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Here is a link to an EXCELLENT article from the NRA American Rifleman magazine about 2 things:
1) How important Rifle Marksmanship is in combat.
2) How the US Army is totally not capable of teaching Rifle Marksmanship from an institutional perspective, including training budget, time, resources, institutional willingness, etc.

Some interesting excerpts:

The Army has seldom placed a high priority on small-arms proficiency. In Vietnam, figures sometimes ran 50,000 rounds per enemy killed, but the nature of that war often precluded precise aiming and firing. Widespread suppressive fire ran the round count through the roof, and there were almost no rifle fights in Desert Storm. Consequently, in 2001 the Army entered Afghanistan poorly prepared for long-range engagements against dedicated enemies with a tradition of shooting.

The American military usually does an adequate job of teaching marksmanship to large numbers of people. It does less well in teaching large numbers to fight with rifles. Consider no less an authority than Maj. Gen. Merritt Edson, USMC, a Distinguished Rifleman who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on Guadalcanal. He later became executive director of NRA, and during the Korean War he said that the military could not be expected to teach lifesaving marksmanship skills to every soldier or Marine. His advice: If parents wanted their son to have the best chance to survive combat, see that he learns to shoot a rifle as a boy.

History was on Edson’s side. Many of America’s infantry heroes grew up shooting: Alvin York, Sam Woodfill and Audie Murphy to name a few. But in 1940, 43 percent of Americans lived in rural areas. Today it’s about half as much, with attendant diminished civilian marksmanship skills. We no longer have large numbers of recruits arriving with gun handling skills or a basic knowledge of ballistics, let alone marksmanship.

Currently the main combat arena is Afghanistan, with two constants: it’s high and it’s steep. The median elevation in central Afghanistan is 6,000 feet, and anyone who’s been there knows that it’s uphill in every direction. But few training facilities permit troops to shoot long range at severe angles.

Derrick Martin, an Iraq veteran, noted that in combat there’s no such thing as a perfect rifle-range position. “You’re loaded down with a helmet, vest and web gear; you’re hot and tired and scared. You’re not going to make very many perfect squeezes. So you need to know what looks and feels good and what doesn’t. We can teach you that, but we need to do it a lot more than once or twice a year.”
. . ..

Obviously it’s high time to prepare the troops for the next rifle fight. But what’s the solution? First, acknowledge that very few people enlist to shoot. Far more are attracted by career prospects and benefits—the Army website says almost nothing about war fighting. (The pull-down menu emphasizes jobs and benefits, while “Being a Soldier” cites musicians and health care providers.)

Secondly, recognize that raising tens of thousands of soldiers to an NRA standard of civilian marksmanship is impossible. Even assuming the institutional willingness—a huge assumption—the Big Army lacks the resources.

http://www.americanrifleman.org/article ... p-matters/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The comments after the article are interesting as well.

As a side note, but still connected to this topic, I've heard some say that in a TEOTWAWKI situation, it won't do you any good to have guns because everyone else will have them too and they will simply overwhelm you...but the real question is: can everyone else shoot those guns and HIT what they are aiming at? If our men in combat are having problems with this, outside of competition shooters, hunters, shooting "hobbyists" and some LEOs, what are the chances that any average Joe or Josephine is going to have problems hitting the target, too? As many of us on this forum know, its not like in a movie, huh?

Back onto topic, though, the Army really should ask itself where its priorities lie. If its in winning wars, then they need to cut out some sort of feel-good stuff and find the money to train soldiers to shoot. I know, easy for me to say...but then again, I'm not trying make General and I'm not one already, either. You know that "inside the Beltway" mentality we accuse the politicians of having? Well, don't think for a minute that the high brass isn't affected by that, too.

Heartland Patriot wrote:As a side note, but still connected to this topic, I've heard some say that in a TEOTWAWKI situation, it won't do you any good to have guns because everyone else will have them too and they will simply overwhelm you...but the real question is: can everyone else shoot those guns and HIT what they are aiming at? If our men in combat are having problems with this, outside of competition shooters, hunters, shooting "hobbyists" and some LEOs, what are the chances that any average Joe or Josephine is going to have problems hitting the target, too? As many of us on this forum know, its not like in a movie, huh?

