 What is happening guys, Staff Sergeant Massey here, also known as our Chisel on social media and welcome to another episode of US Army Basic Combat Training, many series, your future starts here. For today's episode, we're gonna be talking about firing weapons while on basic training. Check this out. I myself, when I went through basic training, I never had any background. I never fired a weapon. I do not know anything about weapon systems whatsoever, but to become a US Army soldier, you will learn these basic fundamental techniques on how to fire a weapon. Once you go to basic training, you will either get assigned an M16 or an M4. The drill sergeants will be teaching you basic rifle marksmanship techniques. Also at basic training, you will be using blank rounds, live rounds, you will qualify with your weapon before you graduate and you will also be put into the test by moving, communicating, using live rounds and movement and all of that with your assigned battle buddy. It's our first class, Griffin Perry. I'm a senior drill sergeant with Alpha Company 360th, responsible for coordinating and planning training for the week, for each duty week. So right now, the trainees are conducting rifle marksmanship period nine, which is group in zero of their M68 CCO. So they progress from iron sights or backup iron sights to M68. We'll go through group in zero, two days where they do their grouping, eight out of ten rounds in a four centimeter circle and then they zero, getting those ten rounds, center mass on the silhouette. They've been firing live rounds for about two weeks now. Initially, they're really timid because they're not really understanding the capabilities of their weapon or what the weapon can actually do. So they tend to be nervous their first couple of times before they fire live rounds. After they get on the range a couple of times, they're a lot more comfortable. They understand the capabilities of their weapons. They understand how to handle them safely. So the biggest transition that I see is confidence in themselves. They come here not sure of what's going on, what's going to happen. Not sure how difficult the challenges are going to be, but after pushing themselves through ten weeks of training here, they start to understand that they're capable of more than maybe they thought they were when they arrived here. So the biggest transition would definitely be the confidence in themselves and their abilities. So the best piece of advice I would give to someone that's considering joining the Army is to prepare themselves, not only mentally but physically. One of the biggest things that people tend to not be prepared for is the physical challenges that are going to be presented to them when they get here. Not just with the APFT but with road marches and with obstacle courses and things like that. So being physically and mentally prepared is the biggest thing you can do before you come to base of training. I had a grandfather who was in the military, who was a medic during World War II. I had a couple of friends that had joined the military. So me wanting to challenge myself and also wanting to do something better that was not only a stable career but something that I could take pride of doing. I wanted to help my mom. She's a single parent of four kids and she had a stroke a couple years ago. So it limited her abilities to work. So she was down for about a good six months. So I was kind of footing the bills and working two jobs and going to school full time wasn't kind of helping. So I knew I had to do something different and set a better example for my siblings. It's a different experience. It's something new and it's a great experience to meet other people from the different sides of the world. Different cultures, different vibes, feelings. It's amazing. Originally I was going through a different branch. My mom said there's more than one branch to go through. So keep trying. I jokeling axel which one do you think is better. Of course the army is better. So we kind of started the conversation from there. Just told me to come into the recruiters office. They kind of broke it down for me to where I would be able to explain it. It just wasn't here. You're just going to sign your life away. Once we were done our recruiters they did every Tuesday and Thursday everyone that was enlisted. Everybody that was going to ship out. The future shippers. We all got together and we were doing PT which is just basic exercising. We did combative training. We ran to prep us for basic training. So when we got here it wasn't just a jam shell. We didn't know what to expect. My sister is joining right behind me. She's a 68 whiskey with combat medic specialist. I told her it's a good choice. It's good for her. It'll help her but I told her also don't get discouraged. It will get tough at times. But she just got to push through it because at the end it's going to be a bigger picture. I just want to give a shout out to my mom for sticking by my side in my decision to join the Army. It was the best thing ever. Super supportive. And I just love her for being there for me. Thanks mom. So today we have them going through deferred issue basically where they're going to receive their ASUs and anything associated with that. So berets, shirts, pants. So this is just the phase two.