There is hardly anything more deadly than a Marine and a weapon, but the Marine Corps Shooting Team is teaching Devil Dogs to be even more lethal — and allowing them to compete.
"We take a good or decent shooter that rose to the top of his or her peers and we make them a more proficient, a more disciplined and all-around better shooter," said Master Sgt. Jeremy Coppola, the team’s staff non-commissioned officer in charge.
The shooting team holds two-week competitions at Marine Corps bases overseas and in the U.S., where team members train Marines of every rank and military occupational specialty to improve basic marksmanship skills and shoot in dynamic environments.
"It’s an opportunity for up-and-coming/budding shooters who have an interest in marksmanship to go out and compete," Coppola told Marine Corps Times in an interview.
The next competition is scheduled to take place between March 10 and 24 at Marine Corps Base Twentynine Palms in California, followed by a competition from April 7 to 21 at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, according to MARADMIN 632/16, which has information on how Marines can participate.
The two-week competitions involve shooting from a specified yard line with either a rifle or pistol as well as dynamic matches, in which Marines have to transition from one weapon to another and there is no limit on how much ammunition Marines can use, Coppola said.
"He is just told to engage and neutralize targets," Coppola said. "The way that he neutralizes those targets and the amount of ammunition he uses is going to be on him and how he develops his plan of attack."
Typically, the Marines who score in the top 10 percent at the competitions are invited to the championships, from which the shooting team selects members to compete in the U.S. and internationally, officials said.
"If we accept them to the shooting team, it’s essentially another duty station for these Marines," Coppola said. "These Marines actually get orders, they come here, they shoot for three years and then they go back to the greater Marine Corps and give those skills that they’ve attained while being on the shooting team back to their new commands."
In the past, the shooting team held two competitions — one for fundamental skills and the other for dynamic shooting — but the high operations tempo prevented Marines from being able to attend both, said Capt. John Sheehan, the team’s officer in charge.
The two-week competitions offer a way for the shooting team to teach both sets of skills to Marines, Sheehan said in a Jan. 25 interview.
"We’ve got the cadre of really experienced marksmen and we’re spreading what they know across the Marine Corps," he said. "The intent there is to improve the force."
Marines who take part in the competitions can earn points toward a Distinguished Marksman or Distinguished Pistol Shot badge, but Marines also enter the competition out of an innate desire to rise to the top, Sheehan said.
"We take on the approach that competition breeds excellence," Sheehan said. "If you and I are competing against each other – because we’re Marines we’re typically that Type A personality that are aggressive and want to win – we’re going to push our skills and abilities beyond what they were before they began just because we want to be the top dog. We want to be the winner."
