When they sent me the Blue Force Gear GMT sling to evaluate, I’ll admit that I was skeptical. I mean, they said it is simple to use and can both be tightened and loosened instantly. Frankly, looking at the photos, I thought it looked a bit complex, which goes against my KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle.
Once again, I was mistaken. But more on that later on. Let’s take a look at why having a sling on a long gun is a necessity.
Why use a sling on your long gun?
A long gun without a sling is simply incomplete. Period. There’s no other way to look at it. Why? Because slings serve a couple of purposes that we’re going to take a look at.
Carry Your Weapon, Hands-Free
They help us carry a weapon when our hands would be otherwise occupied and generally serve as a holster for a long gun. Perhaps we are negotiating an obstacle. Or we need to carry something such as a friendly casualty or other items.
Stabilize Your Weapon
A good sling helps to stabilize a rifle or carbine when taking shots where we need some extra stability, whether standing, sitting, prone, or kneeling. This improves accuracy.
During my time in uniform, we spent considerable time on the range in various shooting positions, including the use of a sling to enhance our stability. Believe me, they do work very well, especially with practice. Older slings required some acrobatics to use, but the Blue Force GMT Sling is so easy and quick to use that it’s a major game-changer.
Retain Your Weapon
Bad guys frequently try to disarm good guys. If I’m strapped into my rifle via a sling, it’s more difficult for a miscreant to disarm me by taking my gun. With it strapped to my torso, I’ll tend to come along with the weapon, much to the goblin’s chagrin.
Transition to Secondary Weapon
In the event that we need to transition from rifle to pistol, a sling is paramount unless we want to drop our rifle onto the deck. And dropping a weapon onto the deck is definitely something we want to avoid during a close encounter of the violent kind. Having that sling allows us to make a seamless transition to our secondary weapon.
Blue Force Gear GMT Sling
Blue Force Gear makes all sorts of tactical goodies that we can drool over. Items such as plate carriers, magazine carriers, sling swivels, belts, medical kits (including trauma kits), MOLLE pouches, and, you guessed it….slings. And not just one or two types of slings, but several.
Every piece of their gear is extremely durable and well-designed. They don’t offer fluff. Everything they come up with serves a very real need and purpose. They’re not into gear to make us look like “cool guys”, but rather for top-tier operators to use in the real world.
Today’s evaluation will focus on the Blue Force Gear GMT 1.25-inch sling, which is a two-point sling. That means it attaches at two points on the weapon (front and rear, normally). In order to best stabilize a weapon, a two-point sling usually works best. Larry Vickers, an instructor for the Army’s Delta Force, designed this sling.
What makes the GMT sling work so well?
The secret of the GMT sling is the Double Locking Sling Adjuster. This thing is seriously ingenious!! I never imagined that a sling could be tightened or loosened so quickly and easily.
The adjuster is a double-locking buckle interface that utilizes durable, glass-filled nylon. It provides consistent, smooth tension when both loosening and tightening the sling. Once you have it set, it stays put until you decide it’s time to make a change.
It’s so stupidly easy to use, I couldn’t believe it. Simply thread the sling through the sling swivels.
Once it’s in place you only need to do two things. If you decide the sling needs to be looser, grab the nylon ball that’s toward the rear and pull it rearward, and the sling will loosen up.
Want it tighter? Grasp the tail of sling that’s forward of the knob and move it forward, tightening the sling.
That’s it. That’s all you need to know or do to operate the sling. As an added bonus, you can operate it with one hand.
It’s Versatile
The more I use it, the more apparent the versatility becomes. Think about it. Whenever you change seasons, a regular sling is a hassle when you’re wearing a winter coat, which can be thick and adds bulk to your torso. And then you might be using a chest rig or plate carrier on top of that. All of this means more adjustment for the sling. And if that sling is laborious to adjust, it becomes a chore.
Not so with the Blue Force Gear GMT sling. Don it while it’s nice and loose and tighten it up to where it works best. It takes a total of a couple of seconds.
This also works well if you’re going from one set of gear to another. I simply leave my sling very loose when I take the carbine off and tighten it to my taste when I don the weapon.
Adding to the versatility, using this sling makes changing shoulders far easier than most other slings. Let’s say I’m right-handed (as a point of fact, I am) and I need to switch shoulders to engage hostiles around a corner using my left shoulder. I pull the nylon ball, which loosens the sling, and switch shoulders. Again, easy and quick.
After I’m finished engaging the baddies, I can tighten the sling up by pulling that tail forward. Presto, I’m back to where I started. And the great thing is, it takes a lot longer to read it than it does to actually do it.
Let’s say I need to transition from my rifle to my handgun. I pull the ball back and loosen the sling. I can now drop the rifle and draw my pistol. Realistically, if I’m in CQB, I’ll already have my rifle sling fairly loose in the eventuality that I may have to draw my handgun. So grabbing that nylon ball under pressure is not something I’ll likely have to do. However, the act of loosening up that sling ahead of time will have been made easier because of the convenience of this sling.
Ease of Use
Remember when I mentioned using a tightened sling as a shooting aid to stabilize the rifle? With a simple sling that’s using old-time, standard adjustments, we have to usually wrap our wrist and/or arm through it in order to tighten it up. While that’s not too difficult, it can require a bit of acrobatics at a time when we don’t have the room or time for such adventures.
With the Blue Force Gear Vickers GMT sling, just grab the tail and move it forward to tighten everything up. We instantly have that extra tension with no need to wrap our arm through the sling. This adds to our speed, and in a gun battle, speed can be life, especially when combined with accuracy.
Made With Superior Materials
Blue Force Gear uses superior nylon in their slings. It has more loft (thickness and softness) than the thinner nylon that used to be used, and that some manufacturers still use. It makes the nylon much more comfortable against the skin than the thinner nylon, which could abrade or cut the skin. As I said, a lot of thought goes into this gear.
Various Fits
The GMT slings come in one-inch and 1.25-inch widths. They’ll fit a variety of rifles, carbines, shotguns, and submachine guns, among others. The one I reviewed is black. However, they’re also available in other colors, including Coyote Brown, Multi-Cam, Ranger Green, and Wolf Grey. Basically, they’ll fit any darn weapon you can get your hands on.
Final Verdict — This is a great sling!
I’ll admit to being very glad that I gave this sling a try. It’s far faster and easier to operate than I’d initially believed it would be.
The materials used are of the highest quality and will last a lifetime. Blue Force Gear’s reputation is certainly justified with this piece of gear.
At the time of this writing, GunMag Warehouse is offering it for $49.95. While it’s not a cheap sling, it’s certainly not as expensive as many on the market these days. In my mind, this represents a very reasonable buy.
I also love the fact that this is made in America by a red-blooded American company with a stellar reputation. In case you haven’t guessed yet, this one gets two thumbs up!
