I want to become a rifleman.

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444 has given some great advice. Ive ordered several books, and am waiting for them. I have also been dry firing from various positions at home, and practicing maintaing a good sight picture. On saturday, I took my new 10-22 out, and fired at my spinner target at various ranges from the standing position(unsupported), wow thats humbling. It did make me think up a good drill for the range though-snap shots at a 3 inch target at 25 yards. I think this will show my lack of uniformity also but its something to work at.
 
To those of you who tryed to give this man good advice, Bravo.

the the rest of you $**T heads who turned this into a political debate, then SHAME ON YOU.

This isnt the forum for that and its very rude to the owner of this thread, as well as to others who are TRYING to make logical sense of it. :mad:
 
Perhaps my hint the first time was not strong enough. And, to be fair, I also mentioned politics. Shame on me.

That said, the gentleman is asking how to shoot a rifle, not asking us to shoot off our mouths on politics. Copy? We have a whole forum for that. This forum right here is about rifles. This thread is about how to shoot them.

Mike
 
Coronach said:
Perhaps my hint the first time was not strong enough. And, to be fair, I also mentioned politics. Shame on me.

That said, the gentleman is asking how to shoot a rifle, not asking us to shoot off our mouths on politics. Copy? We have a whole forum for that. This forum right here is about rifles. This thread is about how to shoot them.

Mike
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+1 :)
 
Don't overlook "dry fire"

I'm no expert. I don't compete. With kids and works, I hardly have time to go to a range. This is what I think help me.

When you can not go to the range, you practice dry fire. It helps a lot with breathing control, trigger control, and improving your position and natural point of aim.

The key is to note relationship between your site, sight alignment, and target, when you break a shot, and improving it.

If you want to be more organize, get a note book. Draw a target, and mark down your sight position in relationship with the target and analyze for each session. You should notice that the group should get smaller as you improve your technique.

When you get to the range, see if you can improve.

-Pat
 
Good advice, Pat. I have been practicing both maintaing a good sight picture, and trigger/breathing control around the house with my k31. I have been shouldering my 10-22 and k31s and opening my eyes to see what the sighting alignment is, its good practice too. I plan to head out on tuesday and give it a shot on the range.
I am also really enjoying "the art of the rifleman", its given some great advise.
As of now I have noticed that hitting steel spinners at 25-35 yards is much easier with my scoped .22 boltie, than with the 10-22. The improvment in sight picture is substantial. I think its more because there is less to think about/adjust for with one sighting plane, not so much the 6x magnification. I still plan on making open sighted shooting my focus, as I think it is easier to be a good open sight shooter and move to scopes than the other way around.
Can anyone recommend a good source for shooting slings? preferably cheap ones, so I can get several. I have heard the USGI model can be made to fit a k31.
Thanks all!
 
Coronach, just delete all the political threads. I was having a fine time reading until that first guy posted his nonsense about Bush. Hard to let that emotional crap stand without a response.

Correction: There was never any real surplus or balanced budget in the 90's. It was a "projected" surplus that never actually materialized for whatever reason. Some will tell you the projections were flimsy, but that is a different argument.
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On the link about Fred's rifleman book and his target set up, are there any pictures of that? I can't tell what the catalog language is really talking about.

I agree about bench shooting not being like regular shooting. I started doing real bench shooting recently and I have realized it doesn't help me with anything but zeroing in. I want to be able to stand and fire and do it accurately. I have to work on that some more.
 
On the link about Fred's rifleman book and his target set up, are there any pictures of that? I can't tell what the catalog language is really talking about.
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don't know if this is what you mean, but here is the proper sight picture on the AQT. You get a point of aim = point of impact zero at 25 meters, then you increase rear elevation to get the shots into the V circle. I think you add 5 clicks for the 100m stage, drop down two clicks from that for the 200m stage, then drop down 1 click from that for the 300/400m stages.

