‘PISTOL’ ARREST
Holsters: The issue M12 as well as the old M7 leather shoulder rig are used in small numbers. We have been issued Safariland thigh rigs or nylon rigs. I use a Blackhawk nylon rig since I bought it myself prior to deployment. I can put a variety of guns in it like my personal Beretta, M1911, H&K and so on. Very popular in the wire is a locally produced cheap knockoff of the Jackass rig horizontal shoulder holster. I really hate staring at muzzles when I am in line at the chow hall though. Especially when you consider the level of training of many of the troops.
Many guys also switch from shoulder rig to hip rig when they go out. In a stress situation this could lead to problems. Also, I’ve seen many troops put spare mags on same side of belt/vest or on straps of thigh rig (same side as gun). Don’t know how they expect to reach them with the weak hand if they need them in a hurry. The concept the pistol is an immediate-need piece is totally lost on the majority of troops. If you need the pistol it needs to be carried fully loaded and ready. Many troops don’t bother to chamber a round, and army doctrine states carry with safety on. As far as training, it sucked. They told my unit on a Tuesday night we would qual with pistol the next morning–with some of my troops never having handled a pistol before!
I gave an off-the-cuff class prior to qual. Everyone did qualify but the army standard is 16 hits out of 30 targets on a knockdown range. Peripheral hits counting as much as center hits, so no idea where guys were hitting to correct errors. There was no pre qual, static warmup target to analyze shot group location to teach correction (were short of 9mm ammo, even though at the end of qual we were given a buch of full mags to burn-up to get rid of it!). Just 30 shots for qual and no chance for troops to teach and learn.
With both rifle and pistol we did room clearing and close quarters combat stuff which would have been good training and did help, but were shooting singe shots at targets and were required to put the safety on between shots. The pistol guys shot 85 DA rounds in a day. So that’s it, under 150 rounds of pistol shooting–some for the first time–prior to going to war. We had no further practice in Kuwait (short of ammo you know) and that was it. One of our replacements showed up from Kuwait issued just a single mag of ammo for the trip!
My two cents is like a broken record. More ammo, more training, not new gizmos or technology. I feel the M9 is just as serviceable a 9mm as the next pistol. Would I feel better with a .45? For me, sure. But rather than spend money on a new pistol, lets burn training time and ammo on teaching soldiers the true art of proper employment of the pistol they already have.