Ragnar -
I would say, effectively against targets, no particular target implied. I also don't want to be argumentative, and I'm probably the least qualified guy around to explain Appleseed, but: slings, stances, and reloading are, like putting rounds on targets, not about tactics in any exclusive sense. They are basic shooting skills. Familiarity with the weapon, facility with it, requires you to be able to load, fire, hit your target, reload and do it again. The sling usage taught enhances the hitting. The positions taught are basic: standing, sitting, kneeling, and prone. No mud walls or logs are to be found on the range - but they do discuss how to adapt the basic positions to those situations.
All of the skills taught are basic, perishable skills that many people today do not know. For myself, I personally cannot say that I shot better at the end of the day than I arrived shooting. But there was a young lady who'd never shot before who had clearly improved. My small son's groups shrank to a third their original size, though he still needs to work on consistency. My daughter improved as well, though she is still struggling with something I haven't been able to diagnose as yet.
For myself, my shooting speed with the bolt action improved a bit, but I honestly mostly went for my kids, so that they could experience some things that they never have before.
Appleseed isn't about the highest level of marksmanship possible, nor is it about the highest level of tactical combat skills possible. Both of those require quite a bit of further training, as I am certain that you well know. A one or two-day course can't possibly teach those things to the standards an MP or an infantryman must achieve. It is about basic riflery and marksmanship being taught to the Joe/Jane Average citizen: how to put rounds on target with his/her rifle (not an issued one), to do it well, and how to really run his/her rifle under very mild pressure, with time limits and standards of performance expected.
For you, and honestly for me, the pressure to be found at Appleseed is nothing like what the loud men wearing brown rounds gave us at basic, nor what we got in pre-deployment training, combat warmups for support and combat troops in Kuwait or Fort Bragg, and certainly nothing like what one feels in a guard tower that is taking hostile rounds from without the mud walls and Hescos, or on a patrol that is breaking an ambush.
Military combat training and discipline is not the focus here. Trying to understand it from a combat veteran's perspective is a bit of a stretch until you change your glasses - your focus. In spite of all my previous experience, I did learn things - but one of the IITs asked me, while she was looking at my first and second targets of the day, why I was there, because I clearly already knew how to put rounds on target and manipulate a weapon.
They have a target they call the "redcoat" target. They tell you about what it may have been like for farmers and tradesmen in the colonial militia to come out to protect their munitions from seizure by the British Army, and how someone in that position may have needed to hit a target at various ranges that day, cold and without much advance preparation, and then have you shoot at their "redcoat" target, cold, without zeroing, checking the weapon, or any advance preparation, putting each citizen in that proverbial citizen-militia member's buckled shoes and tri-cornered hat.
I cleaned it. I was the only one on the line to do so. So, when that instructor asked me why I was there, I could see her point. But I had a ready answer in the form of the 15 year old girl and 12 year old boy to my left and right. I was there primarily for my kids, so that they could experience some things that I have experienced, without having to get yelled at or shot at, and without a great deal of financial investment. And by the way, this was some of the least expensive, competent instruction I have ever heard of: all of the cadre are unpaid volunteers, and there are more exceptions to paying or means of paying reduced costs than there are requirements to pay the full tuition - which is cheap, anyway.
I will probably go back and try to get a Rifleman patch. It is, honestly, a small pride thing for me. I have nothing to prove to anyone, really. I have been in the Army, I have an Expert rifle pin, I have been downrange and been shot at, and were it just me, I might let it go. But when I go back, I will be taking my kids, with the hope that they will learn more and improve at the same time as I try to run the bolt on my .22 just a little bit faster and shoot just a little bit straighter, and deal with my sore back just a little bit better, and maybe come away with a patch that says I showed up and did my best to accomplish a goal - and, most importantly, maybe inspire my kids to some competence with arms as well.
I don't think Appleseed is about my kids, honestly, at least, I don't think it is for the program as a whole, or for the staff that ran the Appleseed I went to. But for me, it is. I think it is a program that is about accommodating the needs of each person who comes, and teaching them something about our American heritage in the process.
My son, whose groups shrank so much (and we don't say this out loud, but so much more than his sister's, too), told me this morning that his favorite parts were the discussions of the events of April 19th, 1775. As a kid growing up in Virginia, I got that kind of discussion frequently - pass a battlefield or two on the way to school, and that tends to happen. Around here, we talk about post-Civil War Indian wars, and don't usually even think about the U.S. revolution. Now, my kids are thinking about it, and talking about it, and carrying around patches with drummer boys on them.
I like that, too. I can't think of anything about this experience that I didn't like.