This way, you have an easy aiming point that is still center-mass of a torso-size target.

sight%20picture%20on%20AQT.JPG
 
uglit said:
..... The guy's last name escapes me, Jim somebody, wrote a far more useful book. The title is THE CARBINE:pARTOF THE ANSWER.
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It's Jim Crews. Good trainer, good writer, good material.
http://www.marksmans.com/sys-tmpl/door/


uglit said:
you are ducking incoming fire, and the target is prone, dodging, or using cover. So you have to have snapshooting ability, not 1 minute per shot bs, not 10 seconds per shot bs, but 2-3 hits per second reality. Nothing about position rifle shooting teaches you anything that is likely to be of any help at all in a real fire fight.
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I'll have to respectfully disagree. There is NO better place to learn the fundamentals than position rifle shooting. You augment that with learning field expedient postions, snap shooting, movement, etc. You must have a base of proper fundamentals to build on. Excellence is the basics mastered.

It's MUCH easier to bring someone up to speed when they already have excellent capabilities in trigger squeeze, sight alignment/picture, follow through, stable positions, gunhandling under time, etc. than someone who shoots fast and has lousy fundamentals. At least if you consider that getting HITS is important.
 
Some basics right here.

To get you on your way until you can get ahold of a good instructional book, here's some basics, you might know a few already.

1) Feet about shoulder width apart, off foot foreward a little, whatever feels comfortable when the rifle is shouldered.
2) Keep you off elbow under the rifle as much as possible. This gives you bone support under it, rather than just muscle tension which will wobble and jump.
3) Keep you right elbow up at least 45 degrees, close to parallel is best. Makes a nice pocket for the rifle butt.
4) Take a deep breath and let it out. Take another deep breath and exhale to the point of feeling comfortable.
5) Concentrate on the front sight. The rear sight and target will be slightly fuzzy, that's O.K.
6) Slowly tighten you whole hand. A good grip won't move the rifle, but a bad grip and jerking the trigger will.
7) Follow through. Keep you body in shooting position for several seconds after the shot. Many a perfectly executed shot has been buggered by moving in anticipation of a reload or wanting to look at the target. Look at the target through your rifle.
8) Dry fire when you can't get to the range. This builds muscle memory and will show next time you get to the range.
9) Worry more about small groups than hitting the target. When your group is small, adjust your sights to move it to the target. Don't "kentucky windage" at all. That's for later and much longer range. Even then it's not a really good idea.
 
My opinion, but you're wrong.

Moderators, If possible, please delete this post. It was in response to another poster you have deleted and therefore is not needed.
 
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Learning to shoot from the standard positions is FAR superior to using crutches like bipods and other artificial supports. This is one of the biggest problems with most people's shooting: they depend on artificial shooting aids. If they ever HAD to shoot without them (like if you don't have them, don't have time to employ them, or the situation/terrain prohibits their use): they don't have the skills to shoot without them. On the other hand, if you have become proficient without any crutches, then shooting with a crutch is just gravy.

Last month I took the Frontsight Two Day Rifle Skill Builder. One of the stages in their skills test is a single shot (drill completed three times), COM (in the chest scoring zone of a silhouette), at 200 yards, in 6.5 seconds (I think). You start from standing in the low ready postion, the timer goes off and you make the shot before the timer counts down to 6.5 seconds. Just getting prone is hard, forget about bipods or rests. You can make the shot from any position you want. If you can make the shot from offhand at 200, by all means do so. I can't make the shots unless I am prone. You can use a bipod if you want to. But, I don't think you will have time. Can you do it ? By the end of the class, most people can. But, it takes some work. That is something that isn't acknowleged very often in todays society: shortcuts are the rule of the day. True skills require more effort than most people are willing to put forth. This is a drill that can easily be dry fired at home. Just put a silhouette up in the house. Ensure that your rifle is unloaded. Using a timer, drop to prone and get off a good accurate shot using the basic fundamentals in 6.5 seconds. Good fundamentals are required because you won't make the shot at 200 by jerking the trigger or ignoring your sight picture.............
Developing these skills is a very worthwhile persuit. I get great satisfaction from trying.
 
I would also like to thank all those who gave topic-relate input here.

I'm also interested in improving my shooting skills, and I've considered scoping milsurp rifles to do so (such as my Mauser). Perhaps someday I will add a scope to one of them, but in the meantime I need to learn to shoot them the way they were designed to be shot.

Someday I will add a scope to my K31, but for now it's wonderfully accurate for point-shooting. Someday I'll set it up for longer ranges, but not now.

Again, thank you all, especially 444. You've helped me make an important decision about firearm related projects I'm considering.
 
