Day 46: The Range

When I was a kid, I remember going to my friend Lynn's house to shoot pellet guns. Now, as most of you know, I have never been much of a weapons person. Sure I have a pretty mean shot with a rubber band gun, but outside of that my experience with weapons is pretty limited. Lynn on the other hand was a true hunter who could shoot with the best of them.

On one particular day I went over to Lynn's house to shoot with him. I remember standing under a small fruit tree with a little bird in it. I was probably only 10 feet away. I aimed, I shot. BOOM! I waited for the bird to fall. I waited some more...and then the bird flew away. Lynn then took the pellet gun, aimed at a bird clear across the field, shot and watched it drop. My hopes of being a world renowned gun slinger were dashed in a moment.

Yesterday was my chance to redeem myself. It was range day. We had qualifications with the 2 weapons I mentioned yesterday--the M9 (pistol) and the M4 (rifle). First, we went to the M9 range. We were given 40 rounds (bullets). There were little green men that would randomly pop-up from the ground which you would shoot. Without any kind of practice they told us to go out and shoot them. Now, I actually had shot this weapon before, so I felt a little confident in my abilities. I went out to the range, loaded my weapon, and 40 loud bangs later, I had defeated my enemy and conquered the course.

Next came the rifle range. This was quite a bit more complicated. First we had to go to a "zeroing" range. This is basically where you get into a foxhole and shoot for hours at a time, until your sights are adjusted into an accurate position. I don't want to brag, but I was one of the first guys done...beginners luck maybe? I then went up to the qualification range. At this range you had to shoot at 30 targets at different distances. There are the gimme 50 meter targets and the I can barely see you because it is 3 football fields away, 300 meter targets. In between are various other targets. Again, the targets popped up and my job was to make them fall back down by hitting them. We shot from 3 different positions...standing in a foxhole, lying on our stomachs, and kneeling. In the mid-afternoon heat, we went out in full body armor and shot. Amazingly, I qualified on my first try.

Some of the guys waiting to shoot

Once everyone qualified (which took all day because people had to keep shooting until they were successful) we moved on to night shooting. This was pretty cool. We put on our night vision goggles, turned on a laser sight that is mounted to our weapon, and shot the same range in total darkness. With all the lasers turned on it was kind of like a laser show with a lot of loud sound effects. About 2AM this morning we all qualified and headed home.

It was a long, hot, uncomfortable day, but the shooting itself was pretty fun. I successfully qualified on all of my first attempts. So I am thinking of turning down my doctor job and becoming a sniper while I am in Afghanistan. What do you think? Well, okay, maybe I'll keep my day job and leave the shooting for someone else. But hey, those little birdies at Lynn's house better watch out now or they won't know what hit them.

A nice sunset at the end of the day