Crazy Uncle Al Gore
Member
Hey all, I just graduated Marine Corp Recruiting Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina. While I’m by no means a weapons expert, one of the things I was most impressed with was the training I received on the M16 service rifle. You spend one whole week learning in a class room setting about the fundamentals of marksmanship, breath control, trigger control, bone support etc. You also spend a lot time “snapping in”, where you put on a loop sling and lay in the prone, sitting, kneeling and standing position for around twenty minutes so your body would be used to it later on.
The second week you go out to the range and start shooting from the 200, 300, and 500 yard line. Before coming to recruit training, 100 yards was to far for me to shoot accurately from a bench, so I was surprised when saw that I could consistently hit the man sized target at 500 yards when I used the basic shooting fundamentals they had taught me.
The next rifle training you receive is called A-Line. This is where you start “tactical shooting”. At 25 yards you would fire controlled pairs, and failure to stop drills, two round to the stomach, one to head etc, all while where you flack vest and Kevlar. You also shoot moving targets but they move so slow it’s a joke.
All in all I was very impressed with the training I received, especially our instructors. The Primary Marksmanship Instructors and range coaches where able to take a company of 300 recruits, many of whom where afraid to even touch a gun, and turn them into basically trained rifleman in a very short period of time.
The training you receive at recruit training will not turn you into an uber hard core, spec op, tactical shooter, but it does lay the ground work for future training at other schools. My question for all the Marines out there is, what was your marksmanship training like? I know the curriculum changes very quickly with lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By the way, I graduated from 3rd Battalion, Kilo Company, Plt. 3057, Senior Drill Instructor SSgt. Miller, the best of the best.
Regards,
The second week you go out to the range and start shooting from the 200, 300, and 500 yard line. Before coming to recruit training, 100 yards was to far for me to shoot accurately from a bench, so I was surprised when saw that I could consistently hit the man sized target at 500 yards when I used the basic shooting fundamentals they had taught me.
The next rifle training you receive is called A-Line. This is where you start “tactical shooting”. At 25 yards you would fire controlled pairs, and failure to stop drills, two round to the stomach, one to head etc, all while where you flack vest and Kevlar. You also shoot moving targets but they move so slow it’s a joke.
All in all I was very impressed with the training I received, especially our instructors. The Primary Marksmanship Instructors and range coaches where able to take a company of 300 recruits, many of whom where afraid to even touch a gun, and turn them into basically trained rifleman in a very short period of time.
The training you receive at recruit training will not turn you into an uber hard core, spec op, tactical shooter, but it does lay the ground work for future training at other schools. My question for all the Marines out there is, what was your marksmanship training like? I know the curriculum changes very quickly with lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By the way, I graduated from 3rd Battalion, Kilo Company, Plt. 3057, Senior Drill Instructor SSgt. Miller, the best of the best.
Regards,