Be all that you can be in the Army!!!!! I have a couple of veteran friend who try to educate me on the art of shooting an AR at milk jugs at a 1000 yard but guess.... I ain't no good at it but have a lot of fun.

Keep the dreams big and keep on learning
 
CAPTAIN MIKE said:
Join the United States Marine Corps. You WILL
1. Get in Shape
2. Become a rifleman
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and....

3. Get shot at by people who hate our guts (sometimes with good reason) or maybe kidnapped, tortured and publicly executed.
4. Earn minimal pay for grunt work while your friends from high school are going to college, graduating and picking the primo plums of the job market and getting years of experience
5. Getting exposed to depleted uranium and who knows what (remember Agent Orange?)
6. Getting injuries or diseases that you spend the rest of your life being treated for in under-staffed, overworked, under-funded VA hospitals
7. Having your tour of duty extended... again... and again... oh, and being hauled back into the service involuntarily years after you "served your time" because they decided they were short-handed - not popular with the wife and kids and gainful employment you now have
8. Basically lose control of your life for 4+ years

I am thankful for servicemen and the centuries of capable service they have rendered this country. However, I have come to doubt the wisdom of our nation's highest authorities when it comes to making the decision to send troops into harms way. There is a reason that the constitution says that only Congress can declare war. For decades now we have had presidents who have managed to dispense with that little "inconvenience". I wish we would go back to making troop commitments the way the founders intended.
 
If you want to go back that far, you will have to go back a long way. We have been sending Marines and other troops to Central and South America and other places without declared wars for quite some time. Pre-WWI at least. I read an article recently about a former Commander of the Marines who was upset about it back before WWII. I don't remember, did we have a declared war when we fought the pirates on the North African coast? Hell, did we ever declare war against any of the Indian tribes for that matter.

I am sure I could come up with a list of much more than 8 of all the things every citizen of this country benefits from due to the fact that they live here under the protection of the armed forces of this country. That is why we call it military service. :)
 
I think that while many of our military are rifleman, obviously not all rifleman are in the military. I serve my country stateside every day, and in anycase this is nothing but a diversion from the topic.
But it does make me wonder, is there any way for a civilian to get out on a military range? It would be a great learning experience.
Ah well back to dryfire practice...:rolleyes:
 
For those who are interested, Congress first committed military forces without a formal declaration of war in 1798. It repeated this undeclared war again in 1801, 1815, 1820, 1859, 1918, etc.

Having said that, the reason we created a Legal & Political forum is so that Legal & Politcal matters can be discussed THERE. If you don't have anything to add on the topic of the thread, please be courteous enough to your fellow members not to add off-topic posts on a completely different subject.

LAST WARNING - TAKE THE POLITICAL DISCUSSION TO THE APPROPRIATE FORUM OR START LOOKING FOR A FORUM WHERE THE POLITICAL DISCUSSION IS MORE TO YOUR LIKING.
 
Dr_Pain said:
Be all that you can be in the Army!!!!! I have a couple of veteran friend who try to educate me on the art of shooting an AR at milk jugs at a 1000 yard but guess.... I ain't no good at it but have a lot of fun.
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Ain't that just crazy, open iron sites, my wife enjoys shooting the Match Grade AR-15 out to 1000 yards, she likes it so much I had to build her, her own rifle. More or less I think she just likes to show up a bunch of male Marines, by out shooting them. Little blonde, blue eyed girl that never shot a high powered rifle till she joined the Corps.

Davo said:
I think that while many of our military are rifleman, obviously not all rifleman are in the military. I serve my country stateside every day, and in anycase this is nothing but a diversion from the topic.
But it does make me wonder, is there any way for a civilian to get out on a military range? It would be a great learning experience.
Ah well back to dryfire practice...:rolleyes:
Click to expand...


Yes there is a way for you to get out on a Military Range. PM me towards spring if you remember and still haven't gotten there, because I'm sitting in Iraq right now.

1. MCCS open to the public ranges, which unless you know someone stationed on Camp Pendleton, you may have trouble with. Some of us have hook ups and know of weekend practice matches that go on too.

2. Join here --> Santa Margarita Gun Club at Camp Pendleton, I don't know what actuall membership is involved, just know they sponsor alot of the Camp Pendleton matches. http://www.santamargaritagunclub.org/.

