Against the Grain

by Ian Daniels

  “Can we load up and actually shoot something?” Andrew was asking.

  He, Nick and Breanne were the three that I had on the line currently. I did want to grant that wish but we didn’t have an ever lasting supply of ammunition and the noise from a group of shooters would be an attention getter to be sure.

  “That reminds me of a story from this rifle clinic I was at a few years ago,” I said in an effort to stall and distract from Andrew’s request. “There was this old guy there that must have been ninety. He had this old bolt action rifle with iron sights and he was scoring better than almost everyone else there. So the instructor walks over to the guy and asked him about it. The old dude tells him that all he can see of the target is a big blur, his rear sight was a blur, there were three front sights but he just kept doing the same thing that he had been doing for the six months before the day of the clinic in his basement at home: he would dry fire every day. He just put the front sight, the middle of the three that he was seeing, on the same spot of the blurry target and concentrate on everything else that he could control like his breathing and where his hands and fingers went and how they worked. Dry firing like that made this old guy who couldn’t even see the target one of the top shooters at the class. That is one of the reasons why I am a believer in dry firing.”

  “I’ve also seen guys that hunted all their life completely discombobulate during their first three gun match,” I continued on. “Dropping mags, loading shot shells in backwards, missing close targets… totally looking and feeling like a newbie because they had never practiced that type of thing or hadn’t practiced enough at home. That was during an event, I don’t want that type of thing to happen to any of you if you ever have to shoot for real. Anyone that thinks ‘I’ll get it right when I really need to’ is delusional and a danger to themselves and everyone counting on them.”

  They were taking it all in pretty well so I decide to buy just a little more time and stay on my soapbox a little longer.

  “The worst ones though are the guys that say ‘I was a cop’ or ‘I was in the military thirty years ago, I know what I’m doing.’ Those guys really are delusional. Let alone the tactics and equipment that changes every couple years, shooting is a perishable skill. It absolutely leaves you if you don’t use it. I know every time when I’m shooting if I am trying to do something I haven’t practiced recently. It actually feels slow and awkward and I know before I ever pull the trigger if it’s going to be a good group or miss the target completely.”

  “That sounds like a full time job just to keep up on everything,” Nick supplied.

  “Not exactly, but that is why we have to practice and keep things simple. I’ve gotten hit by simunitions from a twelve year old because I tried to get too fancy, and I’ve seen a swat team get lit up with paintballs by a bunch of geeks because they were thinking too much. You’ve gotta keep it simple.”

  "Is that story about the old guy really true?" Andrew asked me once I was done with my long winded thoughts.

  "It does me no good to lie to any of you about this stuff. It’s my ass on the line if we’re out there together and you can’t do your part," I looked at Nick and Breanne both. The details of the shootout in the woods were still fresh in my mind and I remembered all too well how Nick hadn’t kept up and it was Breanne who had finally helped deal with the guys that had me pinned down.

  “Here is another rule from gun fighting one oh one; don’t get pinned down. You move, or you get killed,” I elaborated. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘shoot, move, communicate?’”

  “Yeah, in movies and stuff,” Andrew answered.

  “Well it’s wrong. A guy I used to know put it best; it should be ‘shoot, maneuver, and communicate.’”

  “What’s the difference, other than the word?” Nick asked.

  “The difference is that moving is just moving for moving’s sake. Maneuvering is making it bad for them and better for you. It just stresses the importance of getting the upper hand in a situation,” I explained to my small and interested audience.

  “A couple days ago I got stuck by those guys shooting up the house. We all could have hunkered down and lobbed rounds close to them and not really done a whole lot, but what Breanne did was maneuver to a spot that was good for her… and me… and bad for them. That’s the difference.”

  We talked about the simple side of tactics for a few more minutes as we waited for the rest of the group to make their way out to our little training area, then we got started.

  “Jake, grab that pack over there would ya?” I asked as he waked up with Julie, Paul and David. The three other women, Cary, Michelle and Megan, were all busy helping Sue with cooking and watching the little kids so I’d leave it up to everyone else to get Cary and Michelle at least up to speed.

  Although she saw the need, Sue just wasn’t interested and didn’t really like guns anyway, and I wanted to be the one to get Megan started shooting, after Nick gave her some simple safety and function type lessons.

  “What the heck is in this?” Jake asked as he half carried, half dragged, the large pack over to us.

  “Your new gun for one thing,” I reached in and pulled out the monstrosity that I had painstakingly hauled through the woods on my back, along with all its ammunition and assorted gear.

  “Holy crap!” Jake said as I unfolded the stock and locked a foot long magazine in place.

  “Here’s the deal guys,” I put one foot up on a nearby log and let the big gun’s weight rest across my leg, “you have a lot to learn, but its time that everyone had the proper setup to learn on. Until recently I had kind of figured that everyone had enough of what was needed, but I’m starting to see that may not be the case.”

  That earned a few nodding heads in agreement… and a few in oblivious confusion.

  “We’re going to go through quite a few things so everybody pay attention.”

  I hadn’t used my classroom teaching voice in a while but after a few lines, I started to fall back into what used to be second nature; instructing in front of groups.

