Originally Posted by
rob_s
What application are we talking about here? Are you saying that the military is not properly training it's people and that they need to step it up? What about your experience in the service leads you to this conclusion? What I hear, over and over again, from guys that come back from Iraq and come out to shoot with us is "man, this in the kind of training we needed before we went overseas. that long-range shit they taught us did me no good standing in a mud hut" (or words to that effect).
Personally, I am a non-LE civilian firearms enthusiast with an interest in self-defense application of guns. While I have enjoyed my experiences shooting at distance, other than marksmanship training I find them to be all but useless. Unless I'm preparing for the barfcom fantasy, me shooting someone at 600 yards is not only highly unlikely, but is going to present a big challenge in court IMHO. So I can use long-distance shooting as a way to work on my marksmanship skills, to stress the fundamentals, but beyond that....
And then there's the issue of just how great my marksmanship skills with a carbine need to be at non-LE civilian distances. In my experience with our matches when it comes to the long gun manipulations and confidence with the platform make up for lack of marksmanship skills in almost every case. We just had a "long range" match and several of our shooters that often excel at CQB did horribly simply trying to shoot at egg at 75 yards, or a 4" steel plate at 50 (myself included).
So what, then, is the point in all of this? You seem to take issue with the .5k thread (or whatever it's being called now) but I'm not sure WHY you take issue or what the issue is exactly. Can someone, with proper training and practice (and often, proper tools) make hits on a man-sized target out to 600 yards with iron sights? Of course. Personally, I don't know why I'd want to. ;)