Check out this link, the matches already went but it has a bunch of info on it, that you could expect if you participate. Don't be afraid to go out there and blow the competition, you'll still learn some stuff.
http://www.odcmp.com/Competitions/WesternGames.htm

Creedmoor Sports, Inc., of Oceanside - is a company dedicated to shooting supplys and training, they also sponsor events. www.creedmoorsports.com

Precision Arms in Escondido CA - precisionarms.com Precision Arms does a bit of work on the Pala Range, can't find a web site for Pala, they have alot of long range rifles, the owner also shuts down the shop on monday to go to the range with any customers.

Alot of the military rifle training you're going to find is centered around the AR-15/M-16 platform of rifle. You can get an AR-15 in CA, it's just not as cool as the ones us "out of state people" have brought in, and paid our $78 per year for a "dangerous weapons permit". For what it's worth in competion rifle matches they use the old 20 round mags and shoot no more than 10 rounds in them, exactly what a CA legal AR has.

I've meet alot of guys at the Rifle & Pistol competion, alot of active duty, alot of former military, and you'd be suprized how many civilians are actually on the base shooting these competions. I've even gotten tactical advice that seemed to pay off that I teach to my Jr. Marines.

The biggest points I can give you is to apply all of this. Aiming, Breathing, Trigger Contrl and follow throught. Natural Muscular Relaxation, Natural Bone Support and Natural Respetory Pause. Natural Point of Aim, Site Alighment, Site Picture, clear front site tip.

Shoot all the ammo you can afford to, not spray and pray, but actually practice, The wife and I go through about $120-$200 per month in ammo when I'm home, Some of that is for fun, some for practice, some for competition, to me my life depends on it, and in my opinion, all the trigger squeezing on card board paid off on my last tour. If something ever goes bump in the night I know my; 9mm, .45 and AR's better than some of my own body parts.

I may get flamed for this, but the crimson trace laser sites on my 9mm, actually improved my accuracy, it enables you to hold the red dot and dry fire, also the 22lr conversion for my 92FS, was a great investment to decrease the amount of jerk I give on that sloppy rolling trigger and decrease the amount of money spend on 9mm. I grew up with glass triggered 1911's and have a Kimber TLE with a trigger job on it, so the military M9 is funky to me, I also grew up with Deer rifles with extensive gun smithing done to them and high powered scopes, so the M16 with it's pistol grip & sloppy trigger had to be learned, those country boy habits were hard to break.

As far as moveing targets go, well brother, joining the Corps as an 0300 or 1371 will get you plenty of that action, other wise I don't have any sugestions on moveing targets.
 
KC&97TA said:
I may get flamed for this, but the crimson trace laser sites on my 9mm, actually improved my accuracy, it enables you to hold the red dot and dry fire...
Click to expand...

I haven't thought of using it that way. It is actually a great idea. I would think it works well for rifle with the laser cartridge insert for rifle too.

Thanks for the tip, your service, and be safe.

-Pat
 
Davo said:
But it does make me wonder, is there any way for a civilian to get out on a military range? It would be a great learning experience.
Ah well back to dryfire practice...:rolleyes:
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10 USC § 4309
http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/10C401.txt

Sec. 4309. Rifle ranges: availability for use by members and
civilians

-STATUTE-
(a) Ranges Available. - All rifle ranges constructed in whole or
in part with funds provided by the United States may be used by
members of the armed forces and by persons capable of bearing arms.
(b) Military Ranges. - (1) In the case of a rifle range referred
to in subsection (a) that is located on a military installation,
the Secretary concerned may establish reasonable fees for the use
by civilians of that rifle range to cover the material and supply
costs incurred by the armed forces to make that rifle range
available to civilians.
(2) Fees collected pursuant to paragraph (1) in connection with
the use of a rifle range shall be credited to the appropriation
available for the operation and maintenance of that rifle range and
shall be available for the operation and maintenance of that rifle
range.
(3) Use of a rifle range referred to in paragraph (1) by
civilians may not interfere with the use of the range by members of
the armed forces.
(c) Regulations. - Regulations to carry out this section with
respect to a rifle range shall be prescribed, subject to the
approval of the Secretary concerned, by the authorities controlling
the rifle range.
 
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