With Great Umbrage

"Military handgun training is laughable."

I will have you know, Tam, in 1987 we spent WEEKS and WEEKS on the M1911A1 in 19K One Station Unit Training.

We learned how it worked, we were quizzed and tested on statistics such as its weight, mass (drop! if you don't know the difference!) maximum range, maximum effective range, etc...

We learned how to take it apart.

We learned how to put it back together.

We learned to do that blindfolded then blindfolded in the dark.

We learned to clean them so that they'd pass a white glove inspection using only a t-shirt and 2oz of Break-Free® CLP.

We even shot them once!

Do not sit there in whatever kind of chair that serves as your throne and say that we weren't TRAINED!


I'm serious about going out to shoot once.  We spent a day shooting, we got to shoot the pistol table twice for practice and once for scoring and once more if you failed to qualify.  Fail that second round of testing and they recycled you to a different training company.

Here's the standard.  52 rounds total per table.  26 or more hits on man sized targets from 10 to 31 meters and you're expert badged.  16 out of 52 and you're "qualified" and wear the "Marksman" badge.

So a recruit in my OSUT company fired a maximum of 208 rounds.  If you got a hit you could stop shooting, so many of us fired fewer rounds than the 52 allowed per iteration.

Tam's totally correct, it's laughable to call someone with this level of practice an expert.