Back onto topic, though, the Army really should ask itself where its priorities lie. If its in winning wars, then they need to cut out some sort of feel-good stuff and find the money to train soldiers to shoot. I know, easy for me to say...but then again, I'm not trying make General and I'm not one already, either. You know that "inside the Beltway" mentality we accuse the politicians of having? Well, don't think for a minute that the high brass isn't affected by that, too.

I speculate that in TEOTWAWKI, most of those with guns will be on more or less the same side of things and not so much likely to be firing on one another. It's the NON-gun owning anti-liberty types we have to worry about before TEOTWAWKI happens. Also, it would not be that far off the mark (pun intended) to say that among American rifle owners, decent marksmanship is a common interest. I'm not saying that everyone who owns a rifle is the next Carlos Hathcock, but taking into account the fact that hunters practice to hit their targets and then actually put that practice into real world application when they hunt; and taking into account that even recreational rifle shooters spend at least some time at the range learning their craft, I think the argument that marksmanship is a dying art is a bit overstated.

I didn't grow up on a farm, hunting to meat on the table, but I'm a decent rifle shot. Granted, I've never had to be a marksman when someone was shooting at me, but that doesn't negate the fact that the skill is there.

Well, talk about getting back to your roots! Interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

Back in the early 60's while in the USMC, I excelled in marksmenship. Along with time in presidential guard and with HMX-1, I was on national rifle team for two years. Gaither a small pile of 14k medals, along with a bunch of other awards.

BUT, I started at about eight years old. Lots of trigger time on my single shot .22 Winchester. It was also serious time, not just shooting tin cans. Worked up the junior matches using my cousins dedicated target rifle. Worked with many different type of sights at many different ranges.

At boot camp I shot 248 out of 250 on qualification day. All bulls except for one flier in the '3' ring at 6 o'clock, shooting off-hand at 200 yards. I still maintain it was a underloaded cartridge.

Marksmanship is not an accident. If you have a weakness, work on it. If there is a shot at a specific distance you know you can make, don't take it. Use your range time on working things you are not very good at. I see way too many guys at the range just burning ammo. No plan, no purpose, no improvement.

Does the Army need every man (and woman) to be a rifleman? I think it's important for the infantry, and special operation obviously, but armor and artillery have different priorities. So do EW, FA, LG, etc.

Also, if you listen to people like Jim Higginbotham, he seems to think it's possible to train skilled combat riflemen who didn't grow up as marksmen. Training needs to be more than firing for familiarity, but it apparently can be done in large groups with newbies who don't have bad habits to be broken first.

tbrown wrote:Does the Army need every man (and woman) to be a rifleman?

In a word, yes. That is why Army Basic training is basic Infantry training for everyone, and everyone must qualify with a rifle. No, it's not everyone's primary job, but in the end the Army expects everyone to be able to fight as an Infantryman if needed. At least that's the way it was in my day (ancient times )

I leaned to shoot when I was a boy through the NRA Marksmanship program. I wish I still had my card.

Every child should learn marksmanship. I believe it. As the Bible says, of other matters, in paraphrase: Teach a child in way they shall grow and when an adult they will not stray from it.

G26ster wrote:

tbrown wrote:Does the Army need every man (and woman) to be a rifleman?

In a word, yes. That is why Army Basic training is basic Infantry training for everyone, and everyone must qualify with a rifle. No, it's not everyone's primary job, but in the end the Army expects everyone to be able to fight as an Infantryman if needed. At least that's the way it was in my day (ancient times )

I'm a pretty avid WWII history buff. Despite being an Air Force mechanic I read a lot of books about Army ground units, including the book I'm reading currently about the 101st at Bastogne. Maybe it is "ancient history" now but they were pulling cooks, drivers, typists, whoever, and plugging gaps in the line when they had to just to hold that town. Even back then, there were a lot of different jobs in the Army, but they ALL had to know how to use a rifle. Good thing for us that they did.

When I was in the USMC we had a General come talk to us grunts.(early 80's) We got a pat on the back for something, but what I remember most is what he said at the end. To be a better shot, a better Marine, go hunting! One shot, one kill on big game. Rasing your weapon and engaging small game.(moving targets) Shooting and killing is how you stay alive and get back home.

