Confederate Sharpshooter

My father was (and still is) fond of saying “my son, learn from other’s mistakes, you will never live long enough to make them all yourself.” That’s good advice, although I must add that if I could just learn something from all of the mistakes I’ve made in this lifetime I’d be the smartest person in the room. Unfortunately, I didn’t, and I’m not. Most recently I got to learn the hard way a few of those lessons involving being prepared in the use of a firearm. Those of you who enjoy learning from other’s mistakes, here is a golden opportunity. Those of you who just enjoy watching others screw up, enjoy.

As I posted earlier today, I recently was fortunate enough to find not only ‘a job’ but a serious career opportunity. Better still, in a world of accountant and liability lawyer driven employee handbooks and no-gun rules, I landed a job with an employer who makes me look like a novice shooter. On the job well less than a month, he takes the employees out to a local steak house for a brainstorming meeting, and announces that anybody who wants to go to the Patriot’s Day Appleseed Shoot on the weekend of April 19th-20th can meet at the shop that morning and ride together, and he’d pay the entry fee for anyone attending.

That last statement deserves its own paragraph. I just told you my employer believes enough in the second amendment, the benefits of firearm ownership and marksmanship training, to put forth a considerable amount of cash to pay for each and all of his employees to go get rifle training over the weekend. Perhaps there is hope for the future.

Needless to say, I took him up on the offer. Since I live a bit distant from the range mentioned, I opted to go for a nearby hotel and went down the night before, and met up with everyone else at the range Saturday morning. Although I have been around firearms since I was a kid, and a member of the ‘gun culture’ since the term got coined, I’ve had very little formal training at all. Save for some police rookie school training, a CCW course, and the occasional tip from my favorite gun store proprietor, I can’t think of any formal training. So, I was a bit nervous, wondering how badly I’d shoot in front of some other shooters, many of which were obviously better prepared and experienced. Around 50 participants (or “Cooks” as Fred likes to call them) had parted with hard-earned money with the intention of becoming “riflemen.” I was hoping one of the people earning that title would be me.

Sadly, I had a few things working against me. First, despite having my fair share of long guns available, I did not have a single one that met the complete list of needs stated for the course. Second, having had little time to prepare for the event on such short notice, I’d not even had time to read the booklet to prepare myself. Last, and worst of all, I’d only had a few days to gather gear together from the list on the Appleseed website, and had hastily dumped the entire mess in the trunk of the car after work just prior to leaving home for the trip. I knew that inevitably there would be something forgotten, or something would go wrong. But I figured I’d improvise, adapt, and overcome. Of the list of recommended gear, the only major bit of kit I’d neglected to bring was the elbow pads, but I had purchased a nice shooting mat from higher than crap cheaper than dirt, and also had my trusty GI issue sleeping bag foam pad to put under it. I figured I could live without the elbow pads. Firearms were a bigger problem: the recommendation from people who had been before was either a M1 Garand or other similar battle rife with adjustable sights, or a .22 LR semi-auto with plenty of spare magazines. I own neither. I have an AR-10 flat top with a nice scope on it, but no iron sights for it at all. I have boo coos of .22 rifles, but all are tube fed, from the but stock- I didn’t want to show up with one of those. I own one bolt-action .22 LR, but only owned 2 5-round magazines and one 10 rounder for her, which I wasn’t sure would be enough for the number of rounds to be fired during the course. Still, it is the best shooting rifle I own with iron sights, so even being a bolt action it went into the car as a backup. I also had an AR-15 I’d recently purchased just before the election panic, although I’d only put a few magazines through the rifle I felt it to be reliable and accurate- plus I have plenty of magazines for AR’s. So it became my primary choice. Lastly, I had borrowed a genuine M1 Garand from a good friend, complete with a period web belt with full complement of clips loaded for same. This would be the obvious rifle to use, except for one thing: the ONLY ammunition available for the Garand was on that web belt. I don’t have any 30-06 rifles, therefore I had zero ammunition for same. A quick check of my local gun shop showed buying ammo would not be possible- even if I could have afforded it (I couldn’t) the only loads available on such short notice would have been lighter, hunting style ammo, which he wasn’t even sure would cycle the action. No time to order online, even if the panic buying hadn’t dried up the supply. (it’s getting scary going to every ammo supplier you know of and getting the same story: out of stock, no backorder)
So, to recap: I have a M1 with limited ammo, a AR-15 with plenty of ammo and magazines but a standard GI sling (not recommended) and a bolt-action .22 with only 3 magazines with total capacity of 20 rounds. I have a nice new shooting mat plus a GI sleeping bag pad, but no elbow pads. I have a positive attitude and am really looking forward to improving my marksmanship skills.
I was about to have quite possibly the most fun time shooting I’d had since my first .22 on the farm, but not without first learning some valuable lessons on ‘being ready.’

The Appleseed format should be familiar to most shooters, if not check it out here or read Fred’s column in any issue of Shotgun News. I was lucky enough to be shooting at the original ‘Appleseed’ range in Ramseur, NC. Very nice range, the long range has berms at 200, 300, 400, and 500 yards, with pop up targets no less. For the first day, however, we’d be shooting at the short range, sighting in at 25 meters on the 100-200 yard range. First the inevitable signing in process, figuring out which spot to shoot from, and gearing up from the trunk of the car, minus rifle- safety meeting made it clear no one was to bring a rifle to the line until authorized to do so. It’s always good to see safety taken seriously. I’d spoken to the range boss, and he told me to bring the rifle I was most familiar with and could shoot the best. That would be the AR-15, so I brought some gear for it to the line. First up was a well delivered and interesting history lesson on the significance of Patriot’s Day, and the shot heard round the world. WHERE WERE THESE LESSONS WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL? I’d pay real money to get this bunch into the local school systems to combat the idiocy being taught to the poor brainwashed sheep hearded through the system now. Next up, just to get everyone ready to go, would be a 13 round (representing the 13 colonies) live fire at easy targets- ‘redcoats’ on a white background. I loaded thirteen rounds into a 20 round magazine, waited for the command, and heard “FIRE.”

