Firearms prohibition leaves The U.K. defenseless

[azurefly]

I am fully with andersencs, and I find the protestations of double-naught spy absolutely laughable. To think that prior experience with guns would not benefit, to a noticeable degree, the performance of a military enlistee is just asinine. It is counterintuitive to the point of being actually asinine.

I remember one year when I was in about 5th grade, I went to a summer camp on Long Island that had riflery as one of the activities. (Imagine that! Hey, this was like 1981 or so). Now, I had extensive experience with BB guns (and that's what the camp used, or maybe it was pellet guns) courtesy of a brother 9 years my senior. I was quite effective with a BB rifle or pistol.

I ended up winning the all-camp Riflery Trophy -- beating out 16-year-olds -- that year. I chalk it up to the fact that the camp instructor's training given to a non-shooting camper could not compare to the same training given to a camper who already had a working knowledge of guns.

The same thing happened when I learned to fly. I had spent years going flying with my dad. By the time I took actual lessons with an instructor, I already knew how to take off, fly, and land a Cessna. Sure, I needed further training, and confidence building, and navigation knowledge, but I could do the practical stuff when I was in junior high school, pretty much.

Years went by and when I finally got back into flying and took lessons to finish up my PPL, I still had that natural ability, and much of the knowledge I had been given over those early years. The five or six others in my ground school class gave clear indication that they were not taking in the experience of their lessons nearly as efficiently as I was.

Don't try to tell me that growing up around something does not give you a clear edge over those who did not.

-azurefly

 

[azurefly]

Somehow, I doubt the US military is second to none because of recreational shooting by the public. I am surprised you didn't include vast firearms experience of inner city gang members as also aiding the US military.

Um, when and where do inner city gang members get proper training and the opportunity to get practical range time to hone skills?

Heck, Somali kids own full auto AK47s and shoot whenever they want, but I would hardly classify the general Somali population as good shooters.

You have data pertaining to the effectiveness of "general Somali population" shooting skills? Or is this just a "feeling" you have, based on all the hundreds of hours of live footage you've seen of Somalis firing their AK-47s?

Did you stop to think that part of the reason the US military was second to none was because it is extremely well funded, possesses the highest level of technology of any other military right now, and has resources in theatre providing critical intel that other militaries don't have?

So the more expensive a soldier's rifle, the better his skills will be? That bodes well for those of us who don't get much range time but still want to be crack shots! I just have to save up for that Steyr PSG-1, now! I'll be frickin' amazing!

Did you think that maybe the reason is that the US offers some of the best battlefield medical care and that soldiers know that even if shot in the middle of nowhere that they could be in surgery at a hospital in a very short amount of time and so are not as likely to die while fighting as are soldiers of other militaries.

You are actually arguing that the reason U.S. troops perform well in combat is that they have confidence they can be shot up by enemy troops and OCP will just rebuild them into Robocop? OMG my stomach hurts from laughing at that one!

"I'll just charge on out into the open and go nuts with my M-4 because, hell, I don't mind being shot, since my well-funded military has top doctors ready to patch me up good as new, even if the bullets pierce both lungs, or my heart, or pass through my eye and brain and out the back side of my skull! I am invincible, and therefore I can be steadier and aim better and be a better soldier, simply because I can confidently count on good medical care!"

There is also a fair amount of US troops that fail their first quals with firearms.

Cite, please.

In speaking with one of the Dallas PD firearms instructors, they get a bunch of folks that have never fired pistols or never fired more than one type of gun (pistol, rifle, shotgun) who end up needing a lot of extra training to be functional enough to pass quals.

So you figure this bolsters your position that having a general citizenry that has a good percentage of members familiar with guns is no help to the performance of its military? You don't think that maybe the ones who do poorly might be the ones who come from those households that didn't have or use guns? No one said that every single American male is exposed to guns and is trained in their use from an early age. We are saying that if you have a population that lives under a total gun ban, you will have NO such enlistees in its military; NONE of them will have the benefit of prior experience with guns.

The firearms prohibition in the UK does not leave it defenseless. At best, your argument is that they have to spend some extra time with recruits before they are up to speed on shooting.

No, our argument is that skills that have been ingrained from an early age benefit a person far more than skills taught much later in life.

Try turning a 26-year-old who has never been on a pair of skis into a champion downhill racer. Then do the same with a 26-year-old who's been skiing 30 days a season since he was oh, about 3 years old. You mean to tell us that you think that the former will have skills equal to those of the latter, and all he needs is "some extra time"?

Of course there is one huge downside to being proficient with arms and having high technology. It often means that the greatest threat to the American soldier very well may be other soldiers. In the first Gulf War, 1/4 dead were by fratricide and 17% of the wounded were fratricide. Those percentages would have been a good bit higher had it not been for the last minute SCUD attack hitting barracks in Saudi.

Being a good shooting doesn't mean a whole lot if you can't properly ID the opposition.

Please explain what that has to do with the subject at hand. What does the inability to properly identify friend from foe have to do with gun handling and shooting skills that were learned at a young age? Are you actually arguing that our soldiers are more at risk of friendly-fire incidents if their compatriots are better at shooting than if they are worse at it, and that if it were not for the troops being hit by SCUDs, more of them would have killed each other by friendly fire??

You are really out there, man.

I guess that by extension, we ought to send our troops out with rubber replica rifles so that we'll have zero friendly-fire incidents. Or maybe they should be forced to fight with MILES gear... After all, the better equipped and the more skilled our troops, the better you apparently feel they are at accidentally killing each other. Kinda like saying that a driver who has taken advanced defensive driving courses is more likely to run over his toddler when backing out of the driveway. Things that make you go "hmmm?"

-azurefly

 

[Mk VII]

the military prefers them to come without any experience, that way they don't have preconceived views to be broken down.
Having said that, I had done a lot of .22 shooting before entering the service and beat most of the other recruits to win some prizes.

 

[defjon]

Completely off topic and deletable, but I feel I must give a +1 for this:

"With tha thoughts from a militant mind...
Hard line, hard line after hard line!..."


RIP, RATM.

Ahh, fun with acronymns...