...I was an average shot with a .22 before the Corps...trained in boot camp on the M14...fell in love...fired expert with it...got to ITR and they gave us M16s...what a kick in the teeth...I understand that they were supposed to be better for jungle fighting...makes sense, lighter and smaller...quicker...but when you go back to a sandy desert...the BGs are shooting homemade rifles that can hit 400+ yards and you have an M4 to answer with...I was glad to read that they dug out some M14s to use over there...the Army/other branches CAN take a raw recruit and make a great marksman out of him...they did it to me...but the rifle's a big part of that, too...they need both short-range and long-range rifles in every squad...just my inexperienced opinion...our boys/girls need the best training and best rifles money can buy...and they can't say they can't afford it...look at the hundreds of billions they've come up with to "save" failing businesses...it's just not enough of a priority...we've got men on this forum who could take a newbie and make an expert rifleman of him in a week...it's worth an extra week of boot camp to do that...

speedsix wrote:...I was an average shot with a .22 before the Corps...trained in boot camp on the M14...fell in love...fired expert with it...got to ITR and they gave us M16s...what a kick in the teeth...I understand that they were supposed to be better for jungle fighting...makes sense, lighter and smaller...quicker...but when you go back to a sandy desert...the BGs are shooting homemade rifles that can hit 400+ yards and you have an M4 to answer with...I was glad to read that they dug out some M14s to use over there...the Army/other branches CAN take a raw recruit and make a great marksman out of him...they did it to me...but the rifle's a big part of that, too...they need both short-range and long-range rifles in every squad...just my inexperienced opinion...our boys/girls need the best training and best rifles money can buy...and they can't say they can't afford it...look at the hundreds of billions they've come up with to "save" failing businesses...it's just not enough of a priority...we've got men on this forum who could take a newbie and make an expert rifleman of him in a week...it's worth an extra week of boot camp to do that...

During WWII, they had several different long-guns at their disposal. While the bulk of the troops were issued and used the M1 Garand, there was also the M1 Carbine, the BAR, the Thompson Submachinegun, and the Springfield "sniper rifles". Each of those weapons had a different sphere of influence and that mix helped those GIs to get the job done. I know this because as I read accounts from the GIs themselves, THEY talk about swapping their M1 for a "Tommy gun" when going house to house, an M1 Carbine for a quick night patrol or BAR to cover a flank position across a field for some increased firepower. There is no one-gun solution, despite the driving desire to standardize and save money...war is an expensive business, and if we want the troops to succeed, then they need to be armed, AND trained how to use each one, appropriately.

In answer to the above question, I remember my dad telling me when I was a kid that all Marines are riflemen first, regardless of their MO, and that this applied from the lowest recruit to the Commandant of the Corps.

Interestingly, I am a few chapters right now into my very first reading of LTC David Grossman's book "On Killing." I'm still less than halfway through it, and so I know that I'm not giving the topic full consideration here, but it would appear from what I've read so far that the military really has more than just the task of teaching marksmanship on its hands. What I gather is that:

A) There is the task of both teaching someone who has never shot before how to do so, and also the task of teaching someone who has a lifetime of bad shooting habits how to do it right.

B) Then, it is of little or no value to teach a man (or woman) how to hit a target at 800 meters with consistent accuracy if that man will be reluctant to do so when the target is another human being. So the military has to use a lot of operant conditioning techniques (which came into being after WW2) to teach the soldier how to overcome that reluctance and get comfortable with the idea.

C) ......and this may be the most important one......it has to place controls over the behavior, so that the trained rifleman will do as trained when told to do it, but will not shoot and kill people when he hasn't been told to do it.

This last one is a doozy, because as the effects on the culture of first person shooter video games and other games in which personal violence is rewarded are documented, it appears that kids who learn violence from the games and learn to act that violence out socially are lacking the control piece to only do it when under the command of legitimate authority.........or something like that.

Anyway, I commented earlier that I am a decent marksman with a rifle, but after reading so far in Grossman's book, I wonder if I would hesitate if I found myself in a situation of having to shoot another human being at rifle distances. I don't think this would be so much of an issue at handgun distances, and I long ago reconciled myself to the idea of doing what I must to survive; but the ranges at which rifles are employed—at least as most of us who are not combat veterans would imagine—I would think tend to remove the more intimate "kill or be killed" stressors that one faces with a bad guy all up in your grill at contact distance. I remember the first time I saw a prey animal in my riflescope, about 150 yards out. I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. It was such a distraction that I didn't pull the trigger. I was shaking afterwards.........and the target was a smallish doe—not another rifleman trying to kill me in return. And, I had already arrived at the moral decision to kill an animal with a rifle before I ever hiked out to the blind. I had no idea that I was going to react the way I did until it actually happened. In war, that hesitation might get me killed, in addition to the negative effects of rapid breathing and a trip-hammering heart on accuracy.