  “To start with, none of these guns are perfect on their own, but we aren’t in a vacuum on our own either. We are working with each other, covering for the other’s shortcomings, so you all need to learn the limitations of each other’s equipment and abilities.”

  “What do you mean?” Julie asked the timely and intelligent question. If I remembered right, she had always been at the top of her class, just missing out on valedictorian even.

  “Well take this thing for example,” I expounded, “this is a semiautomatic shotgun. It can lay down huge amounts of fire and be completely devastating… at a very short range. The ammo is heavy and bulky, it’s slow to reload and it has to be reloaded a lot because the mags don’t hold that many rounds… so it has to be used within its own limitations. But when it is used right, it is a monster,” I finished and passed the big weapon over to Jake.

  His toothy smile stretched from ear to ear.

  Unlike the 308 that Clint had built for me, I had put this 12 gauge Saiga shotgun together on my own… and it was one mean mother. It was not completely smooth or polished like Clint would have done, but it was a short, fast, and a reliable beast. It ate clay pigeons for breakfast, shot slugs through cinder blocks for lunch, and knocked down steel faster than I could swing it for dinner.

  “Short but effective…you’re right, that thing is perfect for him,” Julie said wryly.

  Jake was too busy grinning to notice his girlfriend’s joke at his expense.

  “Julie, how comfortable are you with that 30-30 lever gun?” I turned to the young woman that somehow pulled off tough and feminine at the same time. She had a medium-small frame and dark brown, nearly black hair. Her steely eyes and quick wit told you right away that she was tough enough when it came down to it.

  “I’m fine. I’ve only shot it a few times but I like it, makes me feel like Annie Oakley or something,” she quipped.

  “Good. It’s a good gun and it co
mplements a shorter, higher volume of fire weapon like a shotgun pretty well. I’m going to teach you how to run it like an AK though so be ready. Speaking of which, Drew, you and Cary get to argue over who gets what,” I pulled the other two long guns out of the pack.

  “Is that an AK, like an AK47? Cool!” Andrew said excitedly.

  “Yes this is an AK, and I want to remind you all that these are my personal and private guns. I know them better, and definitely like them better, than a lot of people I know. So while I want you all to take ownership of them, don’t forget that these are still my babies,” I said for the whole group to hear.

  “Dude, seriously, why do you have these?” Andrew asked, possibly entirely missing the point of my last statement.

  “Hunting,” I dismissed without a second thought.

  I didn’t feel like getting into a philosophical debate on freedom right now. Plus it kind of seemed pointless. It was a changed world and as we had just been attacked and had used these “assault weapons” to defend ourselves, that was all the reason I needed.

  “What the hell do you hunt with this?” Jake asked while still looking at the big shotgun, obviously feeling foreign in his hands.

  After a brief moment’s thought, I shrugged a single shoulder and gave the best answer I could. “People.”

  “What no M16s?” Paul asked, his tone bordering on mockery.

  The question earned him a disapproving look from both Breanne and their father, and I was having serious second thoughts about including him here today.

  “What you see is what you get,” I locked the bolt back and checked to see that the gun was empty as I handed him the SKS that Breanne had been using, holding onto it tightly for a split second as a reminder that I was not exactly someone that would take a lot of smart mouthed crap from him.

  …Plus it wasn’t like he had the balls or skills to run an AR anyway. I had just given him what the communist’s dictators gave to their conscripts, and that fact was the private joke within myself that helped me not shoot him on the spot with the same gun. Paul and I still were not on real good terms after what had happened at his house. I could have easily left him out of this exchange and training altogether, but in the end I knew that the group would be stronger if they were all appropriately armed and able.

  Of course I didn’t completely trust him, and I definitely didn’t like him nearly enough to have him here on my own account, but everyone needed to be on the same page. Seeing as though he was only wearing a light, trendy v neck tee shirt, I kind of wanted to make him shoot a course of fire with the Mosin carbine. His shoulder would be black and blue before the first reload, but that would do more harm than good. Everyone needed to get comfortable handling these guns and not be afraid of firing a weapon. If he did well enough with the SKS, I could always let him try the Garand and “accidentally” forget to show him how to move his thumb when loading.

  Besides the AK47, the other gun that I had handed Andrew was my old semi automatic Mossberg shotgun that I had used in competition. It was a good, reliable, all around type of shotgun and the setup made it easy to shoot at both steel targets in competition, and moving targets, like animals… or people.

  “David, are you still okay with the pump gun and twenty two?” I asked the eldest member of the group. It was no secret that his post sixty year old body was losing the young mans strength and touch he had once had.

  “You boys can do the hard and heavy stuff while I’m out getting dinner,” he joked reassuringly.

  “Okay, but don’t sell yourself short. With those long barrels you can send buckshot and slugs farther and more accurately than these guys, and you are more than accurate with that bolt twenty two,” I made sure to keep him in good spirits.

  “What other vacuums do we need to be aware of?” Breanne asked getting us back to practical matters.

