US Army Reserve Shooting Team member and Olympian Keith Sanderson discusses Olympic pistol shooting disciplines.
Keith Sanderson on Olympic Pistol Shooting
July 27, 2012
ConventionalShooter, Shooting, Video 8 Comments
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Firearm User Network 
Aug 02, 2012 @ 08:03:05
How do you account for the gold medals both individual and team in International/Olympic rifle and the abysmal showing in pistol especially Rapid-Fire. We haven’t won a medal of any kind in this event since Bill McMillan in 1960?
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Aug 02, 2012 @ 15:38:13
How many ranges do you know hosting International disciplines? How many gun owners are even aware of, never mind actually participating in, the shooting formats in the Olympics.
American gun owners don’t know about this. Organized and competition shooters are a tiny minority.
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Aug 03, 2012 @ 07:05:13
What you say is true although, I started an ISU league in the Buffalo area which carried on even after I left the area. It’s now defunct as people have moved to IPSC and IDPA.
Getting Gold Medals has worked for the rifle shooters, mostly coming from the AMU. So what’s sauce for the goose….specifically what’s wrong with the pistol shooters in the AMU etc?
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Aug 03, 2012 @ 07:14:12
john, what you say is true, although some years ago I started and had flourishing ISU league in the Buffalo area, and was the only person to organize send a NY State ISU pistol team to Germany. After i left it continued for awhile until the IPSC and IDPA came along. So it can be done.
To address the point again, AMU has supplied many Gold Medal winners in rifle…so what’s up with the AMU pistol shooters. In the present Olympics we weren’t even a factor.
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Aug 03, 2012 @ 12:38:53
It can be done, provided enough people care and are actively involved. Conventional rifle competition draws many more participants than conventional pistol. Just look at the difference in registered competitors at Camp Perry between pistol and rifle events for an example.
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Aug 03, 2012 @ 16:00:31
John, Having given it a bit more thought, the rifle shooters go out and compete nationally and teach various army groups. The difference between NRA/ Military style shooting is not as at a greater variance with Olympic style. Whilst, in pistol shooting the AMU shooters have to teach and compete in NRA/Combat/IDPA/IPSC all of which are vastly different from ISU. I think it’s probably a lack ISU training time. It would be nice if the AMU could expand enough to have more people like Keith spend all year preparing instead of having to do all the things he has to do now. I’m sure it comes down to the AMU budget.
What’s happened at Perry is that IPSC and IDPA have cut into the shooters who would shoot the NRA style.
BTW the cost of target systems is well within the average clubs budget now. They’ve done away with those very expensive turning target systems. The start stop now could be done by whistle at club level. Just thinking what about ISU Centre-Fire, what have they done with that at the Pan-Am Games etc?
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Aug 04, 2012 @ 10:52:31
>> The difference between NRA/ Military style shooting is not as at a greater variance with Olympic style. Whilst, in pistol shooting the AMU shooters have to teach and compete in NRA/Combat/IDPA/IPSC all of which are vastly different from ISU.
Valid point. In fact, the AMU fielded two of their 3P smallbore shooters at Interservice and Perry this year. To nobody’s surprise, they did well.
>> What’s happened at Perry is that IPSC and IDPA have cut into the shooters who would shoot the NRA style.
Possibly. OTOH, many action pistol competitors might not compete at all if conventional disciplines were the only game in town.
>> BTW the cost of target systems is well within the average clubs budget now. They’ve done away with those very expensive turning target systems.
CMP/NRA pistol still uses turning targets, although a whistle and stopwatch can be used. I think the electronic targets (Sius) used in most ISSF events are more expensive to install than turning targets…
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Aug 04, 2012 @ 11:54:38
John, actually since the ISU pistol targets are stationary all that is needed are five red light and five green with a simple automatic timer. As a matter of fact when I was putting together the ISU league in the Buffalo area we held all matches at one range as there were four ISU turning target bays. i forgot to mention these were indoor 50′ bays with suitably reduced ISU targets. A local Wizz Kid put together an NRA/ISU fully automatic timing device for all four bays.
Scoring can be done manually at the targets.
For NRA indoor/outdoor events, you can use every other ISU target for each competitor and as you say use whistle and stop watch if no turning targets are available.
My own Idea to further upgrade the ISU RF, CF and STD for spectator and competitor satisfaction is to replace the paper target with a suitably downsized clay-bird, of say the nine ring, a la Biathlon. For CF and STD a slightly larger Target frame to accommodate five/ten clay-birds. Here the Hit or miss scoring would be used throughout.
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