Train to fight

Those who were not in before 2001 won't fully comprehend what an incredible advance the Marine Corps has made in practical marksmanship training. Although the nay-sayers still haven't been completely vanquished, the gospel is being preached far and wide. It used to be that only "high-speed" units got "high-speed" training; fortunately cooler heads prevailed (heres to you LtCol Blish!) and we realized that every Marine needed to be able to shoot in field conditions and handle his weapon safely and effectively. These photos warm my heart. Keep up the good work, Slab.

Slab, those are some great pictures. My 8-year old son loves to see pictures of ships/aircraft/submarines, but he absolutely loves to see guys like you in the field with weapons. Training, shooting, etc. Keep'em coming.

Good training!! As a cop, tactical firearms training is often stuff we can come up with on the range and then we execute. Richmond PD has some OUTSTANDING tactical firearms training (thanks largely to its chief firearms instructor, Jerry Keefer).

One instructor even incorporated a one-eye projector, a home video camera, and a large piece of white paper suspended on the indoor range to create a hyper-accurate FATS simulator. The shooter would face the white paper and interact with the "bad guy" (an instructor standing off the range being live-taped on the video camera and projected on the white paper screen in front of the shooter). The benefit is that the officer and suspect can interact live without that "pause" you get in a FATS simulator. With that, we were able to put officers through some really great (and intense) shoot/no-shoot scenario training. Some of the scenarios were a suspect on a routine encounter who quickly pulled out a wallet, another in which a suspect has a gun to his head and threatens suicide, and another in which the officer encounters an "off-duty" cop who has a gun out. These are one of a million possible training scenarios.

I always get a chuckle out of Army firearms training. It's so inundated with ridiculous safety rules, you really lose the training effect with it all. I put up with it (like a lot of other Army BS).

Sometimes it just takes a few guys to come up with some really neat (and fun) training to give you the effect you want.

Looks like a lot more fun (and relevant) than the training I had, until we got our big gun.

When can I go?

Hey, Joel-- that projector set-up is an outstanding idea. I'll remember that one.

Yeah, I remember that in my Gunsite rifle course in 2003, another student was a Marine reservist GySgt. He and I joked that what were doing at Gunsite-- safe but realistic live-fire training-- would have gotten us thrown off any self-respecting Marine Corps range. Not because it was unsafe or stupid, but just because it was different and didn't fit the mold.

For those who are interested, this link has some great simple carbine drills that can be done indoors or out:

http://www.10-8forums.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=42283&an=0&page=1#42283

jpp 89

What does "blading" mean? It's not a term I remember from way back when...

I *think* it means to present your side profile when firing on a target like the marine in the picture is doing. Seems logical to present as small a silhouette as possible but current body armor is weakest on the sides - the ceramic reinforcement being located in the chest and back areas. What he should be doing in this case is presenting full to the enemy so any rounds hitting him will hit his strongest parts.

But I could be way off base.

Great work Charlie. The risk assessment would cause some people to shit themselves at Bragg so we would have to go do it at an NG base or something. Great work and hopefully this becomes the standard in the near future.