A little company called Range Often was kind enough to send me a pair of their Tactical Made gloves. These gloves were designed to provide a protective layer between your hands and the world around you. At the same time, they wanted to maximize dexterity and provide their users with a mission capable glove that makes shooting as easy as HMMWV maintenance. An asbestos glove offers excellent protection but tends to be pretty terrible for everyday use. There is a fine line gloves have to walk between providing security, comfort, and dexterity.
Protection First
The palm and fingers of the Tactical Made shooting gloves are covered with protective leather. Genuine suede leather and not simple polyester. The suede leather provides an excellent degree of thermal protection to the hand and keeps your hands safe and comfortable when it comes to thermal protection. Being in the military means working around lots and lots of hot, potentially dangerous things. A good pair of tactical gloves will save you from that discomfort.
The handguards on a rifle can get hot and uncomfortable when the round count gets high, and let’s not forget about the thermal pain caused by machine gun barrels. The same goes for 5-ton and HMMWV parts, and lord knows how hot things you have to deal with in the aviation world. I’ve been wearing these gloves exclusively when working on everything from shooting to working out and even changing tires. The gloves do an excellent job at providing a layer of protection between you and your task at hand.
This includes dealing with hot handguards and barrels, heavy iron, and tools of all types. The Tactical Made gloves provide you with that mission-essential protection. The thing about being a primate is that we need our hands for work. If your hands go down, then you’re down and when you have a team relying on you, going down is not an option. Especially in a situation in which you can prevent it. The Tactical Made gloves give you a layer of second skin to protect.
Thermal issues are just one concern. Others include biohazards, harsh chemicals, and, as many will attest to, C-Wire. Gloves are a must-have, and there is a reason they are required PPE at every range and in every theatre.
It’s All About Dexterity With Tactical Made Gloves
Dexterity is also critical. My first pair of issued gloves were these terrible leather gloves that made my hands fat and nearly everything else impossible to use. Dexterity was effectively nil. My second pair of issued gloves were a pair of heavy leather flight gloves that, while better, still sucked. I finally cracked down and bought my own modern gloves to maximize my ability to bot protect and use my hands.
The Tactical Made gloves try their hardest to provide you with gloves that do just that. As a young man who once thought himself invincible, I hated wearing gloves because they made my hands both hot and made it difficult to do the various things I was tasked with. I wanted dexterity, so I understand why that matters.
The Tactical Made gloves make a few smart decisions to improve your comfort and dexterity. In my experience, too many gloves put the seams at the fingertips, and this kills your fingertips’ ability to function. That’s not an issue here. The Tactical Made gloves fold the seams up and over and keep them out of the way. This allows you to do things with precision at your fingertips.
The glove design also helps make the glove touch screen compatible. As someone issued several different electronics when deployed, I really hating removing and donning my gloves to use them. These make taking range selfies a breeze! As well other touch screen tasks that are at least half as important.
The mobility flex joints in the Tactical Made gloves provide a good degree of dexterity and control with the gloves donned. Using tools, manipulating a rifle, working on a water pump, or doing the little things like open doors, punch in combinations on locks are easy without feeling too restricted by the gloves themselves. They offer an excellent degree of mobility while maintaining a protective layer over your hands.
Comfort and Fit
The leather could be bulky, but the true fit design keeps things nice and calm. The gloves fit tight and make doing small movements easy and controllable. The form-fitting design and tight wrist closure is perfect for keeping the gloves in place as you work and move. In the various tasks I’ve completed, I never had the need to adjust the gloves to keep going.
The gloves feature minor ventilation to keep your hands cool on hour 3 of a 7-hour patrol. It also allows sweat to dry, and that tantamount to long term comfort. The Tactical Made gloves are well suited for troops, shooters, and anyone who wants a comfortable layer of protection with excellent dexterity.