  “Right, so Bre, like the AK’s, you’re Galil is a small to mid caliber, high rate of fire, zero to three hundred yard type of gun. That’s why I’d like to keep Nick working with a bolt action,” I nodded to him. “He maybe has lower capacity and is slower to fire, but the power and range is double that of your gun. If there is a threat out on the horizon, he is the man to take the shot. If a threat is in closer, or there are multiple targets, you have to help pick up his slack.”

  “Nothing new there,” Breanne murmured under her breath. She had meant it as a joke, but it touched close enough to a recent and raw nerve that only a few people joined in with nervous laughter and there was a fair share of uncomfortable looking faces. Nick was good enough to let it roll off his back as we continued on.

  “Nick, this is the Swiss straight pull rifle I had David stash at the house for me a while back. It’s similar enough to the M38 you’re used to, but it’ll be about twice the gun that old Mosin is as far as bolt guns go. You sight it the same, you can load it the same even though the mag can be removed, but it’s an all around more accurate gun and will be faster to work the bolt on too. The biggest problem is that I don’t have a huge amount of ammo for it, so keep that Mosin handy.”

  “Listen everybody, you all need to switch on right now. We are going from defensive uses, to offensive uses of these guns and of yourselves too. You are going to make physical and mental mistakes, it’s going to happen, but try to limit the mental ones okay? Repetition and just plain good old time will help with becoming familiar and laying in a solid foundation, but you need to use your heads and pay attention.”

  With that last little lecture over with, we got down to business. For the better part of the next two hours we first ran dry fire drills to get everyone comfortable with the new guns, and then they all got a chance to see if they could actually hit a target. After that, we went to doing live fire drills. We mostly shot the .22 rifles as they were easy to shoot and learn new skills with, plus the vast amount of ammunition I had for them made them great trainers to get the basics ingrained before running the larger guns on the same drills a few times.

  David and Nick had set up a great range with the targets just like I had asked for and it was now paying off huge dividends as everyone got to experience live fire on their own and as a team. This was serious stuff, but I also couldn’t help it, this was fun for me. I never really liked training brand new shooters, doing the introduction of “this is a bullet” and walking back and forth to the targets every couple shots to see what was hitting where; it was a known fault of mine. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I was better than that or didn’t have enough patience; I just had a lot more fun teaching the next level of shooting. The dynamic stuff was much more dangerous, especially without a strong foundation in the basics, but seeing the smile on someone’s face when they hear the bullet they fired ping off of a steel target three hundred yards away, or after the first time they cleanly run a plate rack without a miss, that was fun and I was glad that this group was at that point in their progression of becoming capable shooters.

  Nick had shot some impressive groups from various positions with the Swiss K31, and then in order to conserve ammunition, he switched back to the old Mosin Nagant to learn how to transition between multiple targets at various ranges. The others with their carbines had all been doing the same thing on a lesser scale before I had pulled Drew off the AK to try his hand at firing the Mossberg shotgun.

  “Don’t just hose through it, you can’t get that timing right every time,” I was telling him as he worked the Mossberg shotgun through the improvised plate rack targets. “Treat each one as a separate target and stop on each one to make the shot. The speed comes in between each target. Get there, set the sights, work the trigger and move. Don’t watch it fall, use your peripheral vision to know if you got a hit or not.”

  “Kind of like the slow is smooth, smooth is fast thing?”

  Andrew and Jake were having a good time learning about the new shotguns and they were having a better time trying to beat each other on the plate rack drill I had them running through. If we had have had the ammo to spare, these gu
ys would have practiced until they were pros.

  “Sort of, but more so be deliberate. Deliberate is smooth, and smooth is fast. Slow is just slow. Or another way to say it is: get it right... then get it fast. The speed will come on its own, concentrate on getting it right.”

  I was now being reminded of the downsides of competition. He was more concentrated on taking shortcuts to win instead of learning the valuable lessons that would keep him alive.

  “Just keep in mind, this is a gun game thing and isn’t good for shooting at living things. In real life you have to be able to first hit your target, and then see if it needs shooting again before moving on from it. But right now we are just trying to get comfortable. Smoother and faster will come in time.”

  “Dude I thought you were all Rambo and stuff, you’re totally more samurai aren’t you?” Jake asked, half joking but also sounding half serious.

  “Rambo? Naw, I was always more partial to John McClane or Jason Bourne. You know, minus the whole secret man love for Ben Afflect thing.” I said with a straight face as he stepped back up to the plate rack again.

  “Why don’t we all have these? This thing is great!” Jake exclaimed excitedly after the five near continuous shots rang out and all the No Parking signs that we were using for our targets stopped swinging.

  “It is great… sometimes. Remember the niche you’re stuck using it in. A shotgun is like a sledge hammer; it’s powerful, but that means it is also heavy and slow and not pin point precise. You aren’t going to hang a picture on the wall with a sledgehammer. Think about what your paper targets looked like earlier when you shot a round of double ought at the different ranges, not good hits past forty or so yards right?” I reminded them yet again.

  We were finally winding down to the end of our practice session when I realized I had gone a bit out of order with the lessons and trigger time. “We’ve all done some good work tonight,” I said, getting everyone’s attention, “but there’s one more thing we should think about to wrap this all up.”