"It's not the rifle, shithead, it's you".

[Diz]

This is a direct quote from my other buddy, Hawkeye's evil twin, whose has just completed his 4th tour of southwest Asia. They were doing a buttload of AK training with the Afghan National Police (ANP). One comment he kept hearing was "It's an AK, it won't shoot any better". Well, one day he heard it one time too many, and grabs the guys rifle, aims in off hand, and commenced to hit steel way past where the jundies were aimed in, and proned out at that. He then told them "It's not the rifle shithead, it's you. If you guys would start listening to us, you could do that too". Which in fact did start to happen, once they applied the Basic Rifle Marksmanship (BRM) skills to the project.

I think this illustrates a common problem in this country as well. A lot of folks don't bother to take the time to learn BRM with the rifle. See FM3-22.9, Rifle Marksmanship, August 2008 for a complete description. It is of course AR-centric but you'll get the point.

[Hawkeye]

This was funny when you first told me, and it still makes me chuckle every time. Its amazing how many "shooters" have very poor BRM skills.