ping
Saw this on the news today. IMHO, should have been done loa long time ago. Every soldier should be a rifleman first. Works for the Marines.
Interesting... even as a Coastie... *everybody* and I mean *everybody* on the ship had to qualify with the .45 and the M-16, and the Remington 870 short barrel shotgun. and *everybody* was sent to the range every couple of weeks when we were in port just to stay in form. I'm sure of this because I worked as a range officer for every single trip to the range. I was doing range duty two or three times a week, and I was just the backup RSO.
All of the deck rates (BM, QM (me!), and such) had to also qualify on the .50 Browning. Big, big fun, that.