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While the basic concept of shooting is easy to understand, many find that they struggle to maintain accurate groupings even under easy shooting conditions. When you are facing an urban survival scenario, you may not have the luxury of a missed shot.

In this article, we will go over the 5 main shooting principles taught to both the U.S. Army Snipers and United States Marines, to make you a better marksman. If you adhere to these basic principles and spend time practicing in a variety of terrain and atmospheric conditions, you will be capable of taking controlled and accurate shots no matter what situation you find yourself in. This can be the difference between life and death.

1. Solid Shooting Position

The first rule to shooting true is to have a stable firing position. A correct shooting position is a combination of holding the rifle correctly and positioning your body correctly for your terrain and situation. There are various ways to stand, sit, and kneel while shooting as well as competing theories for how best to hold the rifle.

In the end, what you are trying to achieve is a steady and relatively comfortable position that allows you to fire accurately, make use of your available cover, and will enable you to move quickly if need be.

It comes down to hand positioning and body positioning:

• Familiarize yourself with the various hand positions and decide through training which works better for you.
• Your body positioning will depend on your situation, and you should get familiar with shooting from all positions.

Basic Rifle Shooting Positions

There are four basic positions for shooting rifles or carbines. Obviously, it is impossible to encompass and name every possibility*. These are just the most basic stances you will want to practice.

*Snipers have something like 12 variations of the prone.

1. Standing: This is simply shooting while standing. Either in a long-range marksmanship stance or in a combat-ready stance. This is the least stable position, provides the least concealment, but allows you maximum mobility.

1. Kneeling: This is most commonly done with one knee down and one knee up, often with the support arm resting in the meat of the leg for added stability. This support provides more stability, in turn more accurate fire, and is a nice compromise between mobility, accuracy, and a small silhouette.
2. Sitting: Sitting on the ground, either ‘open legged’ or ‘cross-legged’ with your elbows resting on the meat of the legs for stability. Another compromise between mobility, stability, and silhouette size. Sitting is often used when firing downhill or in awkward terrain.

1. The Prone: This is what you call lying down on your stomach. The feet are usually slightly bent to provide added stability. This is the most stable and accurate firing position but is also the slowest to move out of.

Tips for Creating a Solid Firing Position:

• Relax: You should be able to relax when in the correct position. Your bone structure should naturally support your firing position — muscle tension will cause shaking and muscle fatigue, killing your accuracy. Neck should be relaxed, and cheek should rest naturally on the weapon stock.
• Rifle Butt Placement: Should be firm and high in the shoulder. Snugness will reduce the disparity between the movement of the front sight and rear sight picture. Proper placement of the butt also helps to steady the rifle and lessen recoil.
• Avoid Bone On Bone: Your elbow directly on your knee, as an example, is hard to keep still. Put your elbow into the meat of your thigh (for example) and you will have less movement in your position.

Hand Positioning

Firing Hand: Once again, according to the U.S. Army’s Special Forces Sniper Training and Employment Handbook: The shooter should grasp the rifle firmly but not rigidly with the firing hand. Exerting light pressure rearward.

Off-Hand: let the weapon rest in your nonfiring hand. Where exactly you grab will depend on your preference and situation. Longer range shooting is usually done while resting the mid-point of the barrel on your hand. Close-range combat shooting has proponents both for short stocking the rifle as well as for grasping it further down the barrel.

Using Shooting Supports (Walls, Windows, etc.)

These are examples of Nonstandard Supported Positions and/or Field Expedient Weapon Supports Used by Army Snipers:

1. Foxhole-Support Position: Used primarily in prepared defenses. Sandbags or other material may be used to provide a stable firing platform.
2. Window-Supported Position: While the window edge can be used to stabilize the weapon for added accuracy, it makes you more conspicuous. Firing from inside a room will conceal your position better.
3. Bench-Rest Position: Used when firing from a building, a cave, or a deeply shaded area. If you have time, you want to set this up inside the room. You can use a platform or table and chair to set up a comfortable and secure shooting position.

