One of my goals this year is to manage to get to, and compete in one or more 3 gun matches. This is one of the sports that caught my interest, and got me to pickup a rifle again after so many years. For those that don’t know what 3 gun is, it is a challenging, physically demanding event that requires the competitors to be agile, quick, and decisive using multiple weapons (handgun, shotgun, and rifle) and multiple loads (slug, buckshot, etc) across multiple stages with various barricades, cover, concealment, and distances.
Suffice it to say, it is very cool and a serious test. Some of the events around the country present physically demanding challenges as well as technically challenging your shooting skills. It seems that the folks at the Weapons Training BTN in Quantico have taken notice of 3 gun as well and are pulling together some new training plans that incorporate it.
I know that there were multiple times where I came on duty and was handed a shotgun and box of shells and told to walk my post. I wouldn’t have had an ability to get that box opened, and the weapon loaded given my lack of time with the shotgun. It did make a great club though and butt strokes do work if you can get close enough. Training Marines through the 3 primary weapons a rifleman might have ready access to, and using them in a course of fire as shown in the link is overdue, and a brilliant adaptation of a civilian sport to a training regime. As long as the CO maintains an ammo budget to support this it will be great.
Listen to some of the sound bites in the video. There are some classic ones in there, “…fighting to get back to our rifle…”. A perfect realization that the rifle is the best weapon out there.