Editor’s note: This column is a response to an Associated Press article entitled, “Half of Today’s Army Recruits Have Never Held a Gun,” which begins with the following paragraph, “As gun ownership drops among young Americans and the Army trains a generation more accustomed to blasting out emojis on cellphones than taking aim at targets, drill sergeants are confronting a new challenge: More than half of raw recruits have never held, let alone fired, a weapon.”
A travesty in the making if you ask me, and a sign of the times for certain. A nation of people unfamiliar with arms is a soft nation, and none of this bodes well for the military charged with protecting our way of life. I hear often, and even referenced in this article, the following lie,“It is easier to train someone that has never shot a weapon before, and they are often our best shooters.” The particular Drill Sergeant quoted by the AP in the article is a former Cavalry Scout, which is a combat arms MOS. I find his opinion shocking, so allow me to retort.
As someone who has trained over a thousand SOF guys and dozens of civilians, I would always rather have someone who has shot before. Preferably a lot. If a noob shows up to a class, I can teach them many things in an afternoon. One thing I cannot teach is familiarity with a weapon to the point where he is completely comfortable in using one. This develops over time, through many hours spent on the range. Now, I can teach the basics of gun safety, but it is always a lot better if someone else has beat that into them. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you cannot teach everything in one sitting. If someone is already safe with a gun, and familiar enough they aren’t scared of the damn thing, we can get on to the part about putting a bullet where they want it, preferably quickly. Also, in my experience, anyone that has started down the path of marksmanship with even a tiny bit of self-awareness will adapt to new techniques or revised fundamentals faster than someone totally new.
Someone totally new is generally amazed that gun goes bang when you pull the trigger.
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Consider how for many of those same recruits, their knowledge of firearms and all topics related to firearms is from the movies, TV and video games they have watched or play? Now that is scary. As I have observed and stated, any similarity between TV (and the movies) and reality is purely accidental. I just can not watch that nonsense any more.
ReplyDeleteAnother item to take into consideration is the same recruit who has never handled a firearm before is also likely some one who is out of shape compared to his peer group a generation ago. And has not spend much outdoors and has much less out door skills.
There is too, the added cost of training your current recruit. You are going to spend less time and ammo on some one who already has a knowledge base, because he grew up with a shooting/hunting background vs the metro sexual city boy, growing up in a culture that teaches that firearms are evil by nature. It has been my experience, too many military units treat basic rifle marksmanship as just one of those things that has to be checked off of, and an item that gets in the way of your real military job. While I was in the military (active duty Army, Army Reserve and Air Force Reserve, I spent more time cleaning and going over safety issues than I ever did actually on the range firing it. The majority of my range time was merely to check the box to say that I am on paper "qualified" with the issued weapon.
So to sum it all up: We're totally screwed.
I had plenty of practice with the M14, but was given only one mag for the M16 and told to empty it.
DeleteTed Kennedy gutted the DCM program in the sixties and the current CMP successor program is barely able to stay alive. We used to be a nation of riflemen now its a nation of pussified idiots that can't figure out the correct restroom to use.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
DeleteThe young man next door just got back from his third combat deployment. He refused to Re-up in what he calls a "queer promoting PC Corps that hates white hetero men and where ALL females quall , even the ones that never shoot". His brother is an army crew chief on a Blackhawk. He wanted to go 30 but says that "the officers are queer and its more important to be PC than it is to know your job". He told his dad that "everything is F***ed Up, The command is all f***ed up. Its all political. I don't know if we'll even be allowed to shoot back. We don't train on our weapons because it cuts into GLT sensitivity training."
ReplyDeleteThanks. http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2016/09/comment-on-green-beret-responds-to.html
Delete.
ReplyDeleteThe Army should send their recruits to Parris Island for a week or two at the rifle range.
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The Army should send their recruits to Parris Island for a week or two at the rifle range.
DeleteThe post has nothing to do with training, but the fact that the averages enlistee is not familiar with guns as they used to be. The comment below concerns the MC, I believe.
The young man next door just got back from his third combat deployment. He refused to Re-up in what he calls a "queer promoting PC Corps that hates white hetero men and where ALL females quall , even the ones that never shoot". His brother is an army crew chief on a Blackhawk. He wanted to go 30 but says that "the officers are queer and its more important to be PC than it is to know your job". He told his dad that "everything is F***ed Up, The command is all f***ed up. Its all political. I don't know if we'll even be allowed to shoot back. We don't train on our weapons because it cuts into GLT sensitivity training."