The military needs to change this.

rogersmithiii said:
Maybe the military should train them properly.
Every Farnam class that I've attended has been run with a hot range, and there wasn't one ND ever.

Now I get that the average shoot attracts a lot of newbies, and Elmers, whose grasp of firearm safety is imaginary at best, but if you have trained people in a class or on a military base, it's far safer to run a hot range / base where the guns are always loaded, than it is to mess around with a ton of handling, loading, unloading, inspecting, etc.
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I suspect that the folks taking a Farnam class are a lot different from your average squad of grunts.

A friend of mine was in the 101st during the Iraq Invasion. One of the idiots in his squad decided to clean his rifle without clearing it. He managed to shoot another squad mate. The fellow who was shot was sent to Ramstein for treatment. The shooter was also sent out of country because he was having trouble walking -- the remaining members of the squad had decided to give him some percussive retraining.
 
42! said:
OK, I googled him and even looked at his DTI site. And other that running DTI and being a "Handgun Instructor" who the F is he. He writes some books based on his handgun instructing and all of a sudden he's an expert on the military? Sounds more like a cult leader that anything else.

Be careful who you follow, David Koresh was not the messiah and neither is this guy.
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IIRC, Farnam is a Vietnam vet. He's apparently a talented instructor, but a bit caught up in his own opinions.
 
smokey-seven said:
That's going to create some MG law problems.

Depends on the A%^holes you associate with on the range. I've carried long and hand guns for over 70 years and have not had ONE ND in that time. I've associated with countless qualified shooters over that period and have seen a grand total of 2 accidental discharges, both due to a failure of the weapon mechanicals. Neither one created a problem, both rounds went down range.
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All the NDs I’ve ever seen happened on Army ranges, or while deployed. At the clearing barrel.

Hell, the very existence of clearing barrels tells you why this is a bad idea.
 
smokey-seven said:
That's going to create some MG law problems.

Depends on the A%^holes you associate with on the range. I've carried long and hand guns for over 70 years and have not had ONE ND in that time. I've associated with countless qualified shooters over that period and have seen a grand total of 2 accidental discharges, both due to a failure of the weapon mechanicals. Neither one created a problem, both rounds went down range.
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Civilians are a lot safer with guns than soldiers
 
There are some Marines I couldn’t trust with a box of crayons. Not everyone is ‘trainable’ to the level you’re expecting, unfortunately.

In an ideal world, your scenario makes a lot of sense. Maybe in the 1950’s it could have worked this way, but I suppose there’s been shitbirds as long as there’s been a military.
 
I do agree with the general premise, though, in a weird way. When the Ft Hood massacre happened, all those processing soldiers went down with no way to return fire. That's not right, either.

I suspect if I'd never been active duty, I'd assume this would be a great idea too. Gun culture in the military is weird.
 
Picton said:
I suspect if I'd never been active duty, I'd assume this would be a great idea too. Gun culture in the military is weird.
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Farnham was a Marine in the Vietnam war, IIRC. But that was a long time ago and I think he's gotten caught up in his dogma.
 
Dench said:
Imagine the endless NDs. Holy shit.
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In 2 years of active duty after 9/11 I saw 3 NDs and heard about a few more. These were guys on duty.

If they were carrying around the barracks while boozing it up or showing them off to strippers downtown, I can’t imagine.

I’m a fan of having E-5s and above armed with a 9mm on duty. Responsible gun handling would be part of the criteria for promotion.
 
In 2008-ish, I was joining Woburn Sportsman’s and made friends with a guy my age. He was a LT. from Hanscom and expecting to be deployed to the sandbox. He wanted some range time before deploying, and the only way he could do that was to buy his own guns and join a club. He was not allowed to use the base range or gov’t owned guns.
 
jakeroub said:
In 2008-ish, I was joining Woburn Sportsman’s and made friends with a guy my age. He was a LT. from Hanscom and expecting to be deployed to the sandbox. He wanted some range time before deploying, and the only way he could do that was to buy his own guns and join a club. He was not allowed to use the base range or gov’t owned guns.
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I did the same thing when I wanted extra practice before EIB in 1998. I bought an M1 carbine because the sight picture was the closest I could find to an M4, then went up to the post Rod & Gun Club to do my shooting.
 
