There’s nothing quite like firing a full-auto weapon. But there’s also no denying that shooting a full auto rifle is quite a different experience compared to firing a semiautomatic weapon. The basic rules of firearm safety still apply, but there are a few specifics that are unique to full auto weapons you should be aware of.
Today, let’s go over the five tips you need to know to shoot a full auto weapon safely and enjoyably.
Learning to Shoot a Full Auto Weapon
1. Practice Correct Grip with Your Support Hand
First off, there’s something you need to learn about shooting any full-auto weapon (but especially full auto rifles): both hands are needed.
Forget what you see in action movies, where the hero goes around toting a machine gun in either hand.
In reality, accurate full auto shooting depends on you having a solid grasp of your gun’s grip while also being supported by your “support hand.” This is whatever hand you aren’t dominant with.
That hand should constantly be resting against the gun’s barrel and pulling the weapon into your chest to better control recoil.
Using both hands properly ensures you’ll be able to keep the weapon under control as you spray bullets.
2. Keep a Solid Stance
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Next, you’ll need to make sure you maintain a solid stance. This is important for any shooting, but it’s especially true when using a full-auto weapon.
Make sure that your body is set up with your weight on your front foot and your rear foot in a stable, supporting position.
By leaning into your weapon, you’ll offset the recoil that inevitably comes with full auto guns.
3. Be Ready for Recoil
Speaking of recoil, be prepared for a lot of it! Even if you don’t fire very high caliber bullets or if your weapon isn’t particularly high-powered, you’ll still need to compensate for more recoil than you might be expecting.
Simply put, rifles that spit out tons of bullets at once produce a ton of kickback.
This means you’ll need to spend lots of energy keeping your weapon’s barrel pointed in the right direction in your body stable and secure.
Mentally and physically preparing for this recoil will help you avoid surprises when you squeeze the trigger and fire off a few rounds in rapid succession.
With recoil, it helps to think of it as a mounting pressure that progressively becomes harder and harder to control. The longer you hold on the trigger, the more difficult the recoil will become.
4. Conserve Ammo!
Again, movies showcase heroes with machine guns firing entire boxes’ worth of ammo in just a few short seconds. This isn’t realistic, however.
Ammunition is expensive, and even if you have tons of crates to blow at the range, you don’t necessarily want to fire everything in a few minutes.
In truth, machine guns should be fired in bursts. This both helps you conserve ammo and helps you maintain strong control over the weapon before recoil becomes overwhelming.
5. Use Short, Controlled Bursts
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Again, using short and controlled bursts is key when firing a full auto weapon.
These still allow you to take advantage of the full-auto nature of the rifle in question. But short and controlled bursts also help you conserve ammo and maintain control over the firearm.
Wrap Up
All in all, these five tips will go a long way toward helping you shoot a full auto weapon and have a great time.
Be sure to have someone experienced around if possible and especially if it’s your first time. But otherwise, good luck and good hunting!
What do you think of full auto weapons? Do you like them or not? Let us know why in the comments section!
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I’ve owned full auto weapons for several years.
While they’re fun to shoot, they’re expensive, they go through a lot of ammo in a short time, and honestly, for any defensive use, I’ll grab a semi-auto anytime over one of my machine guns.
So true. On one of my contracts in Iraq, we had Kurds as shooters on our vehicles. They were all equipped with AKs and various Russian machine guns. But the Americans on the team were all armed with semi-auto AR SBRs. The Kurds were told that if they couldn’t suppress or hit one of the bad guys who shot at us regularly, they should get one of the Americans to come take care of the problem. We had a guy on one of the teams who’d been in Mogadishu and he attested that it was aimed shots that had kept them alive.