I know a lot of people who are hobbyist shooters. They buy their guns and pay for their own ammo, and each shot fired is money out of their wallets. I, and twenty-two other soldiers from my unit, on the other hand, went out for a training shoot over the weekend, where everything was provided for us. And man, was it provided. We put sixty-six-thousand rounds down range, all full-auto! It was awesome! Our rates of fire were so crazy, our machine gun barrels barely got time to cool off. There were times where we'd switch one barrel off, only to replace it with a second still-smoking barrel from earlier. I dug a pit under my gun's tripod, about two feet deep, and it easily overflowed with brass and links.

Also, I've proven that I'm pretty adept with the gun and the C2 sight. I feel very confident with the sight, and can quickly lay on targets. Apparently command was impressed that I was getting so many first-round hits when sighting new targets, up to a kilometre in distance. "So I hear you're a killer!" my warrant officer said to me, haha. It feels pretty good to get that sort of recognition.

So not only did we get to fire a ludicrous number of rounds with guns you can't legally own civie-side, we got paid for it. My job can be pretty brutal sometimes, but it also has its perks!