You will run into situations where properly supporting your weapon and getting a stable firing position will rely on common sense and imagination. Practice various support styles and positions – “Train as if in combat to avoid confusion and self-doubt.”

2. Proper Aiming (Correct Sight Alignment)

Your ‘sight picture’ is the term used to refer to the visual of the alignment of your front and rear sights when aiming in. One of the most common mistakes with inexperienced shooters is that they are not able to always bring the rifle, or their cheek, back to the same exact position each time they aim in and have to re-locate the correct alignment.

More experienced shooters will have the muscle memory that allows them to quickly aim in correctly. Many shooters will put a piece of tape on their buttstock to gauge were their cheek is resting and to assist them in finding the same spot each time.

A small misalignment in your sights can throw your shot way off target. As the Marine Corps Fundamentals of Marksmanship Handbook states: “A correct sight picture will be where the target, front sight post, rear sight and eye position are completely aligned.”

Determining Elevation and Distance

Another aspect of proper aim is ensuring that your sights are set at the proper distance. Having your sights set at 500m will not allow for accurate shots at 200m. While this is a subject all its own, it needs to be said at some point in this article. Get used to judging and determining distance and changing your sights to match.

Most urban combat training involves keeping your sights set to around 200m-300m and training your muscle memory to compensate for this on the fly. You don’t want to be stopping to adjust sights in the midst of a shootout.

As the Marine Corps Fundamentals of Marksmanship Handbook states: “When working with different distances, adjust your aim to the physics of the bullet. 300m is generally aimed at the center of the target.”

3. Breath and Muscle Control

Your breathing causes your chest to rise and expand, causing movement throughout your body. Learning to control and account for your breathing is key to high-level marksmanship.

The principles are simple to understand, but hard to master.

1. When you are ready to shoot, take a deep breath and exhale about half of it out.
2. Hold your breath as you compress the trigger.
3. Release your breath only after you have taken the shot.
4. If you hold your breath too long, your heartbeat will increase and your weapon accuracy will decrease.
5. Learn to relax and calm yourself as you take the shot. Heavy breathing from exertion or adrenaline will decrease accuracy.

If you fire on the inhale, your shot will go high. If you shoot on the exhale, your shot will dip. If you are hitting in an up-down pattern you need to practice your breathing control more. Learn to fire on the pause, the stillness, between breaths.

4. Steady Trigger Pull

Most shooting errors stem from improper trigger pull at some point.

Trigger control is not only the most important fundamental of marksmanship but also the most difficult to master.

– U.S. Army Special Forces Sniper Training and Employment

You must learn to press the trigger with consistent and steady pressure and without anticipating the shot. The goal is to maintain your aim as you pull the trigger and take the shot. This is harder than it sounds.

Many shooters will flinch as they squeeze the trigger, throwing their aim off. New shooters often squeeze the trigger too abruptly and pull on the rifle as they do so. The natural pull of your finger is not straight back, and it takes many shooters a while to figure that out.

If your shots are off in a left or right pattern group, trigger pull may be the culprit.

Snipers are trained in two methods of trigger pull:

• Smooth motion/constant pressure trigger pull – “The sniper pulls the trigger with a single, smooth action…This type of trigger control will help prevent flinching, jerking, and bucking the weapon.”
• Interrupted trigger pull – The sniper applies pressure to the trigger when the target is in sight alignment. If the target moves off, maintain trigger pressure and wait until sight alignment is regained. Continue this method until the weapon is fired. This technique is often used when standing due to wavering sights around.

Anticipating The Shot

You must try and be surprised each time you take a shot. Many shooters sub-consciously anticipate the shot and will flinch, if only just a little bit, as they shoot. You must train and train to work this out of your system if necessary.

5. Combat/Survival Marksmanship: Break the Rules

You must first learn to master the rules before you can break them. You must break the rules in order to survive. Many techniques like proper sight alignment cannot be properly utilized, nor do they need to be when engaging targets in close quarters and/or urban terrain.

In the Marine Corps Rifle Marksmanship Handbook, they delve into an engagement at around 50 meters (probable for urban or jungle scenarios). They stress that at close range, a target must be engaged quickly and accurately.

