FLETC-Glynco story: (not actually on a range, but close enough)
Instructors for a certain agency are complaining to me that their SIGs are arriving not zeroed. A lot of the guns are shooting way to the right, a lot of the guns are shooting way to the left. Horrible QC. End of the world stuff. About 1/4 of the guns are messed up.
I go to the range and sure enough, a whole lot of the guns have their rear sights on completely out of whack. I call my boss at the factory and scream my head off.
Fast forward a few hours.
Talking to some of the instructors, they start bragging about how they’ve incorporated dry fire into the initial firearms program so that recruits are doing significant dry fire before they ever hit the range.
Then one (of the four … follow?) instructors explains that a lot of his students are holding the guns in such a way that he can tell before they ever get to the range that the sights need to be drifted. And so he was adjusting their sights right or left. During dry fire.
I’m convinced that most " firearms instructor courses" consist of two weeks of learning to yell “front sight, front sight” to shooters that aren’t doing well, and one week of learning to properly string out the word “squeeeeeeeeeeze” for those that don’t get fixed with the front sight command.
Just this weekend, 3 Arfcom guys (Complete with t-shirts, hats and sandles) 2 stalls down, laughing and talking loud as hell about their skills and the superiority of the BM and Stag, over Colt. After IDing them, I completely ignore them.
1st engagement: The really fat guy walks over to me, while I’m taking mine out of the case and setting up, says, "What kind of AR do you have? I said “A Colt 6920”. He says, “That’s over priced. You should have bought a Stag”. My reply, in a very calm manner, “You only think that because you don’t know, what you don’t know.” He turns around and walks away.
2nd engagement: After shooting a few drills, the tall lanky guy walks over to me and says, “What kind of sling do you have?” I said: “A Blue Force Gear LAV sling” He says, “You should have a VTAC sling instead”. And he walks away.
3rd engagement: The third guy walks over while I’m reloading after some pistol drills and asks, “Hey, is that an Omega rail you got there?” I said, “No, it’s a Lite rail”. He says, "But it’s a Daniel Defense rail right? I say, “That’s correct” and continue to load mags. He says, “You should have got the Omega.” I said, in a loud voice so his buddies can hear, “What is this? Fuck with Roger day? Are you guys done?” He turns around and walks away. They just stare at me for the rest of the time I’m there.
FWIW, any time someone tells me my gear is sub par, I put $20 on the table and ask them if they’d like to shoot for accuracy, speed, or both … winner take all. Hey, where are you going? Are you looking for the ATM? I’ll be right here waiting …
I took a new youth model .308 to the range one day and created a nice pile of brass at my firing point. A 2-box-per-annum seasonal type sauntered over to visit, looked at my rifle, and wanted to know where my kid was. Explaining that I prefered a short LOP, short barrel, and lower powered scope, he offered to take me to his favorite shop so that I wouldn’t get ripped off again.
Following that, he speculated that the max range for such a rifle was 50yds or less. I asked him if he’d hold my target for me at 100. Blank, uncomfortable stare.
Following that, he declined to take his own rifle and shoot the 200yd steel I had used to create the brass pile. Even with the ammo being on me.
I arive at a public rifle range 1 hour before you can legaly shoot on a sunday. I find a guy and his girlfriend in thier jeep in the middle (50yds) of the range shooting an ak with full 30rd mags as fast as they can. Buy the way you can only have 3rnds in a mag on pubic ranges in PA. When he drives back to the benches I politly tell him you can shoot till 12 and the game wardon stops by often and wont like the jeep on the range too much. He says “how should I know that?” I tell him that if he shot from the benches like normal people he would have seen the signs on EVERY bench with all the rules. He walks over, reads the sign then says to his girl friend “shit we gotta go.” Not even two minutes after they leave a State Trooper pulls up and asks me and my buddy if we we were shooting before noon. We told him about the Jeep and he leaves fast , as he said he just passed them on the road in. I have seen guys get hundreds in fine for stupidity at this range.
Back when I was still shooting a Ruger P-95. A guy and his buddy comes over and makes a remark about how my Ruger was “j-u-n-k: junk” (at least he can spell).
He pulls out his pistol (I forget what make and model); loads up and starts blasting away - in between malfunctions. I load up my junky Ruger and blast away through two full 10-round magazines (thanks to the klintonites and the brady bunch) without a single hiccup. His buddy turns to him and states, “At least his piece of junk doesn’t jam.”
After shooting the same guys come over and strikes up a conversation. Mr. Dufus with the malfunctioning gun states for a fact just how big a crap Glocks are because of the huge gap between the slide and the frame. I just had to bite my tongue. :rolleyes:
I was at the 50 yard NRA range shooting at 50 yards with my trusty Swedish Mauser; “Heidi.” Besides me is this cat with a pimped out AR10 of some sort and a high dollar scope. Group for group, I smoked him with at least a 30 year old open sighted Swedish Mauser. I was embarrassed for him. I was wondering if he was on this site…
On an Army basic training rifle range with a strong crosswind from the right I heard a young soldier say to the other young soldiers near him something to the effect of, “You know, we’re zeroed out to 300 meters and these targets are at most 275 meters and we have no time limit, there isn’t any real reason we should miss any of these.”
Even with his ear plugs in the drill sergeant overheard him, turned around, and asked, “Which one of Annie Oakleys said that?”
Bad part was, I had to admit I was the one.
Dumbass.
Having spent considerable time at Glynco as a guest instructor (not firearms) and spending time with some of the Firearms unit in other places I can only say your touching on the very tip of the iceberg in your FLETC recollections. Some of the old timers from there could have you wetting your pants laughing in about 10 minutes with some of their ledgendary encounters.
I was at a course about a year ago when an “instructor” “teaching” shooting on the move enthusiastically explained that exaggerating the steps made for a more stable and lessened trip hazards. He then proceeded to demo said technique by prancing about the range, looking every bit like Elmer Fudd trying to sneak up in a wascally wabbit. I seriously don’t think you could have a worse SOM technique if you were wearing one snow-shoe and an ice-skate.
Ass-hat telling a group of shooters while shooting at 10 yards-
“Just look over the ACOG, you can see the bullet holes in the target for correction of your next shots.”
Me-“Uh, I’m pretty sure that that is a dumb technique. You aren’t going to be able to see shots going into a person under these circumstances.”
Ass-hat- “Nah, you can see the entry wound pretty good. Anyway, good enough to pass the qual though.”
Me- “You have no idea what you are talking about, do you?”
Me walking away to avoid stabbing him to death with a stripper clip.
“Instructor”, when questioned, telling shooters that the “Range Constant” is what rounds you will be shooting at the given distance.
There are so many it isn’t funny anymore. Thank god I have started to forget them.
detective running the stress course just realized that he had forgotten to chamber a round after cleaning the firearm…from the previous qualifying session 2 months ago.
…mental note to self…don’t have detective for backup on felony warrents.
