Category: Shooting

They cheat.  That leaves one of our shooters with a bronze.

This weekend my club is hosting the NRA State Championships for Air Rifle and Air Pistol Silhouette, which I will be shooting in.  It’s going to be tough, becauase I ended up shooting a AA score a few nights ago and am now classified as AA, even though I’m normally in the A range.

Right now I’m shooting one of these.  It works fine for IHMSA in the production category, but there are a few things about it that are problematic.  For one, the trigger pull is brutal.  The pull is so long and rough, you probably ought to buy travel insurance for your finger.  I cleaned it up a bit by polishing the engagement surfaces, but it only helps a little bit.  Still, I think I need to learn to shoot well with a sloppy trigger.  Someone at the club last night showed me how to clean the trigger up, but doing so would put me in the unlimited category.

I’m thinking about getting one of these.  A lot of shooters seem to use them, and it also solves the problem of not having to worry about my CO2 running low and my shots dropping.  Our master shooter who uses the same gun I do, and can shoot much better than I, can compensate for that pretty well.  As a novice, it’s another variable that’s distracting me from the fundamentals.  Of course, I also don’t know how I feel about a Russian airgun knowing my money will be going to help The Bear maul infant Republics in their cradles.

Blue Trail Range is opening the 100 yard firing line today, with approval from the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.

“We reached this conclusion as a result of our careful assessment of the many physical improvements that have been made to the 100-yard shooting area at Blue Trail and improvements in operating procedures that the management has committed to implement,” McCarthy said in a written statement issued late Wednesday.

“We were able to make this assessment with the assistance of our Environmental Conservation Police unit, which had several senior officers inspect the range and which has special law enforcement and military expertise in firearms and range safety,” she said.

This is good news.  It would be a pity to lose this range because of one sleazy developer with a slick media game.

Jamie Beyerle.  She took 4th in 10m Air Rifle.  And Fifth in Women’s 3 Position 50m Rifle.  And she’s a Pennsylvanian.  Good show!

Are some people still trying to argue these rifles have no sporting purpose?

Looks like Kim Rhode managed to give her competitors quite a run for their money in Women’s skeet:

Cainero, Rhode and Germany’s Christine Brinker were tied with 93 points each, an Olympic record, after the final round of the women’s skeet. The Italian won the shoot-off for gold in the rainy conditions, hitting both skeets while Rhode and Brinker hit 1-of-2.

Rhode then hit both targets in the second shoot-off to pick up silver and Brinker settled for third after connecting on just 1-of-2 skeets.

This marks the fourth Olympic medal for Rhode, who won gold in the double trap event in 1996 and 2004 and bronze in that category at the 2000 Sydney Games.

“I have a collection now. I have a gold, a silver and a bronze,” said Rhode.

We congratulate her.  She has represented her country well.

UPDATE: Voolfie comments: “Kim Rhode just won the Silver Medal in Women’s Skeet.  FOUR Olympiads, two different sports and nothing worse than a Bronze Medal, ever…2G; 1S; 1B.  Simply amazing.”  Indeed

This time in the Hartford Courant.  Let me ask you folks this: Do you think Barack Obama’s EPA is going to work cooperatively with shooting ranges to help ranges minimize their environmental impact?  Or do you think Obama’s EPA will use lead contamination as an excuse to shut ranges down?  Think about that come November.

Blue Trail is the last public outdoor range in Connecticuit.  It would be a horrible loss to the shooting community to lose it.  After bringing in experts to verify that the houses that claimed to be hit could not have been, it would seem that developer Pat DiNatale is taking up a new approach: lead.

What’s most curious to me is that the picture presented here looks nothing at all like lead corrosion.  In fact, elemental lead is highly corrosion resistant.  Even strong acids don’t have a large effect on lead.  In addition, oxides of lead are usually white, bright yellow or bright red/orange.  The picture above looks more like corrosion of iron or steel than lead.  Lead is not very soluble in water.  Most of the environmental concerns for lead contamination revolve around the use of lead oxides in things like paints, and lead salts.  Elemental lead is not really very hazardous, and lead contamination from shooting ranges has never been shown to pose a serious hazard.

Walton Eller, a Texan, has won the gold medal in Men’s Double Trap in Beijing.  Silver was Italian Police Officer Francesco D’Aniello.  Bronze goes to China’s Hu Binyuan.  Italians seem to be pretty dominant in the shotgun sports.  But be all those fine expensive shotguns.

Michael Bane has the coverage.  Bitter was lamenting over the weekend why the United States doesn’t absolutely dominate at the shooting sports.  I think part of the reason is that a lot of our really good shooters compete in other shooting disciplines, and don’t get involved with the Olympic shooting sports to the extent people do in other countries.

Think about how many good high-power shooters there are out there?  Not an Olympic sport.  I do Silhouette, which is also not an Olympic sport.  IPSC?  IDPA?  Steel Challenge?  Pin shooting?  Olympic sports none.  I think the reason Americans don’t dominate Olympic shooting is because here, there’s just so many other disciplines to choose from, many of which are a lot more interesting than standing stationary ten meters away from a paper target with a $2000 air gun.