Bravo Company Gunfighter AR-15 Charging Handle

The BCM Gunfighter Ambi Charging Handle is Bravo Company's ideal upgrade and replacement for the standard AR-15 charging handle.

According to the company, this upgrade is necessary due to a change in tactics over the last half-century. When the AR-15 and its military variant, the M-16, were introduced, manuals dictated that the firearm be charged by removing the dominant hand from a firing grip and charging the gun with two fingers while maintaining the support hand on the foregrip.

Today, that thinking has changed. It is now considered good practice to maintain a firing grip while using the support hand to rack the charging handle to the rear. This led to the introduction of extended latches that allowed for a support-hand palm to easily catch the latch while cycling the action. However, according to Bravo Company, this placed a great deal of stress on the tiny roll pin connecting the latch and the handle. Under heavy combat, this roll pin could potentially fracture, leading to an essentially unusable firearm.

The BCM Gunfighter charging handle eliminates that possibility by incorporating a built-in backstop. Once the latch is opened, the total travel is limited by a flat surface built into the handle itself, taking pressure off the roll pin that attaches the two pieces together.

The handle itself, designed by VLTOR and sold by Bravo Company, is machined from 7076 T6 aluminum and features a hard-coat anodized black finish. It is fully ambidextrous and features equal-sized latches on the left and right side. The BCM Gunfighter Ambi Charging Handle retails at a suggested price of $72.95.