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Time to bring this one up.

By The Armorer on December 9, 2008 | | Comments (12)
It's been sitting in the hopper, waiting for a day when the Muse was AWOL.



The young lady is good.  She's damn good.

However. 

Her trainer has failed her.

She has one failing deficiency, and two downchecks, as I see it.  One of the downchecks is truly a quibble, the other can be argued as a failure, too.

What do you see? 

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12 Comments

By Alan Briley, RN on December 9, 2008 8:30 AM
1.) She does not clear the weapon before disassembly. 2.) She does not do a function check of the weapon after it is reassmbled. (Safety works, on semi-auto hammer doesn't fall when weapon cycles, on full-auto (or 3 round burst, hammer falls when weapon cycles.) 3.) She rests the weapon on the optical sight when disassembling it. (One of my quibbles, but I guess it doesn't count on a battle rifle.)
 
By Blake Kirk on December 9, 2008 8:40 AM
I saw the answer to this one somewhere else, so I won't spoil the fun by throwing it out here.

However, I will note that the last time I was on an EIB committee, we had a corporal from the National Guard show up to run through the requirements to try and earn the badge.  The dude ran through the same sort of evolutions shown above on an M60 machine gun in 57 seconds flat, and didn't leave out anything.  The evaluator said later that the kid was moving so fast that the only way he knew that he'd gotten every step was that all of the sounds came in the right order.

Some times the best training boils down to practice, practice, and yet more practice.
 
By Maggie on December 9, 2008 8:55 AM
Well, I have no idea as to anything she's doing wrong.  I just want to say I am amazed. 

Plus, she looks so happy.  Looks like it might have been more fun to be the daughter of an artillery man.  My Dad was Navy......I know how to polish things endlessly and what a holy stone is for.
 
By Casey on December 9, 2008 10:53 AM
Alan beat me to the one I did catch: she didn't clear the weapon.

One little question: the video-handler stated she did perform a function check. I take it his definition is different from Alan's?

 
By Casey on December 9, 2008 10:55 AM
She is, by the way, adorable. :)

 
By AFSister on December 9, 2008 12:08 PM
What do I see?
I see a young lady who already knows more about weapons than I probably ever will. 
 
By AW1 Tim on December 9, 2008 1:34 PM

    After reassembly, she places her finger on the trigger, then lays the weapon down and walks in front of the muzzle.

   That, anyway, is what I saw.  Plus the failure to clear, of course.

    Respects,
 
By XBradTC on December 9, 2008 1:54 PM
Fails to clear, and fails to remove the handguards (both would get you a NOGO), I'll cut her some slack on the function check, since it's a semi auto, the function check would be attempt to fire with weapon on safe, hammer doesn't fall, place selector to fire, squeeze trigger, hammer falls.
 
By Loki520 on December 9, 2008 4:40 PM
The quibble would be that my firewall at work is preventing the video from loading.  But it's a damn fine white square where it should be and I can find no downchecks on that.
 
By Spade on December 10, 2008 9:30 AM
Do they still remove handguards?

I'm just a civy shooter, but I've never felt the need to remove my M4's handguards. And with the Surefire M73 rail I have on it that would take an allen wrench and some force (the two securing screws are naturally loctited down).
 
By Josh on December 11, 2008 3:09 PM
Even if her performance was not PERFECTLY FLAWLESS, I'd still give her extra credit for being a 12 year old girl who knows more about putting together a firearm than most "responsible" adult citizens, and having more fun doing it than most kids have while playing video games with digital pictures of guns in them.

The possibility of having a kid like that almost makes me want to reconsider my vow to never have any...
 
By John of Argghhh! on December 11, 2008 3:19 PM
As I mentioned in the post, Josh - her major failure - that of properly clearing the weapon, is the fault of her trainer.