The one thing the Marines can do better than anyone is shoot. To qualify at the range you must be able to shoot in the prone position, the seated position, and in the standing offhand position. You must shoot in rapid fire, and within the context of a more relaxed time frame, at various distances up to five hundred yards. Using your rifle sling, it is possible to hold the rifle steady and draw a bead. The Marine Corps shooting technique involves four phases. Breathe, relax, aim, squeeze. This is known by the acronym BRASS. It works for just about everyone. I mean, it’s got a far higher success rate than Alcoholics Anonymous. As we practiced our shooting I could immediately see what the problem was with Lieutenant Baker. He would take the deep breath, blow it out, and then aim. But instead of squeezing the trigger, he would jerk. The reason for this had to do with the BRASS technique. Just after you take a deep breath and blow it out, relax and aim, time stops. Your concentration becomes so intense that all of time stops from here to the farthest reaches of the Milky Way. From here to all hell and gone. The next part should be easy, you just squeeze, but in the millisecond of stop-time, Lieutenant Baker’s eyes would glaze over as he went past the Tao of military science and entered the realm of cosmic consciousness. When his brain finally screamed for him to inhale, he would jerk off a round and miss the target altogether and then look at you with a stupid blank stare.