So I taught a guy to shoot today.

[GOEX FFF]

All trainee's qualify on the M16A2 and the M9 in basic. Used to be you only had to qualify on the M16A2. Non-combat specialties qualify on the M16A2 once a year after basic and tech school.

Gotcha!

Thanks for the info!

[PyroFox79]

Only in the Air Force would one be scolded for teaching a coworker how to shoot. Figures.

[cmichini]

I'm a NCO in the US Air Force (yes yes your welcome, and yes we are getting paid next week ), and there is a new Airmen that came to base from training and he's a short stature quiet guy. Everyone else in the shop thought he was "wierd" and avoided him like the plague.

I knowing that isolating a new person is the quickest way to get him hating life, walked up to him and started to ask him questions. Something interesting happened, he talked back. Well fast track a few weeks, and no one else will still talk to him, and he failed a no notice inspection. Boss man asked me to Mentor him, since he talks to me.

I thought to myself... what can I teach him? Then I looked at the calender and saw it was shooting this weekend and asked him if he wanted to go along, and he did.

I brought my Springfield XD .45, my Mossberg 590, and my Savage 30-06 to the range. However there are two ranges, and the only one open today was the "shorter range one", although it's a 105 yard range I was only allowed to shoot my pistol.

I asked why I can't shoot my shotgun, and the range master said they only want those on the trap/skeet range or the 500 yard range because of their caliber, the shooter range being limited to .45 and 5.56 or smaller. I was unhappy because I love shooting my shotgun.

Anyways, to the meat of the story I went through about 80 rounds of .45 showing him the "fundamentals" (yeah yeah, I still have trouble using the sights, but I'm getting better ) he has smaller hands, so the finger placement was a little different. However at the end of the hour he was hitting paper pretty consistently for a first timer and had good trigger control and never pointed the firearm in a unsafe manner.

I felt a little better about myself for teaching someone how to use a pistol, yet a few coworkers already said that I was wrong to teach him and are even more scared.
He's not a bad guy, just quiet and living in a unfamiliar lifestyle, he's not scary and besides he has no ready access to firearms anyways. I think he actually opened up a bit more today, he talked a lot more after the shooting than he did before.

Bold added by me for emphasis.

First, good for you to be the stand up guy and try to provide some sort of welcome.

Also, what kind of bedwetters do you work with?

You say you're in NCO in USAF, so I assume you're working with other servicemen/women, and they're scared?
Do they think he's going to go postal?

If they REALLY feel that way (so that they're scared) they should report it up the chain of command. If not then they're just being hand-wringing pantywastes then you should school them on unit integrity, esprit de corps and overall socialization skills. Sounds like they're a high school clique and are trying to haze the guy.

Sounds like these folks are the problem not the FNG.

[RedFang]

When I was in the Army, the company I was in was HQ and HQ CMD. I would have CQ once a month. There was a weird kid that worked at the Fire dept. He was a constant screw up, they took him off the truck and had him filling fire ext. He had been shooting with one of his co-workers a few times. The night he got put on the crap detail he borrowed his buddies 45. He was so distraught he killed himself. Just be careful and don't loan your new friend your gun.

I'm smarter than most, I never ever loan my firearms, not even to my father. The only time I let someone even touch my weapons, let alone shoot them I am standing 1 foot from them fully armored and paranoid like a cat about to be thrown in water.

All trainee's qualify on the M16A2 and the M9 in basic. Used to be you only had to qualify on the M16A2. Non-combat specialties qualify on the M16A2 once a year after basic and tech school.

sadly you are a bit wrong with that, non-combat jobs are not allowed to shoot yearly on the M16A2. They said it costs to much time and money to constantly re-fire once a year, so now the only time a non-combat airmen will shoot besides basic is during pre-deployment training.

Bold added by me for emphasis.

First, good for you to be the stand up guy and try to provide some sort of welcome.

Also, what kind of bedwetters do you work with?

You say you're in NCO in USAF, so I assume you're working with other servicemen/women, and they're scared?
Do they think he's going to go postal?

If they REALLY feel that way (so that they're scared) they should report it up the chain of command. If not then they're just being hand-wringing pantywastes then you should school them on unit integrity, esprit de corps and overall socialization skills. Sounds like they're a high school clique and are trying to haze the guy.

Sounds like these folks are the problem not the FNG.

Most Airmen have a rather awkward view of firearms, especially those of us that work in offices and rarely deploy. We love bombers, and fighter jets, but small arms are something they look at with confusion and often fear.

I guess before my time this disturbed man who was dumped by his girlfriend who worked in the same calibration shop as him came to work the next day with a AK-47 and shot a few people, before killing himself. People don't talk about it much, but its the story that rises in the mind whenever someone talks about guns at work.

[JDay]

Please excuse my lack of knowledge with the USAF.
But during boot, there isn't firearms qualifications like other branches? Was this, or did he say this was his first time ever shooting?(

I know that in Navy basic you do not fire a real firearm, their training weapons and pneumatic.