I had my first real training and test this morning: qualifying on the M9 pistol.

About 15 military members from Air Force, Navy, and Marines reported to training at Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA) Lackland this morning, with about 5 civilians. Everybody but me had previous, recent firearms experience, but I had been assured by many friends that this would be easy so I wasn’t too worried. It wasn’t long until I realized I was woefully underprepared for this training.

The Beretta M9 is the standard sidearm for America’s armed services. If you’re a strapping young soldier who does physical work on a fairly regular basis, it’s a pretty easy weapon to handle; if you’re a desk-bound mid-life woman whose most physically demanding tool usage is limited to a coffee grinder and a mechanical pencil, you might be in for some trouble.

Operating this gun requires far more hand and finger strength than I anticipated. The weapon is not sized for Dainty Lady Hands, so some functions that could be performed easily by a person with larger and stronger or more dextrous and practiced hands necessitated my either shifting my hand around the grip or using two hands to perform the tasks. This made my handling of the gun look and feel clumsy, plus I was conspicuously slower than the rest of the students.

Not having familiarity with how to handle the moving parts left me with a “slide bite” within the first 5 minutes of class. It barely qualifies as an injury, but that red mark on my hand is like a scarlet letter A for Amateur. So embarrassing.

Furthermore, I lacked the finger toughness needed to manipulate the weapon over a period of hours. I had let my nails grow out over the last couple of weeks and cut them very short just last night. The protection of the long nails allowed my fingertips to get soft and tender, so the repeated pressing of stiff spring-loaded buttons and levers on the gun plus the loading of rounds into the resistant magazines made my fingertips inflamed and sore fairly quickly. I actually have a bruise on the tip of my right thumb. It was a mighty uncomfortable few hours.

My underpreparedness was additionally highlighted by my failure to properly fit my protective gear before we started on the firing range. Moving from a standing stance into a kneeling position during a timed firing drill is not the moment to discover that crouching causes your flak vest to ride up in the back where it tips your helmet over your eyes so you can’t see what you’re shooting at. More humiliation.

Helpful tip:  when spent shell casings ejected from the weapon of the shooter next to you land on your neck, don’t freak out even though they’re hot.  Flailing is strongly discouraged on the firing line.

All in all, it was a rough morning and I looked like an idiot. At least I managed to keep my weapon pointed downrange and avoided shooting myself in the foot. Despite my slowness, clumsiness, and discomfort, I’m pleased to report that this sorry tale has a happy ending: I passed my qualifying test. We shot 45 rounds in various positions from various distances, and you had to get 31 of them on the target silhouette to pass. Fortunately for me, the hits didn’t have to be in the center-of-mass circle, just on the paper. I got 35, ALL over that paper — but on it!

And I learned some important lessons that I’ll use for next week’s M4 training. I’ll share this advice here for those of you who might find yourselves going to firearms training at Lackland:

1. Work on your hand and finger strength and dexterity. You’ll need to have strength for squeezing and for applying pressure with your fingers and thumb extended.
2. Toughen up your fingertips. Cut your nails short and develop some callouses. Tie snug knots in rough, stiff ropes and then loosen the knots with your fingers. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
3. Conduct gear and clothing fittings in advance. If your pieces fit individually when you’re standing up straight with your arms at your sides, that’s just swell but also meaningless. You have to be able to move into all kinds of positions with all the gear simultaneously functioning as intended, so make sure that will happen before you show up for training.
4. Bring a bottle of water or two. San Antonio is hot, and it’s a lot hotter wearing a flak vest and helmet. You can’t avoid getting sweaty but you can avoid getting dehydrated.
5. Bring wet wipes. After classroom training and firing drills and qualification, you’ll be required to clean your weapon. Your hands will be covered with oily cleaning solvent and the only thing supplied by the instructors to wipe it off your hands will be the oily cleaning rags you just used to wipe down your gun.

Note also that for the rest of the day you will smell like gunpowder and gun cleaning solution no matter how thoroughly you wash your hands because it gets on your shirt. Bring a change of clothes for your return to the office, or just walk around the cubicles smelling like a sniper and let your friends and coworkers be impressed.  I won’t tell anybody if you don’t.

MM