Having just gotten my pre-deployment gun qual last week, I haz some input.
I hadn't shot on a military range since my initial qual at Annapolis, in 2003. I did my required NKO "M9" course (took me a whole !@#$ing hour) the day prior and showed up to the shoot. I was given a 5 minute "gun fam" which basically consisted of, "point downrange at all times, here's the safety, here's the slide release, here's the trigger. Now, go load magazines!"
I then had to show everyone else how to load mags as people were literally loading the rounds in backwards (maybe they usually shoot HKs?
).
After that, we walk up to the 3 meter line. "Any questions before we start?" asks the RSO.
"What's the course of fire? What do we have to do?", says one O-4.
"I'll take you through a dry fire of all the phases," came the reply.
At which time they handed out M9's and told us to practice drawing and dry firing. About 2 minutes later, they handed us a pair of mags each and we started shooting. The RSO announced what we had to shoot about 3 seconds before he called "Fire!" for each phase. At one point, we had to shoot 2 rounds strong hand supported, swap hands and shoot 2 rounds weak hand supported. People started shooting one-handed and all the range coaches flipped $#!t. Nobody had any clue what was going on, including those of us who shoot regularly.
Why? Nobody had touched an M9 since at least last deployment, and all the online "training" we had received centered on how to field strip and reassemble M9's, not how to shoot them or what the qual shoot would require.
In an aviation squadron, pistol quals are viewed as just one more pre-deployment redass that effs up the flight schedule for a few days. And that's sad.
