I get so sick of people claiming to be experts with firearms because they earned a ribbon in the military. Let be give you a great example of that:
To support his supposed opinion, he makes the appeal to authority, claiming, well…
The Coast Guard pistol qualifier consisted of 30 shots taken from 3 yards out to 15 yards, with every shot worth up to five points. Expert requires the shooter to score 143 points or more, or about 96% of the scored shots earning the maximum of 5 points. So how hard is that? Here is a picture of the Coast Guard target.
The colored zones are worth from 1 to 5 points. The target is 25 inches by 40 inches. The 5 point zone is 8 inches by 14 inches, making the maximum 5 point area much larger than the IDPA 8 inch -0 zone. Here is where the course gets easy. A total of 48 shots are fired, and the best 30 of those shots are the ones that are scored. The rest of them are considered “practice shots” and are essentially scored as mulligans.
| Distance | Total rounds in published sequence |
|---|---|
| 3 yards | 12 |
| 7 yards | 12 |
| 15 yards | 24 |
| Total | 48 |
So to REALLY take a look at what it takes to be a Coast Guard pistol expert, the shooter fires 48 shots. Of those, only 60 percent of them have to hit the center of the target. The shots have to be fired in a certain about of time:
| Distance | String | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 3 yards | Draw and fire 2 | 4 sec |
| 3 yards | Draw and fire 2 | 4 sec |
| 3 yards | Fire 2, reload, fire 2 | 10 sec |
| 3 yards | Draw and fire 4, including a hand transition | 8 sec |
| 7 yards | Same four strings | 4, 4, 10 and 8 sec |
| 15 yards | Draw and fire 2 | 4 sec |
| 15 yards | Draw and fire 2 | 4 sec |
| 15 yards | Draw and fire 4 | 8 sec |
| 15 yards | Fire 4, reload, fire 4 | 20 sec |
| 15 yards | Kneel and fire 8 | 20 sec |
I want you to note that not one of those stages says, “Draw, rack the slide, fire two.” Instead, he uses as an example, a Coastie shooting himself in the leg as his reasoning for not carrying one in the chamber. I pray this one is satire.
1 Comment
Don Curton · August 28, 2026 at 7:33 am
Well, he’s carrying a Sig, so there’s that. Otherwise that “test” isn’t much different from the test we had to pass to get a LTC (back when that was required). When we were done and the instructor came by to grade, he just looked at my target, shook his head, and checked off PASS on my form. My target had a large hole about the size of my fist right thru the middle. No flyers, no strays. So yeah, not impressed by his little medal.
Not to besmirch those who served, but the few times I’ve shot with people my age who served, they were all absolute duffers when it came to shooting. Seriously. I had to take and remount a scope and sight it in because a guy who supposedly went to “sniper school” had no idea how to do that. Color me not impressed by their appeal to authority