Sinister Friendly

There seems to be a misunderstanding about what ambidextrous means with regards to firearms controls.

Mirrored controls where they're identical on both sides of the gun is the obviously ambi solution.

But what if I were to tell you that it's not always true that non-mirrored controls are purely dexterous leaving the poor sinisters out in the cold.

The AR is easily operated with your southpaw.  It's just not operated identically.

The selector is rotated with the base knuckle of the left index finger instead of the right thumb.

The bolt stop is operated by the left index finger instead of slapping it with your left palm.  You can also reach around the magazine well to hit it with your right hand too.

The magazine release is operated with the right thumb instead of the right index finger.

The charging handle is already ambidextrous if you use a two fingered claw-grip on it.

The charging handle is by far and beyond the most misunderstood part of this gun!  It really is just there to open up the action before you insert a magazine and load by releasing the bolt with the bolt-stop.

It's got an immediate action function too, but I've yet to see anyone take the concept of "gun not go bang", to the first step in trouble shooting being COVER rather than start tinkering while you stand there.  Why are you standing there in the open again?  I forgot.

Clearing malfunctions is important, but it won't do you a bit of good if you get perforated while you're fixing the problem.  Once you've got cover, you can take a bit more time on the problem and having a charging handle that's super fast to work one-handed left-handed while your right hand stays on the pistol grip with the rifle shouldered stops seeming so critical.  By the way, just blindly and reflexively racking the bolt makes one of the more common AR stoppages worse, not better.

SPORTS is not perfect, but the 'O' is important.

By the way, show of hands, how many times have you seen an AR malfunction where a normal charging handle wouldn't bring it back AND it could be fixed without completely taking it apart and/or replacing parts?  Those of you with your hands up, how many hundreds (if not thousands) of rounds got fired before you saw that?

It was a lot, wasn't it?

It's not broken, stop trying to fix it.