Posted on 10/05/2015 5:45:18 PM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo
A young Marine was found dead from a gunshot wound to his head at a marksmanship range at Camp Pendleton early Monday, officials said.
The Marine, from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was part of a training exercise in which live ammunition was used, said officials at the Marine Corps base.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Yes Army, but it has been 50 years and I do not remember details as well as I once did.
As I said, I understand why they do it. But I do not believe it is worth the cost. What lesson is going to be learned by using live ammo? Anyone with any sense knows that in war the bad guys are shooting you and that you had better keep your head down.
Why not? At least you are not going to accidentally kill someone, but they will learn to keep their heads down.
Maybe the beloved rooky sailor Yogi Berra didn't know that ..... ;)
When the D-Day invasion started, Berra could barely see the sky because there were so many planes, flares and explosions. There was one moment when all the fire and flame of the invasion got to him and he poked his head up over the side of the LCSS. "Get your head down" yelled his commander, "if you want to keep it on."
http://navy.togetherweserved.com/usn/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApps?cmd=ShadowBoxProfile&type=Person&ID=536747
My dad got a nasty scare from being a pin setter at a bowling ally then in the navy he said every thing was a piece of cake
And Rico is NOT rated to repair the M3 tactical helmet.
No, live fire training is vital for all branches of all the Armed Forces. Nothing like chambering rounds and maneuvering & shooting. I flew F-14s; we could practice intercepts all day (ho hum). But firing on a live target — missiles against drones or other missiles, bullets against banners, or bombs/PGMs against ground targets — caused the pucker factor to go way up. Operating effectively while a lot of stuff is going bang and boom around you is key to success in battle. Accept no substitutes.
“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”
Back in the 70’s we’d hold a big inter service East Coast training exercise called Solid Shield. Every year they figured that we’d have half a dozen or more fatalities, IN A TRAINING EXERCISE!
Everything possible is done to prevent them, short of cancelling the training exercise. If it were cancelled, there might be even more fatalities from auto accidents on weekend liberty.
Nothing is completely safe.
People have been killed at the rifle range by wondering what the delay is in firing, then deciding to stick their heads up over the berm to see, just as firing resumed.
Not a good idea.
They were on the ground going under obstacles, and they were supposed to be firing live ammo well above them.
Active Duty ping.
This has happened occasionally and will happen again. What would your better way to do it be? It’s too easy to become sloppy and complacent when you aren’t in a live fire situation, keeping your awareness of what and whom is around you, where your friends are and where the enemy is.
This does not happen this way too often. There was a live fire incident at Camp Pendleton in 1970 on a range where we were training. I knew the kid killed and before I left training saw the incident report. Ruled out somebody with a grudge or human error. All indications were one in a million event of an explosion which threw rocks into the air and deflected a large fragment of a round passing over the explosion downward and into the guy who was prone, taking cover. It happens and part of the training risk. Knew of one guy who was about to rappel and had a brain fart when it came time to secure his line.
“... it is stupid to use live ammo ...”
-
Do you want to train for combat, or hide under your bed?
“Gee, hasn’t anyone seen Starship Troopers ?
Don’t even know what you’re talking about!
They ran out of any kind of ammunition so used paint projectiles instead for practice.
“Starship Troopers” was a really BAD movie made from a really GOOD book by Robert Heinlein.
In one scene, the protagonist, Johnny Rico, is taking his squad through a live-fire exercise in basic training. One of his squad has a malfunction with the comm system in his helmet. Johnny attempts to fix it, but after the kid takes his helmet off so Johnny can fix it....he gets a round through the head and falls dead.
Johnny is demoted, and as is the practice in that society, he is sentenced to 20 lashes with a whip in front of all the troops.
A week later all live fire was banned, due to fire danger. I always thought the "split bullet" theory was a little odd. I was learning, even then, that maybe "The Word" was rumor and gossip writ large.
We had live fire in training in 65, we were crawling through a obstacle course with a machine gun firing over us
What no dynamite going off in those fox holes you crawled past? :) Yes we did real Grenades as well even rifle grenades launched from an M1 Garand, fired from shoulder, man that hurt.
"You don't look over the top of the berm."
Looking for Maggies drawers?
True? Is Batman a transvestite? Who knows?
The Saddest thing in the world: After an afternoon of drizzling rain and shooting, a target covered with wet pasters, someone hit the target frame and it rained black sticky 1" squares.
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