Instruction, repetition, drill, with realistic simulacrum targets are what will make for good military marksmen. But that won't happen unless we have a military budget which provides for ample training ammunition as well as the opportunities to use it.

The Annoyed Man wrote:In answer to the above question, I remember my dad telling me when I was a kid that all Marines are riflemen first, regardless of their MO, and that this applied from the lowest recruit to the Commandant of the Corps.

Interestingly, I am a few chapters right now into my very first reading of LTC David Grossman's book "On Killing." I'm still less than halfway through it, and so I know that I'm not giving the topic full consideration here, but it would appear from what I've read so far that the military really has more than just the task of teaching marksmanship on its hands. What I gather is that:

A) There is the task of both teaching someone who has never shot before how to do so, and also the task of teaching someone who has a lifetime of bad shooting habits how to do it right.

B) Then, it is of little or no value to teach a man (or woman) how to hit a target at 800 meters with consistent accuracy if that man will be reluctant to do so when the target is another human being. So the military has to use a lot of operant conditioning techniques (which came into being after WW2) to teach the soldier how to overcome that reluctance and get comfortable with the idea.

C) ......and this may be the most important one......it has to place controls over the behavior, so that the trained rifleman will do as trained when told to do it, but will not shoot and kill people when he hasn't been told to do it.

This last one is a doozy, because as the effects on the culture of first person shooter video games and other games in which personal violence is rewarded are documented, it appears that kids who learn violence from the games and learn to act that violence out socially are lacking the control piece to only do it when under the command of legitimate authority.........or something like that.

Anyway, I commented earlier that I am a decent marksman with a rifle, but after reading so far in Grossman's book, I wonder if I would hesitate if I found myself in a situation of having to shoot another human being at rifle distances. I don't think this would be so much of an issue at handgun distances, and I long ago reconciled myself to the idea of doing what I must to survive; but the ranges at which rifles are employed—at least as most of us who are not combat veterans would imagine—I would think tend to remove the more intimate "kill or be killed" stressors that one faces with a bad guy all up in your grill at contact distance. I remember the first time I saw a prey animal in my riflescope, about 150 yards out. I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. It was such a distraction that I didn't pull the trigger. I was shaking afterwards.........and the target was a smallish doe—not another rifleman trying to kill me in return. And, I had already arrived at the moral decision to kill an animal with a rifle before I ever hiked out to the blind. I had no idea that I was going to react the way I did until it actually happened. In war, that hesitation might get me killed, in addition to the negative effects of rapid breathing and a trip-hammering heart on accuracy.

Instruction, repetition, drill, with realistic simulacrum targets are what will make for good military marksmen. But that won't happen unless we have a military budget which provides for ample training ammunition as well as the opportunities to use it.

I admit to not having read LtCol Grossman's book. Neither have I (thankfully) ever been put into a situation where I was forced to shoot someone. So, I only have this to add, having mulled it over many times. It seems that if the individual soldier thinks of the "bad guy" as just another human being like themselves then they are indeed going to have a hard time pulling the trigger on them. Especially coming from our Western-world background that says (in general) that its wrong to kill other people. Human beings, unless they are some sort of sociopath, need to rationalize what they are doing. If they have no reason to think of the other guy as a "bad guy", then they probably won't until that other person tries to kill them first. Like I said, I've mulled it over many times...and I truly believe (and keep telling myself) this: that the bad guy will NOT hesitate to pull the trigger on ME, and they have no more right to be here than I do. Not sure how the US Army does it, but I do agree that making good riflemen would seem to take more than just putting rounds into small areas, and that it probably ain't cheap.

The Annoyed Man wrote:Instruction, repetition, drill, with realistic simulacrum targets are what will make for good military marksmen. But that won't happen unless we have a military budget which provides for ample training ammunition as well as the opportunities to use it.

I agree. I have read many stories about troops being trained with wooden rifles because there were not enough real rifles and ammunition to provide proper training. I think the days of depending on recruits being from rural areas being able to shoot is a thing of the past. This is something the military needs to address. IMO, substituting automatic rifles with "spray and pray" capability is not a viable alternative to real marksmanship training. Recruits from Texas may be an exception to this rule.