Military Experts

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:

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I don’t keep one in the chamber for my concealed carry pistol. Many gun enthusiasts do, but I don’t have a safety on this pistol, and I do have a kid. Also, when in the military a boarding party was getting ready and holstering their pistols,… pic.twitter.com/ZbeTozqy8S

— Joe (@JoeAlderman11) August 27, 2026

To support his supposed opinion, he makes the appeal to authority, claiming, well…

I could probably put every shot in a 10 ring without hesitation. Thats just a simple step beyond the normal ones. pic.twitter.com/FrVqrW4dBI

— Joe (@JoeAlderman11) August 28, 2026

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.