Dench said:
Imagine the endless NDs. Holy shit.
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People live up to (or down to) your expectations of them.

Our military (all branches) expects everyone to be a total idiot when it comes to firearms safety. They teach "at my command" and "by the numbers" and "ready on the right, ready on the left..."

Service members are habituated to only respond, not to think. They are never charged with thinking for themselves.

When we visited sister units in Germany, it was a bit of a shock to see that their barracks wall lockers had rifle mounts. Yes: they all kept their issued rifles in their barracks rooms. German soldiers probably had 1/10 or less exposure to firearms before entering the service compared to US soldiers.

When you treat people like idiots, they will act like idiots. When you give them a serious responsibility and impress upon them how serious it is, they step up to your expectations.

I could go on a long rant about how that applies to drinking culture in Germany vs. US, but I think you all already understand how that works.
 
A very good idea in principal and it worked well for the Swiss until their antis f-ed it up. My K31 that I shoot in vintage matches was shot in the Swiss national Schuetzenfests by the same guy it was issued to while he was in the service. The troop tag under the butt plate matches the civilian business sticker and Schuetzenfest sticker. There's a stack of Schuetzenfest inspection stickers on the hand guard.

Wish we could do something like that here and that vets (other than our NES sub-set? LOL) would similarly take pride in continuing marksmanship skills.

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76Too said:
There are some Marines I couldn’t trust with a box of crayons. Not everyone is ‘trainable’ to the level you’re expecting, unfortunately.

In an ideal world, your scenario makes a lot of sense. Maybe in the 1950’s it could have worked this way, but I suppose there’s been shitbirds as long as there’s been a military.
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Then they shouldn’t be in the corps.
 
Picton said:
I do agree with the general premise, though, in a weird way. When the Ft Hood massacre happened, all those processing soldiers went down with no way to return fire. That's not right, either.

I suspect if I'd never been active duty, I'd assume this would be a great idea too. Gun culture in the military is weird.
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Honestly if I could carry a gun at (army) work I still probably wouldn’t want to deal with the hassle. Overseas is another story.

jakeroub said:
In 2008-ish, I was joining Woburn Sportsman’s and made friends with a guy my age. He was a LT. from Hanscom and expecting to be deployed to the sandbox. He wanted some range time before deploying, and the only way he could do that was to buy his own guns and join a club. He was not allowed to use the base range or gov’t owned guns.
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Yeah unless you are combat arms where you shoot stuff as part of your job, you’ll qualify before a deployment (which is a joke), and that’s about it. On the infantry side of the fence we got a lot of trigger time in our work-up. That said, building cohesive platoons that are tactically proficient at the individual, fireteam, squad, etc level is about substantially more than shooting.

You have to realize the mindset for some of the POG jobs, especially those not typically involved in combat at all (think admin, intel, supply), drifts more and more towards “it’s just a job” than “I’m going to war” as they move farther from initial training. The USMC is the only branch that pushes the “every Marine a rifleman” thing, and the first 6 months to a year of service even the super-POGs have that mindset, which is more than in the other branches, but then it dissipates. If you’re infantry, it’s your job. If your doing another job, you don’t have months a year to devote to being super-tactical.
 
To piggyback on the post above. Even if you are trained for a confrontation, it can be hard to go towards the risk. I wasn't there but still, this was hard to see again.
I never read his book but probably should.
www.police1.com

Book excerpt: Warnings Unheeded

On June 20, 1994, a mentally disturbed former airman traveled to Fairchild Air Force Base to kill the doctors who had tried to help him – Senior Airman Andy Brown stopped the killer
www.police1.com www.police1.com


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcT_CAlIlpc&t=298s
 
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Lots of well-intentioned ideas in this post, but the reality is it just would not work. Almost everything boils down to training, which takes time and money, resources DoD is always found wanting. This leads to training triage, prioritize what training will be used/needed the most. When you have senior leadership looking at ways to reduce the training pipeline for carrier pilots, peripheral training in something that might happen is never going to happen.
Also, the baseline skillset of current service members is VASTLY different than 10,20,30 years ago...yeah, I have been doing this a LONG time. As the years progress, I find myself spending more and more time training the basics or limited by student's physical condition. I am not joking when I say that I have to tell service members (officer and enlisted alike) that fire is hot, knives are sharp, and gloves do not belong in the snow.
 
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