Response to "Range Day"

American Mercenary has a nice little post over on his own blog about taking his company's Snipers and Designated Marksmen* to a long distance range for some target work. My comments on his post were running longer than his original post, so I decided that I would make them a post of my own.

I always laugh at gun banners who who say things like "If you want to shoot you should join the Army. Not only does it ignore the fundamental fact that many people who like to shoot are physically or temperamentally unsuited for military life, it also indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the fact that most soldiers will only get to the range once a year, and that, while shooting on Uncles dime is nice, Range Day for most is so rigidly organized that it isn't much fun. Get up early, muster at the company, draw weapons, load onto trucks, go to range, fall into formation again, get safety briefing, stand around, form into relays, file onto range, blah, blah, blah. Tedious. And not usually much fun. You almost always have to stay out there all damned day, as well, because for most weapons there is a Night Fire component to be done.

After the first time or two of Army ranges, the luster had worn off and they were just another job the Army gave us and managed to make less fun than necessary. Qualifying on a new weapon always had some novelty to it, I fondly remember my first time qualifying (officially) on a pistol: We were deactivating a unit in Korea and turning in the old 1911A1 .45 caliber pistols, but we had all this .45 ACP ammo in the bunker... The CO decided that any officers and NCOs who wanted, could go and "destroy" the ammo on the range. All the Staff Sergeants and Sergeants Fist Class went, no one else was interested. (Losers!) We were "piggybacking" with an MP unit with M9 9mm Berettas; let's just say that our qualification rate was much higher than theirs.

(And seven years later, I qualified on the same range with the M9, just barely, and with a much lower score. The M1911 I qualified with was older than me, may have been older than my father. It certainly pre-dated his own basic training. The M9 was designed after I enlisted. Piece of crap...)

Anyway, this all brings to mind that I recall reading somewhere that a Royal Proclamation intended to encourage all English men to hone their archery skills killed English archery, because they were only allowed to practice what we would now call "tactical shooting", i.e., the high, arching shot that was so devastating to the French kuh-niggits. Being prohibited by Royal Decree from "fun" shooting diminished the interest of the English Yeomen in archery. I probably did not actually hasten the change over to firearms by much, but it probably made the change less painful.

Now, American Mercenary is describing a "known distance", or KD, range, which is the traditional style of range; big paper targets that look like traditional targets, shooting at bullseyes. Last I heard, the Marines still qualify on this type of range. (I don't know if they still have a "pit" downrange, with troops pulling down a target with each shot, marking each shot. There is a good representation of this in the Gary Cooper Sergeant York.)

Usually, the Army qualifies on popup targets at (more-or-less) random ranges, from 25 meters out to 300 meters. This better simulates combat, but may not be much of an indicator of actual marksmanship. Part of the random factor of this range is in the fact that no two "lanes" on any popup range are identical: I have shot on ranges where "Lane x" was notorious for the vegetation, or the contour of the terrain, or other issues.

My understanding--and I have heard some say this--is that many Marines feel that an Army-style popup combat range is better, but the Army Marksmanship Unit would prefer a KD range. Personally, I feel that, if I was ever put in charge of such things, the annual qualification would consist of the current 40 rounds at the popup range, and 60 at the KD range. except that it would not be annual, it would be semi-annual, with quarterly "refreshers".

Plus, there's the whole fact that the Army has always frowned on folks with "outside" ways of doing things. Drill Sergeants hate guys (almost always guys) who have been shooting for years, because they have "bad habits" to overcome in teaching them "The Army Way." The recruit could have been an Olympic medal winner, but the Army has to teach him to shoot all over...

And, any soldier who likes guns and shooting is... suspicious. Weird. And not just whenever some nervous nelly starts bleating about "gang-bangers joining up top learn combat skills", either, but in between. Somewhere I have a text file of an email I received during the run up to the invasion of Iraq in which some retired Command Sergeant Major who had been hired to evaluate combat readiness said that "We have to get over out assumption that any troop who likes guns and shooting and practices them is either a gang-banger or a militia nut." Unknown whether this has been accomplished, although I know a few I can ask...

It's probably worse for American Mercenary, as the officer corps has always been more politically correct, and politically left, than the NCO Corps.

*Snipers and Designated Marksmen: As best as I can explain it, Snipers are highly trained, have specialized rifles, and are serving in positions designated on the Table of Organization as being snipers. Designated Marksmen are soldiers in the unit who have been identified as being good shots, but have not received the full Sniper training, and are not armed with Sniper rifles, although they are usually armed with accurized M16s.