Why GIs can't shoot.

Having never been there I can only guess. But I expect that Draftees come from every walk of life, from boys raised up in a hunting culture to those raised up in a household without firearms. Much like the LE community.

Out of 80 men in my Navy basic training company, about 30 couldn’t swim. And about 10 were deathly afraid of water, wouldn’t learn, and got bounced out of the military.

Maybe Navy = Water isn’t common knowledge? Maybe GI = Shooting isn’t common knowledge? I don’t know.

I disagree about the farm boys using shotguns, farm boys didn't have ammo to waste and had to make every shot count.

Most were dirt poor and that one shot had to make do or the family went hungry. Knowing a good spot to set up for that one shot was important also.

Basic Training Rifle Marksmanship Training with the M-14 was excellent. I remember it as one step at a time and you repeated that step until you got it. We had many experts, a large number of Sharpshooters and the rest qualified as Marksman. Only five that I recall went to remedial. Of course none of us ever saw an M-14 again after Basic.

Mk-211 said:

Most were dirt poor and that one shot had to make do or the family went hungry. Knowing a good spot to set up for that one shot was important also.

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Agree. In my family, when they were young, parents and grandparents got 5 rounds of .22 ammo to go hunting. If they didn’t come home with 5 rabbits or five grouse, or a combination, then there was an a$$ whooping.

Ru4real said:

Agree. In my family parents and grandparents got 5 rounds of .22 ammo to go hunting. If they didn’t come home with 5 rabbits or five grouse, or a combination, then there was an a$$ whooping.

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My god, who was whupping grandpa's ass for being a bad shot?

roscoe said:

My god, who was whupping grandpa's ass for being a bad shot?

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Grandma.
If it’s anything like my family...

raised on a farm, firearms were a fact of life in the 40,s-50,s and my brothers and i were very good shots as we were given two boxs of .22 ammo a month and shot quite a lot of small game and a few deer with them. and i was surprized when in basic and ait that a lot of inducties didn,t know what end of a rifle the bullet came out of.

This is deep water.
Not every one learns at the same rate, or necessarily well in mass/group instruction. But military training time is very limited, and needs to serve large groups in that limited time.

Then, there are some things specific to military service to take into account.
Currently, for every person in an actual combat arms role, there are ten supporting that one person. And, "combat arms" is a very wide brush--that includes mortar men, artillery people, people with anti-tank missiles and the like. So, around 2/3 of the people at the point of the spear are not actually meant to engage an enemy with a rifle.
The people running the comms, ELINT, supply lines, intel, HHS, and the like really don't have much need of a rifle at all.

Then, there's the dirty little secret that artillery and mortars are far more deadly in combat than rifles, by factors of ten if not larger.

So, minute of berm can be entirely adequate for near 9 out of 10 troopies. And that's the Army. AF & Navy , it's more like 24 of 25 or 49 of 50.

When I read on the internet where people complain about the poor shooting skills of LE or Military personal my first thought is to ask them to see how well they can shoot while they are dodging incoming fire.

Then, there's the dirty little secret that artillery and mortars are far more deadly in combat than rifles, by factors of ten if not larger.

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True, the primary role of the rifle in the military is to pin the enemy down to a specific spot until the big guns, or air support can do their job.

When I was in we had what were called “BCGs”.

This standard for “Birth Control Glasses”, the big ugly plastic horn rim types issued out my Uncle Sam. They were so ugly, the wearer was guaranteed never to get laid!

The Marine Corps had a very strong view point concerning rifle qualification at MCRD Parris Island SC followed by ITR (Infantry Training Regiment) at Camp Geiger NC in my day. Between the two mid August to Early December. My MOS was other than Infantry, but every Marine is a Rifleman was the rule at that time period. Probably still is! In my day attached to the Infantry as part of a Artillery Observer Team we were armed with a mixture of weapons M14-M16 -1911A1 and or Shotguns. Not all of us were born on a farm in Nebraska or a major City.

That's funny! I've seen them in photos and now I know exactly what they are! (Birth control glasses).

Prior to the Civil War the country was primarily rural farming and yes there was a "lock, stock and barrel" above every fireplace!

The first battle of the revolution was at Lexington and Concord with the intent of the British to disarm the "Patriots"! The Brits were chased all the way back to Boston with the "Minutemen" initiating "guerilla warfare" for the first time. The British after action report stated that "the rabble were excellent marksman firing from behind every rock, wall and tree"!

The civil war again relied on the excellent marksmanship on both sides. WWI saw the deficiency of a source of marksman due to the industrialization going on as mentioned above! This continues to today. I recall a story about WWII new troops not able to hit a human target because it didn't look a bit like the targets they trained on!

Of course training is standardized at basic training but advanced training does produce fine marksman in both the military and law enforcement. 25 years ago law enforcement was getting recruits with military training and basic training saw about 70/30 mix of experience and non-experience. It's probably much worse now!

As a POST Certificated Firearms Instructor doing "quals" I can tell many LEO's only fire their weapons during "quals" which might be quarterly or annually!

Respectfully,

How much time and effort does the military actually put into teaching people to shoot, and how much do they actually get to shoot throughout the year to improve and maintain thier skills, if they have any?

Over the years, Ive shot with quite a few ex and current military, and the majority of them were at best mediocre shooters.

And to bump the scary up, the majority had no real FA training and were usually the scariest people that ever shot our guns.

I made the mistake, just once, of letting someone who claimed to be an experienced combat vet, who could not control or shoot a 9mm SMG, that my kids were easily shooting at 6. Never did that again.

