Imperial Guard Sharpshooter - Sharpshooter Training: While the vast majority of Imperial Guardsmen recruited across the length and breadth of the Imperium are issued with the ubiquitous lasgun, the degree to which they are trained to use it varies enormously. The bulk of regiments are raised from existing military organisations on their homeworlds and so it can be assumed that most guardsmen of the Astra Militarum have some affinity with their weapons, but this is not always the case.Some units issue their troops with lasguns but forbid them to use their weapons in anything other than ceremonial roles. Others regard the expenditure of ammunition on anything other than slaying the foes of the Emperor a sinful waste, meaning that troops recruited from such cultures might be adept at maintaining their weapons but entirely unskilled in their use. Some planetary defence forces are so lacking in resources that only a proportion of those inducted into the Astra Militarum have ever handled a lasgun, even though each world is required to render up the best of their forces and to arm them for the travails ahead. Needless to say, such laxity is a crime of the worst order for which the Imperial Commander responsible is likely to pay with their life.Conversely, other planetary defence forces are drawn from cultures steeped in the use of the lasgun and a myriad of other forms of weapons technology. Some populations exist in a state of total war, whether against lawless elements of their own society, xenos invaders or the environment itself. Needless to say, guardsmen recruited from such cultures require little in the way of training and often respond badly to any Drill Abbot that attempts to do so.Because of the huge disparity in training and familiarity with the weapons they will use, the Departmento Munitorum has a gargantuan task to perform in terms of imposing standardised doctrines and drills across the Astra Militarum. Most regiments are transported some distance to their first (and often last) deployment, and to ready them for their role on the battlefield, they are often subjected to a brutally intensive training regime whilst aboard the troop transport ship.It is during these punishing sessions that those with a natural aptitude with ranged weapons are identified and assigned to yet more intensive instruction. Depending on the length of the voyage, these individuals might have time for familiarisation with every weapon in the regiment's arsenal, or with just a few.To augment the training aboard the troop transport vessels, some regiments employ courses of hypno-indoctrination to give their troopers new skills. The knowledge to operate a wide range of weapons are blasted directly into the recipient's mind by a highly invasive procedure that bypasses conventional procedural memory processes and implants the necessary expertise indelibly upon the individual's psyche. This technique does not necessarily improve the recipient's native talent, but it can vastly increase the range of applications for which that innate ability can be used. For a guardsman, this might mean gaining the ability to wield weapons they have never even seen before as if they had been using them their entire life, the implanted memories imposing themselves upon their mind when required.Many guardsmen who become skilled with precision weapons receive no formal training whatsoever, instead learning the use of a wide range of weapons as necessity dictates. Some are forced to take up the weapon of a fallen comrade, and in so doing discover a previously unknown talent. Others are assigned training drills as a form of punishment for some minor disciplinary infraction, the regimental provosts noting the latent skill and ensuring it is exploited, regardless of the trooper's wishes.