June in coastal South Carolina can be hot and humid, but the breeze off of the Atlantic Ocean generally provides some welcome relief. Such was the case in the summer of 1987 when I found myself lying in the grass of the rifle range on Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island.
My platoon, 1054, had a fantastic primary marksmanship instructor, a dark green Marine who held the rank of Sergeant. Thirty-nine years have caused his name to slip from my memory. However, the lessons that he taught us remain as strong as they did during those two weeks in June of ‘87.
Essential Marksmanship Lessons
The Marine Corps prides itself on making “The World’s Finest Marksmen” and that’s not hyperbole. Four decades ago I was taught all of the essential marksmanship lessons. Applying them, I scored “Expert” with the M-16A2 rifle.
In our modern world that’s swarming with shot timers and people overusing the word ‘tactical,’ there’s a tendency to put fundamental marksmanship principles on the back burner and focus on making noise faster than the other guy. However, let’s talk about a gun handling fundamental…stoppage clearing.
SPORTS: The Coolest Acronym Ever
All self-loading firearms can experience stoppages, an interruption in the cycle of operation, of which there are eight steps. For that reason, it behooves trainers to teach their students how to clear a stoppage when one eventually occurs.
One of the coolest acronyms that the military ever came up with was ‘SPORTS.’ I don’t know if it was the Army or Marine Corps that used it first, but I’m betting that the staff sergeant who created SPORTS got either an Army or Navy Achievement Medal.
The way our PMI explained SPORTS was as follows:
If your rifle has a stoppage, you will perform SPORTS to fix it. S, slap the magazine. P, pull back on the charging handle, O, observe the ejection port. R, release the charging handle. T, tap the forward assist. S, attempt to shoot your rifle.
Naturally, we young privates were in awe of how smart that was. We memorized it quickly and could recite it back to our PMI chapter and verse. We know that SPORTS was created for the M-16A1 rifle as it was the first service rifle to include the forward assist, something Gene Stoner did not include on the original AR-15 prototypes.
SPORTS: Wrong for Every Occasion
During live-fire rifle qualification on the island, I never encountered a stoppage and so I never needed to use SPORTS. I moved to the infantry and other special assignments, to include becoming a USMC rifle and pistol marksmanship coach. Once more, we were taught SPORTS. Like good troops, none of us questioned it.
It wasn’t until I had left the Marine Corps — the first time — and took more training that I came to the realization that SPORTS was either more steps that necessary…or not nearly enough steps.
Allow me to elucidate. Not including the bolt-override stoppage, there are three primary stoppages that you’ll encounter with an AR-15/M4 rifle: Type 1, click, no boom. Type 2, stovepipe/feedway obstruction (piece of brass stuck in ejection port), or Type 3, double-feed (two objects attempting to occupy the chamber at the same time).
When considering the AR/M4 rifle as a fighting instrument, if you’re engaging the enemy and your gun stops making noise unexpectedly or goes ‘click’ instead of ‘boom’ you may have the rest of your life to fix that problem. Kind of like deploying your secondary parachute.
The enemy isn’t going to call timeout and let you fix your rifle. You either need to skin out a pistol or fix your rifle as fast as possible. For the Type 1 and Type 2 stoppages, we clear them by dropping our elbows to our ribs (ejection port toward the ground), tap the magazine (once), rack the charging handle vigorously (let it go, allowing a full compression of the recoil spring to drive the bolt home) and attempt to fire if the situation warrants.
That’s it. Two steps, not six. We don’t need to hold the bolt open and look at the chamber. We don’t need to tap that button on the side of the upper receiver. Tap/rack and shoot, if need be. You can do that in the daytime or in the dark, rain or shine.
For a Type 3 — the dreaded double-feed — you have the recoil spring putting pressure on the bolt and the bolt pushing two objects into the chamber. You can SPORTS your AR until you die and that method won’t clear a double-feed.
The double-feed stoppage is most often realized during the immediate action drill of tap/rack. Your AR stops making noise unexpectedly, you instantly perform tap/rack and that’s when you come to the realization that something more sinister is going on. From a tactical standpoint, you can either skin out a handgun and keep fighting or tell your buddies you need cover firem or go find some as you clear out the double-feed.
The standard AR double-feed clearing mantra is, Lock, Rip, Rack, Reload. Lock the bolt open to get the recoil spring tension off of the bolt and chamber. Rip out the magazine. Nine times out of ten, it’s the magazine that caused the double-feed. With the mag out, rack the bolt once, twice, three times for good measure. Ninety-nine times out of 100 that will clear the brass traffic jam. Grab a fresh mag and reload like you should — insert it fully and rack the bolt vigorously to the rear. Then, if you still need to keep shooting, do so.
Parting Shots
The fact that SPORTS is either far more steps than necessary for a Type 1 or 2 while at the same time nowhere near enough steps to clear a Type 3 can’t be debated with any level of intellectual honesty. Regardless, we have folks who still cling to it as though it’s the fifth gospel in their religion.
Why? Because it’s just such a cool acronym and people feel cool saying it. Also, for many people, it was a part of their foundational training.
What we know about our first experiences in any subject is that they tend to stick with us like glue. Nonetheless, if we’re being honest, we need to evolve and improve. SPORTS was always wrong, from the moment it was created, and we need to tip our hats to the coolest acronym ever and move on.
To learn more information like this, we suggest you go to Student of the Gun University online or simply, www.SOTGU.com.
Paul G. Markel is a combat decorated United States Marine veteran. He is also the founder of Student the Gun University and has been teaching Small Arms & Tactics to military personnel, police officers, and citizens for over three decades.
we had a joke around here about clearing jammed guns back in the days when the area was eaten up with anti-gun groups people and used to show up at the ranges to harass us: Since anti-gun people are so [falsely] concerned with ‘firearm safety’ and present them selves as [faux] ‘experts’, get an anti-gun person to look down the barrel to make sure there isn’t a round chambered.
Even invited a few of them to do it. They suddenly were not such experts and reverted to their true form of spitting screeching creatures from another planet. They especially didn’t enjoy the mannequins we set up on the range with their pictures on the heads where the face would be.