Reinhamre wrote:A club match in Sweden in my club gathered 17 participants in standard pistol. And there are at least 5 more clubs in this town of 600 000 inhabitants
All six clubs have turnable targets, 50 m and 10m. (Some even Megalink) . At a match here last week 3 junior made over 530 in free pistol, the winner had 542 with two white shots in last serie.
This is what shooting is about in Europe.
By contrast, I live in a metro area with a population of about 5.6 million. Within a reasonable drive time I can visit at least 2 dozen clubs or ranges. Those are just the ones I can bring to mind because I'm familiar with them. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 40 clubs or ranges within the same radius; I simply haven't been to them all.
Including rifle, pistol, and shotgun sports, I can choose from more than a dozen competitions per week. If we're talking just pistol, on a monthly basis I could compete in 3 or 4 GSSF indoor leagues, 1 NRA Conventional, 2 IHMSA silhouette, at least 6 IDPA/USPSA/IPSC style matches, at least 3 cowboy action, and a number of unsanctioned club matches.
That's just what I can bring to mind quickly.
The Conventional Pistol matches are the only sort of formal, stand-up-and-hold-the-pistol-in-one-hand events on that list. The range that provides them has turning targets at 25 yards. At the last match, there were 9 participants. (To be fair, turnout gets light when the temp is near 100F and the humidity is so high it's dripping off everything until nearly noon.)
I am aware of no ISSF events, either official or unofficial, that happen anywhere near me. There may be something along those lines at one or more of the local universities but I don't know.
So that's what shooting is like in my part of the U.S. We have so much available to us in so many venues and so many completely different varieties of sports, all coming from so many different viewpoints regarding what's fun, what's a laudable goal, and what's worth our time that it's darn-near impossible for any one person to have even a halfway-complete picture of the entirety of shooting sports available in just this one metro area.
To tie this to the topic at hand, the rule changes -
I disagree mildly with bluetentacle. In the U.S., we do an incredible amount of competitive shooting. Competitive shooters are a minority of total shooters but there's still far more competition than most people realize. But is there anything in the new rules that would make what we see on television every 4 years so attractive that one of those competition-minded shooters would be prompted to think "Hey, that looks cool. I think I'll try that."?
Sadly, I don't think so.
I see several problems but chief among them is an excess of rules. I think it's useful to draw lessons from other shooting sports, so let me illustrate using a U.S.-centric example. Suppose you took it into your head that you'd like to shoot a rimfire target rifle off a bench at targets about 50 yards away and you don't want to be bothered with too many restrictions on what sort of rifle you can use. There are at least 5 sanctioning bodies in the U.S. that offer such matches - Rimfire Benchrest Association, U.S. Rimfire Association, American Rimfire Group, American Rimfire Association, and United States Benchrest. Since you want to shoot a rifle without many equipment restrictions, you can look over the rule books to see what's allowed. For the RBA, the entire technical section of the rule book that defines an unlimited rifle reads: "Unlimited scope power and weight. Firearm must sit entirely on bench and cannot be attached to the bench." If that's too much, there's always the USBR. The entire definition of an unlimited rifle in their rule book is: "Anything goes" followed by a short parenthetical statement that the rifle must be legal under federal, state, and local laws. That's an entire technical rule book section in just TWO words.
Now, look at the ISSF rules for, well, anything. Over in the rifle forum, they're talking about how the buttstock can or can't contact the chest under the as-yet-unseen new rules. I don't pretend to understand it but I do know rules addressing such things are sufficiently "fussy" that the average U.S. shooter would respond to them with a rude gesture, a few curse words, and would then walk away.
The more I read ISSF rules the more I get the impression that they are written by people with the mindset of a custom watchmaker - willing to deal with such minute details as to drive a normal person nuts. Yes, there are a few people who appreciate and will pay stratospheric prices for custom watches. There are shooters and administrators who, I suppose, thrive in environments where people can say, with a straight face, that the way you walk around the venue may have some impact on whether you're in compliance with the rules. Most people, though, just want to be able to tell the time or enjoy a shooting challenge without all the extraneous BS.
I can't see ISSF-style shooting being popular, much less dominant, in any environment where people have a choice. In the U.S., the choice of shooting sports is essentially unlimited. There's something for everybody. In that environment, ISSF-style shooting stands no chance of winning any popularity contests.
If, however, I lived in a country where it took weeks or months to get a license to own a gun, it would be reasonable to get something that is competitive on the world stage and not just locally. Please understand that this is not meant as an insult but it seems to me that for ISSF shooting to dominate, options must be artificially limited. That's not the case in the U.S. and I see nothing in the new rules/guidelines/principles that will make Olympic events more competitive with other shooting sports in the U.S.
The only other people who would put up with such rules are those with a dream of Olympic glory. Nothing will put those people off.
So if the function of these rule changes is to make the sports more telegenic, I think they'll fail. Nothing short of radical simplification that makes the sport visible to the naked eye without having to refer to a video display and thus readily understandable without explanation could do that.
That last sentence needs another long post to explain...but I think I'll sit back and see how badly I get flamed for this post before I dare to try again.
