..was NOT relieved from duty for that, according to Yahoo News, His ship had a "Persistent and undiagnosed problem with it's steerage gear" despite several attempts to fix it, that caused a "Near Miss" during a refueling maneuver. The Captain of a vessel has the ultimate responsibility for the safety of the ship and crew, which means he has to eat it until proven innocent.

The backwards scope deal shows any casual observer what his attention to detail is and the level of veracity he holds himself to.

That character flaw would lead to leadership issues that would be detrimental to his crew's good order and discipline refected in the mechanical state of his command.

to be fare the man May not be a gun guy. It's obvious someone handed him the rifle for a picture. he could be a fine captain that has zero interest ot knowledge of small arms. I mean wasn't he in charge of a guided missile destroyer. not sure an m16 would be interesting after that. especially if not a gun guy to begin with.

Maybe I'm unfair to squids but it's my belief that two things apply.

Every uniformed service member should be intimately familiar with the US service rifle.
Every commander should be intimately familiar with every weapon under his command.

But that just might be army talk.

Heck, I'm sure he has at least one jarhead aboard. Those mouth breathers could've gotten him squared away in about half minute if he had asked because every marine is a rifleman.

Navy 68 - 72. Only weapon I handled was a 45. There were five M1 rifles on the ship. Small arms are just not something the average sailor has anything to do with.
This guy trusted a (probably E-4) Gunners Mate to hand him a weapon for the posed photo session.
I have no doubt that GM got raked over the coals.

Remember everyone, just because someone was in the military and even if they got pretty high up, doesn't mean they know anything really about firearms

Well that confirms why we call them squids. Why isn't there a marine looking out for his bus driver?

would not surprise me if a jar head would do this on purpose or who ever picked the rifle. it's my belief the man was set up to fail. made someone mad at some point

remember when the ATF expert on Glocks couldn't break down a Glock as he was trying to explain how you could build one from parts.
he had basically no idea what he was talking about at all

they are suits there to follow an agenda and collect a check

[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VJFlgwTRYLE[/video]

My guess is he was told to pull up the rifle fire a couple shots for the photo-op, and hand it back.

Looks like he's at sea so probably didn't even look through the optics. Just pulled it up fired off a couple rounds towards the water and the photog took a blast of pics and then picked the one where you could see the rounds ejecting and it was over. Probably handled it for about a minute at most.

Took the words right of my mouth.

If the dude was respected and admired by his crew, the pic of the scope backwards would have never happened.

True that. Gotta take care of the good ones because they are few and far between.

So you think someone put the scope on backwards to make him look bad?, or did someone just screw up and installed it wrong and that rifle was just grabbed for the photo op...???

I almost feel sorry for the guy, losing his command for a Navy screw up for not fixing the steering issue, but we'll likely never know the whole story....

I would think the armorer should be the one installing the scope.

From other articles I have read the problem that caused the Captain to be relieved was related to control of the ship, specifically it's steering. The Navy installed touch screen controls for the steering and this ship has had problems with it since, including before this Captain took command. The reason for going to touch screen controls was to reduce the manpower required to staff the ship. I can't assess the competence of the captain to command, but it sounds to me like he got saddled with a problem due to decisions made well above his level and now he is being tagged for it.

On a separate issue, I don't understand why every member of the military does not have to qualify with standard issue small arms. Even if they did, an individual might not recognize a scope mounted backwards because that doesn't look like a standard issue scope.

Aren't Squids required to qualify annually with small arms?