CLICK.

There is nothing as loud as a “CLICK” when you were expecting a “BANG.” I could feel my blood pressure spike about 30 points. Cleared the round, rechambered, target picture, squeeze trigger… CLICK. Again. Click. This is not good. The other shooters are about half way through the 13 rounds. Clear, tap, reseat magazine, hit forward assist to make sure bolt is in battery, yank on the trigger because I’m frustrated by now… CLICK. OK, my rifle is not working, and I’m not going to get off 13 rounds, so let’s figure out what’s wrong before we get to serious shooting. Check fired rounds. Light or zero primer strikes. OK, firing pin is not hitting primer. Simple enough. I pull the bolt out as the rest of the group stops firing, and take it back with me to the picnic table behind the yellow line. I was not aware that this was not permitted, and a safety instructor corrected me, but shortly after I got permission to try to correct the problem. Obvious first thing to check was the firing pin, it was protruding properly with bolt in position and pressure applied to the rear. Pulled it out, it had some light oil residue on it, but certainly not enough to keep it from movement. Wiped it down, sprayed the bolt with CLP, reassembled, just in time to get down for the first string of sight in targets. Prone position, sight picture, squeeze… CLICK. We shan’t dwell upon thoughts or words that went through my mind this time, let us just say I was not well pleased. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a firearm not go ‘bang’ when I’ve pulled the trigger, so having one fail on me at a critical time is worse than frustrating. Fortunately, I have other options. I was about to switch over to the bolt-action .22 LR, and in fact had swapped the AR for it and had laid it on the firing line when my employer stepped up and offered me the use of a beautiful match-grade M1 Garand for the day- with ammunition. Those of you with lesser employment options, I feel your pain. This is my definition of a ‘good employer.’ I accepted his offer before he could change his mind, got set up just in time to hear the command of ‘load for 10 rounds.’ I had never before seen a Garand clip for 2 rounds, but it was pretty obvious how it worked, so I loaded it and one for 8 rounds, and was good to go. This time, I got a satisfying BANG and felt the welcome recoil of the bigger rifle when I pulled the trigger, and to my utter surprise found when we checked targets that I had put all rounds in the prescribed 1” squares on the target. Not bad at all for a new rifle with no warm up time, and surplus ammo. Things were getting better. Better yet, I was learning things I’d heard about but never tried. High on that list was the proper use of a military sling, which to be honest I had doubted the use of. Not any more. The safety boss and coach on my end of the firing line was a motherly woman named Jennifer, who while not correcting me for forgetting to put in a chamber flag or having the rifle on safe spent her time reminding me to keep my elbow vertical under the stock and properly using the sling to increase accuracy. If you have not learned this skill yet, by all means try a Appleseed shoot. This alone is worth the money spent. This continued until the first break, where I got to meet some of my fellow shooters, and I was not at all surprised to find them to be unfailingly polite, nice, salt of the earth people. I am not sure where all these potential terrorists the homeland insecurity types are looking for are at, but they certainly aren’t to be found where they insist on looking. Back to shooting, and I’m learning the hard way the other big mistake I’ve made for the day: I really, really, should have found a pair of elbow pads. Even with the double padding from the shooting mat and foam pad, I’ve skinned my elbows pretty good, and the day isn’t half over. I don’t notice much, as I’m having so much fun. Either from fatigue or age however my groups are getting larger, but not embarrassingly so. It’s been a long time since I’ve spent this much time firing prone, and I’ve never been one to shoot from the sitting position, but for a middle aged fat guy I’m not doing badly. And as much as everyone wants to fire perfect groups in front of the other shooters, this isn’t the idea: you are supposed to learn from mistakes, not be perfect. In this respect I learned a lot. I have a tendency to allow my support arm elbow to move ‘out’ which gives diagonal groups (from high left to low right) and coupled with improper breathing control (you should not hold your breath, as I have often made mistake of doing, but time the trigger squeeze to have the tigger break as you have fully exhaled and before inhaling.) Coupled together, I got a couple of groups that looked like a line from a tic-tac-toe game. This is good, now that I know what I was doing wrong, I know how to correct it. As we say in the repair business, you can’t fix it until you know what’s broke.

For those of you that are sitting back laughing heartily at the AR-15 failures, and wondering when I’ll get a ‘real’ rifle like a Garand, I have one more lesson to pass along. Ye old wonderful M1 started having problems near the end of the day. The mil-surp ammo had been around a long time, and was producing some heavy smoke with each shot. Also, some of the rounds near the bottom of the can had some green corrosion. For what ever reason, during the last strings of fire it began to have problems. I got a good crash course on clearing malfunctions, but near the end I was having more fail to fires and misfeeds than rounds fired. So I guess at least for now I’m a cook in Fred’s eyes, but not to worry- I will be back, and I will be back with better preparations and with knowledge of what to expect and how to be ready. (yes, that will include the addition of an M1 to the arsenal) And that, friends, is exactly why I went down there: to learn from mistakes, both my own and others. I learned the lessons well, and I am a better shooter for it.

Thanks Fred, you are a true patriot in the truest sense of the word. Keep up the good work. As is my new employer, a pity we don’t have more folks like him in the business world.