I’m not a stranger around guns. Most folks who know me know that I’ve been a gun nut for most of my life (just look at my GI Joe collection in my uncle’s basement). I had a very brief stint on the Army pistol team and shot a lot of guns when I wore the uniform back in the day. I never really acted on my impulse to purchase and own a weapon until about a year ago when a friend of mine introduced me to a local gun show where I caught the “disease” (my bank account curses you Gordo!). Today, I’m the proud owner of way too many guns which are safely locked away someplace until I return. The Army issuing me two more weapons to carry everywhere I go for the next year and a half doesn’t help much in the way of helping my addiction, but at least I can’t purchase any more... for now at least.
Yesterday we did pistol qualification on the Army issued M9. After all of our PMI and such, we headed to the range around noon and didn’t roll off the range until way past dark. In traditional Army fashion, the waiting portion far exceeded the doing portion as I only got about 10 minutes of actually firing my weapon for the entire day.
To qualify, one has to knock down 18 of 30 pop up targets in various situations and ranges using 40 rounds of ammo. Not a hard task to do as most of these targets were close enough to kick over. We had to cycle almost 150 people through the range and most qualified easily. We did have some folks who needed help as they had never fired a pistol before, and that took some time to get them comfortable enough to have faith in their training.
Despite the fact that there are fixed sites on the weapon and I didn’t have time to familiarize the POA/POI (point of aim/point of impact), I qualified easily. I wanted to get a perfect score, but I missed it by a few which I’m not beating myself up about since I’ll get plenty of chances to shoot my weapon before I go. I did get some help on the night fire qualification by using a grip laser with projected a red dot on the silhouetted targets. The laser didn’t help much in the daytime, but it had a “Star Wars” feeling in the dark as I blew down simulated Stormtroopers with my trusty blaster. Ironically, when I got back late that night I received two more magazines in the mail (thanks Bach!) which are much better quality than the ones I’ve been issued. I could have used them on the range but the mail system has the speed of a snail with a ten pound shell... and I’m not even in a foreign country yet!
CPT Brendan, SFC Jay and MSG Tim at the range
MSG Tim helping a soldier on the range to qualify
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