Replies

There’s two problems at work here, from my observation:

1. The cost to become competitive at this level is ferocious.

To outfit a youngster with an air rifle, shooting coat, gloves, etc... we’re probably looking at about $3K to start, and then there will be ongoing costs of training, service to these high dollar rifles/pistols, travel to matches, etc.

The air rifles that are used at national levels of competition are like the one the young lady from the PRC is holding: They’re typically German or Austrian, with names like Anschuetz, Feinwerkbau, Walther, etc.

And they *start* around $2K. Just the aperture sight packages for these rifles costs more than $400.

I know that there’s a lot of people saying “Pffft. You don’t need to spend $2K, why I used a blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Yea, and I suppose you’re ready to compete in a NASCAR event with your family mini-van, right?

To the people who maintain that such rifles aren’t required, I’ll say this: You probably have never even held a serious target rifle. There’s a reason why you’ll see nothing but Anschuetz/Feinwerkbau/Walther on the firing lines: That’s what it takes to compete. The 10-ring on a 10m air rifle target is 0.5mm in diameter. These rifles are capable of hitting that 0.5mm point shot after shot after shot... if you do your job. There’s no serious air rifles made in the US, period. There never have been serious air rifles made in the US.

The situation is the same in .22 events. I own an Anschuetz 1807 .22LR target rifle set up for 3-position. There is nothing made anymore in the US that will touch even this out-of-date Anschuetz. Nothing. There used to be a couple rifles that would come close - rifles like the Winchester 52B/C/D and the Remington 40X. There’s nothing in the US market new any more that can or will come close to what the modern Annies will do. That rifle cost me about $2300, “new old stock,” which means that it came to me via a US importer of rifles that had been sitting in some European dealer’s inventory for 10+ years. It was new, but it’s two evolutions behind the current state of the art from Anschuetz. A new .22LR top-of-the-line rifle from Anschuetz will set you back nearly $4K.

Here’s a site where you could buy everything you need to compete in serious matches in one stop:

http://www.championshooters.com/store/home.php

Poke around a little bit. Add up the prices.

If you want to seriously compete in the target world, you’re going to have to put in a bunch of money. It’s true in the shotgun sports as well - you’re going to be into the gun to the tune of $3K on up (for a used O/U shotgun) and then the shooting costs will consume hundreds to thousands of dollars per month. If you’re trying to compete in the shotgun sports and you’re thinking you’re going to get there with a Remington 870.... you’re not. After shooting a couple thousand clays in a week with a off-the-shelf 870, your shoulder is going to fall off. And the 870 will probably fall apart.

And I’m just talking “regular” clay games. I won’t even get into the neurotic, single-purpose guns that the trap people use. For the clay games, you need to be breaking thousands of clays per week to become good. To offset the expenses, many youngsters need to become sponsored by some company. Kim Rhode gives a very good idea of the expenses in this interview:

http://www.eliteshooters.com/articles/kimrhode.html

NB the line: “Pallets of ammunition.”

BTW, Kim just won her fifth gold in women’s skeet.

2. Youngsters in the US today can’t seem to settle down and concentrate. I’ve been on ranges with young people straight out of the US Army and I, a 50-ish geezer, have shot rings around them. Why? Because I’m not concerned with just “sending lead downrange.” I shoot for scores. I know what a minute is, to the second, in my head. I know what the drill is, and can run through the drill automatically in my head. I can shoot rings around them with my rifle(s), and, more damningly, I can outshoot them with their own rifles.

But most of all, I believe the reason why I can outshoot young people is that I have an attention span longer than it takes to read a 140-character message on their damn phones.

About the only young people that I observe who can shoot are the Marines. The Army? IMO, there’s lots of people who have been in the Army who can’t hit the side of a barn... even if they were standing inside it with the doors closed.

The civilian kids? Pfffft. Spray and pray. Too many, when turned loose on a rifle range, are no better than third worlders with AK’s. Every youngster who I let shoot my Annie 1807 jumps the trigger. They all talk a big game about how they want a super-duper light trigger. Well, when they actually have their finger on an 8-oz trigger, the result is the same every time: unintentional discharge. They have no actual idea what a serious target trigger is, nor any notion of how to control their trigger squeeze. But boy oh boy, do they talk a big game when talking about what kind of trigger they want.

They’ve never seen a shooting coat. They think it’s an “unfair advantage,” and they have no interest in learning how to get one or use one, nor how to use a target or 1907 sling correctly. Matter of fact, most of them laugh at the idea that a sling improves your shooting. Again, only the Marines seem to know anything about using slings.

The problem isn’t that the NRA isn’t “doing something” about this. The problem is that the vast majority of today’s youth have the attention span of a goldfish. If you want to become a good shootist - and I mean *just* a “good” shootist, not an Olympic level competitor (which is a whole ‘nother level of concentration and commitment), you have to exhibit some attention to details, concentration, commitment and sacrifice. You’re going to have serious expenses of money, time, material, etc.

A big piece of the problem very early on, IMO, is that the prevailing rifles owned by young people from an early age are semi-autos. Semi-autos teach horrible shooting habits. Want to cripple a kid’s shooting career from the get-go? Give them a Ruger 10/22 as their first rifle. I don’t think there’s a bigger POS on the market today that gets given to kids to start them off on the wrong foot.