Well, I never learned anything about shooting or tactics in the military that cannot be learned better and in a shorter period of time at any one of the many high quality shooting schools out there. That's even considering half of those schools are taught by military and police people who can distill a lot of their experience into a smaller amount of high quality instruction.

I learned how to shoot at a DCM club when I was in high school and told the Marine marksmanship instructor to just leave me alone. Then there was that whole stupid idea of taking your rifle sling apart and wrapping it around your arm and tweaking the rifle barrel hard enough to affect your point of impact while having it so tight you lose feeling in your off hand.

I have been rewatching some of the Hutaree videos and reading some of the commentary about how full of crap they are, but reality is, they were not half bad with what they were doing.

I would not go downtrodding what they were training, but it is not urban ambush techniques or the vehicle drills you would expect to see in modern urban guerilla warfare. These guys are not driving convoys and having ambush/react to ambush vehicle drills and chinese fire drills with guns. What they do a lot of is pretty decent quality infantry patrol and enemy contact techniques consistent with their rural areas of operations.

I am not knocking someone who joins the military, especially when they are stuck in a life situation where they are on the fast to nowhere treadmill of shit jobs, exploitive rents, and overall social disrespect that can often lead to the sorts of issues that put people in jail. I see guys in their late teens or early 20s not being given a real break, not being told the truth about the way things work and not really being mentored, then I think a reasonably smartly mentored tour in one of the services can be a good life enhancement move for them.

My first MOS was not in a combat arms field, but I had free time, money and military discounts at private training courses which were run by people with the real experience and some connections anyway. I signed up for what I could and actually made it a lifetime commitment to do some sort of combat arms training course once a year, whether or not I was in a combat arms MOS. Sure, there were guys all proud of sporting their "wings" around the barracks and chow hall and all, but what could they say when I piped up that I had just gone to a private jump school run by Marine officers anyway? That's the difference between a has-been and a "doing it right now' sort of thing.

I eventually got tired of the BS and went into combat arms MOS jobs for the remainder of my time in the military, and of course that was a one way trip since the non-combat arms MOSs are where you have to take orders from bitches which sort of goes against my grain.