The closer a target, the less you need to focus on proper sight alignment. At close quarters combat, Marines are trained to point their shoulders at the enemy and to look just over their sights as they fire. This is trained often enough to allow them to be accurate at close range through muscle memory alone. This shows that with enough training, you can become accurate at close ranges without impairing your vision or wasting valuable time by ‘aiming in’.

At close ranges, trigger control should be applied quickly and instantly the moment that sight picture is achieved. Trigger control is applied as sight picture is being acquired.

– Marine Corps Rifle Marksmanship Handbook

Once the first two shots have been fired and you regain the initiative, your weapon should be moved to your shoulder and the tip of the front post used for the follow up shots.

– Marine Corps | Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT)

In the end, you need to practice, practice, and practice some more. Test yourself and see how you perform with different challenges. The more versatile and accurate you can be in a variety of scenarios, the more likely you are to survive an engagement – or come back from a hunt successfully.

Sources Used:

• U.S. Marine Corps
  • Rifle Marksmanship
  • Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT)

• U.S. Army
  • Special Forces Sniper Training and Employment
  • Close Quarters Combat Techniques

All Images Taken from Public Domain Government Publications (Free for Public Use).

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Have you ever thought about what you will do if the SHTF and friends and/or family start knocking at your door, asking for help? During a local, temporary disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane, it would make sense to help them. I know I would.

But what if it’s a long-term disaster with no signs of abating? What if you only have enough food to last your family a few months? If you start letting in friends and relatives, then next thing you know, your food will be gone in a week. Then the people you helped will be right back where they started, only they’ll have dragged you down with them.

That’s why a lot of preppers keep their stockpile a secret, as well they should. However, if you have a chatty friend or family member who spills the beans about your preparedness plans, then a lot of people might end up finding out anyway. If that happens, then you could end up in a situation where you have to turn people away–people you care about.

This is easier said than done. If people are banging on your doors and windows, begging for help. You or one of your family members are likely to cave and let them in. And even if you still don’t let them in, these people will get so desperate that they might try breaking into your home. Could you really shoot a friend or relative?

In this video, Ethical Preparedness discusses this problem and talks about what you should do. This is one of the most interesting and practical discussions of this topic I’ve ever seen. Watch it below.

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A hallmark of economic catastrophe for a country is the collapse in the value of its currency, otherwise known as ‘hyperinflation’. Cases of hyperinflation abound throughout history, with two of the most famous happening in Weimar Germany in the 1920s and, more recently, Venezuela after the oil price collapse in 2016.

Typically, inflation rates occur in conjunction with economic growth rates. As the economy grows, it becomes slightly more costly to buy goods and services, leading to a gradual decrease in the value of the currency.

Occasionally, governments that are deeply in debt with no way to raise their income levels start printing money in order to pay off the number value of their debt. Owe $20 billion in Bolivars worth of debt to a creditor? Just print out $20 billion Bolivars and pay them back, easy peasy.

The problem with this is that, because every currency today is ‘fiat’ and not backed by any particular commodity like gold, the increased supply decreases its value. Once the value begins to decline, any foreign investor that has any amount of the currency in their holdings rapidly begins to throw it away in favor of a currency that has a higher value, flooding the market with even more supply.

This begins a runaway effect on the value, so where a commodity like a loaf of bread cost 2 units of currency at the beginning of the process, it can start costing 50, 500, 5000, and even 5 million units of the currency to buy that same item. Soon, everyone’s savings become completely worthless, and unless they’ve prepared beforehand, they’re completely and utterly broke.

For Western countries, this seems like an unlikely event. The U.S. dollar, while still a fiat currency, has been backed by the cost of oil since the Nixon administration. Thanks to our close ties to the wonderfully stable Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, oil is traded using only the value of the dollar as an exchange rate.

This means that the U.S.-backed Kingdom is necessary for continued U.S. dollar valuation. If they should fall and the next ruling party should select a different currency, the currency would go back to being based on next to nothing. Combine that with our $20 trillion-and-climbing debt, and you get a potentially disastrous situation.