As I posted previously, the BCT M-14 training was fairly intense. Advanced Infantry Training was shooting every Infantry weapon they had. M-16, M-79, M-60, M2, 1911, 12 Gauge, and LAW. You fired the M-16 for qualification and for combat courses. Probably a couple thousand rounds. If nothing else you were very experienced in shooting.

We called the GI glasses Clark Kents.

One of my additional duties as an enlisted man in an Infantry slot was to do individual and small group Marksmanship instruction. Once the Modern Volunteer Army got into full gear we often got men that qualified with "the M1 Pencil" It seemed that Basic training and Advanced Infantry Training Units were more interested in passing folks than actually training them. We once failed a surprise NATO inspection of a Nuclear Weapons site with mated warheads (Storage can have MP guards but mated or deployed with cannon ar supposed to be guarded by actual Infantry MOS personel back then) because all four NewBees (FNGs) at the time did not know how to take appart and M60 GPMG. The inspector was a former member of our unit and chose them because he did not know them!

Three of these four were BOLOs on our first range trip and the forth a Marksman, the lowest class of basic qualification (one round less than 50 percent hits at 15 to 300 meters) I spent a couple of weeks loosing valuable rack time while on 3 on 3 off on that missile site patiently teaching sight alignment , BRASS, and positions to get them qualified as we had only that much time to get them qualified or loose them to the rear. Two raised them self to mid level Marks men, one Sharp shooter and one .... by one point... made expert.

All of them argues there was no Army wide requirement to diss assemble a -60, M16A1, and 1911a1 blind folded and put them back together but dang it they aught to have been and I was in charge of them! They really complained when I had them take down all three then mixed the parts and had them reassemble from feel.

For a bit I stored a Diana air rifle with nice Walther sights under a locker and that really helped with the lessons. Also had one summer a break barrel 4.5mm (.177) air pistol that really helped with 1911A1 scores that summer. with in the platoon this was fine but both were declared contraban at Company level and seized, though no charges were made ( found in common use area). So we place guys with loaded magazines a in pouches and one in the rifle around and on the Missile site with 320KT Warheads counted down to two minutes and hold, sent out armed patrols every night (half the year we had two patrols out) and then "command" got upset when they played with single shot air guns under very tight and controlled conditions.

BTW in late 1974 my platoon of then 34 men (even the weapons squad had to qualify with rifles for the Nuke job) had 20 Experts in it 12Sharpshooters and two then high marksmen. Funny what you can do with a then hand picked unit with all Cat one IQ levels and PT minimums of 70/100 in each section rather than the Army 60/100, aint it? You can imagine how much those Bolos were welcome once the army started treating us like any other unit for replacements!

Qualification is seen as many as an onerous task. Stressfull. Plus all that waiting in line to get rifles and later ammo and then all that cleaning to the Armorers standard and more waiting. Fact is in the Army most folks, even Infantry spend less time actually shooting than the guys on this board.

In Germany some of our guys poked fun and Komrade because they found out his Q Course was only eight rounds from his G3 and that all at one range!

What they did not understand was that it was EVERY WEEK for Infantry/ PNZGRN/FJ. Every week they marched to the range and shot at 100, 200, or 300 meters...and everything was recorded including where groups were centered and how large.

At a time when most Infantry in the the US Army shot around 140 rounds a year and in pretty much three or four days the Krauts fired 216 rounds spread out over 52 days! I was also assured that they had a yearly class to remind them of BRM skills and that week shot an additional 40 rounds or so.

My unit was unique in that we were each required to have qualified with in 180 days of going on Security duty AND have fired a minimum 9 round succesful zero check, weapons function check, and Fam fire with in 12 weeks of such duty so at an absolute minimum we each got two qualifications a year and three Fam fires. We did the BCM course at a major training area every year as well along with our crew served weapons and side arm training then as well. All that and still there was seldom more than a few weeks here or there I was not doing remedial with some new guy or someone that just got lazy enough to attract the Platoon Sgts attention.

One year I took three of our five officers to my German Shooting club to let them shoot their privately owned side arms (P38, BHP, Star Model B Starlight). Two were shocked when after I asked them why they did not bring a 1911A1 and they himmed and hawed about to much paper work that I pulled out my own Privately owned Weapon a Series 70 Mark IV and let them all shoot a couple of magazines. The XO of course knew about my pistola as he processed the paper work for purchase and arms room storage. They were all deeply disturbed that I was a much better shot with all the pistols than any of them. Unfortunately the Club asked me to not bring them any more and informed me none needed apply for membership. The Germans wondered how two such fine enlisted men like Kirk and myself that were voted in to the club (at that time only 4 auslanders in just over 100 years had managed it) could have such poor men as officers. Sloppy gun handling, low abilities, and inflated self opinions I was told were not welcome.

In the Air Force I qualified with both rifle and pistol as expert. I wasn’t due to their training. I already was. Just because they say so doesn’t make it so.

From my personal experience in the Army, the amount of rifle training depended not on on the individuals MOS (job) but also the type of unit they were assigned to after training. I was always in Combat Engineer units and we got plenty of marksmanship training throughout the year. Even the cooks, clerks, and mechanics had to go to the range at least once every quarter to practice and qualify. It really did matter on the individual unit on how much training you got.

When I went to basic training in 1989 at Ft Leonardwood as a combat engineer, we spent close to half of basic on the rifle ranges with the rest doing general soldier task training. When we got to AIT it was the same, half the time on the rifle ranges and the other half on engineer specific task training.