing some kind of repelling situation, whatever it may be, and this is going to hold this gun very securely against my body. Once again, it's kind of slow to get into operation and now I'm off sling again. And that's the balancing act. That's what happens with a convertible sling, is you kind of get the best of both worlds but you also have to think about how you're going to have everything configured and set up and adjusted so that it best suits your purposes when you are wearing the rifle, regardless of whether you're in a fighting mode or an administrative movement mode or you're in between fights.

You're not sure what's going to happen next. Again, I think the debate over single point or dual point is probably a little antiquated, what we need is convertible slings. If you only have one choice if you can't get a convertible, go with a single point. And remember that means if you're staging this gun for home defense, you're going to want to have it in the single point configuration mode so that it's as useful to you and as maneuverable as possible in the close quarters of your home in that worst case scenario when you grab the rifle to defend yourself, your family, middle of the night, alarms going off, dogs are barking. We don't want to be making adjustments on our sling.

Set it up the way that you're most likely to need to fight with it. And that's going to be the single point configuration for most long guns inside the home.