So, if we find ourselves in a situation where the inflation rate is starting to climbing into double-digit levels, we want to be prepared for a situation where our money isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

Hyperinflation preparedness can be broken down into three different time spans – what to do leading up to the crisis, short-term ability to bug out and survive the initial wave of chaos, and long-term asset production.

The Preparation

We need a plan of attack for when disaster strikes – where are we going to go? How are we going to get there?

If you’re looking to escape the country, you’re going to want to divest yourself from your country’s currency and economy. There are a few methods to do this:

Invest In Foreign Assets

You have the option of investing in foreign economies rather than your own. This can mean buying foreign real estate, keeping your money in foreign banks, investing in the equities of foreign companies that do NOT depend on the U.S. economy, or just keeping a reserve of that country’s currency.

Make The Jump To A Primarily Digital-Based Income

With the advent of the internet, there are near limitless opportunities to start a digital business or find gainful employment that is entirely remote. Find a niche on Upwork, Fiverr, or an entirely independent business, and begin moving towards a digital nomad lifestyle.

Invest In Digital Currencies

Often hailed as the currency of the future, Bitcoin and similar digital blockchain-based currencies offer a potential safe haven for your money, as their worth is not tied to any particular currency. However, their value is extremely volatile, so venture into digital coinage very carefully, as you can very easily lose everything.

If you’re going to stay in-country (maybe this is a world-wide economic collapse), you’re going to need to start investing in high-value items and in-demand skills to ensure both short- and long-term survival.

Stockpile Barter Items

High-value trade items include weapons, ammunition, food, and drugs (tobacco, medicinal, coffee, alcohol, and marijuana). Here’s a list of barter items to consider.

Develop Essential Skills

People need certain things to survive and thrive. Your job is to provide them with the items or services that allow them to do that. This includes carpentry, blacksmithing, farming, or warfare.

Acquire Asset-Producing Items Like Arable Land

The value of having a plot of land that has ready access to flowing, fresh water cannot be overstated. People are going to need to eat, and the ability to get away from high-population areas that will be the epicenter of civil strife will increase survival chances a dozen times over.

If you go this route, try to make sure it’s at least ready to start producing crops at any given time. Pigs and chickens are also high-value assets to keep on your land for fertilizer and food.

Build A Reference Library

If you lack the experience or know-how upon arrival, readily available information is essential. Hardcover books kept in a sealed container should give you everything you need once the situation deteriorates. Here’s a list of survival books.

Short-Term Mobility

Mobility is absolutely key, whether you’re getting out of town or getting out of the country.

• Leaving The Country
  • If you’re heading out of the country, you need to make sure you have enough of whatever assets you’re keeping outside the bounds of your country’s currency for a plane ticket out of there. Once the ticket is secured, get to the airport, then watch as your home country devolves into chaos from the safety of your new home.
• Staying In The Country
  • The usual bug out bag with food, supplies, etc. will be necessary.
  • A car that has some off-road capabilities is a wonderful asset to have. A small stash of extra parts for it – like extra tires – and some extra fuel will provide you with a safe ride to your out-of-town destination. (Remember, gas has a 6-month useful life expectancy, so change out stored fuel regularly.)
  • Bring the bartering items and any materials for a productive life that you haven’t already moved to your destination with you.

Long-Term Survival

If you’ve prepared accordingly, a post-money life may not be so bad. If you’ve stocked weapons, food, water, and basic luxury goods like drugs, you’ll more than likely have everything you need to get started.

Produce, Produce, Produce

• Once you’ve arrived at your new primary residence, you CANNOT wait to get started on producing.
• If you developed a skill, begin offering your services to your neighbors.
• If you bought arable land to produce food, start fertilizing it, plowing it, or otherwise preparing it for the growing season. Your existence now depends on your assets to start producing value.

Build Your New Community

Whether you’ve chosen to invest in a skill or in productive assets, you’ll need to either join or create a community of like-minded individuals who can watch each other’s backs and provide for one another. This community is your lifeline, and a solitary life is not only an exceedingly difficult one, but one that is hardly worth living at all.

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