Nampa Rod and Gun Club

222 West Railroad St.   Nampa, Idaho

Club News




AN ESSAY FROM THE OUTDOOR WIRE
Over the past few days, I've had the pleasant occasion to communicate with Roy Jinks, the historian for Smith & Wesson.

Those too-brief conversations have reminded me that shooters have absolutely no reason to apologize for our love of shooting sports. In fact, our love carries on a love affair with shooting that has existed since our nation's founding .

We are not some aberrant drip from the gene pool of America, we are a continuation of an interest that has been integral in spinning the unique fabric of the United States of America.

Shooters are as American as "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and...".

You get the picture.

Even a short conversation with Roy Jinks brings that picture into clear focus.

Everyone knows that frontier riflemen were recruited by the Continental Army due to their abilities to place a bullet accurately into small arms targets more than 300 yards away. But Roy Jinks brought the wonderment of those abilities into clear focus when he explained the King of England offered a reward for the capture of a rifleman and his return to England to demonstrate their marksmanship.

According to the traditions, Jinks says, a marksman was delivered.

He displayed his skills; enlistment in the English military dropped.

And shooting for sport - and big money - was once a major spectator event in places like (gasp) New York City and Chicago, Illinois.

In 1868, a major match was held in New York at the Jones Woods facility.

It was significant enough that Harper's Bazaar dedicated their entire front page to the event - and it's enormous total cash prize of $30,000.

As perspective, the Jones Woods facility, complete with 56 firing points on a 300-foot range only cost $40,000 to build.

Great shooting matches were major sporting events worldwide.

Wimbledon, Jinks recounts, wasn't originally built for tennis, it was a shooting facility.

When it was "surrounded" by the urban sprawl of London, the matches moved to Bisley - a name now synonymous with marksmanship.

No local fair, exhibition or traveling show was complete without an exhibition shooter or two.

While I'm not old enough to be of particular interest to a historian like Roy Jinks, I very much remember one of my favorite reasons for going to the Kentucky State Fair: the shooting gallery. When I first frequented them, we were shooting little pump-action 22 caliber- shorts at a variety of metal targets. Hearing the ping of my shot hitting a target is a sound that I recall as vividly as the unique smells of the carnival midway - or the horse barns. I frequented them all, but the shooting gallery got my money every time.

Shooters have been- and still should be- part of the fabric of our nation.

So what has happened to reduce shooting to a virtual non-event in America? That's a question for all of us.

First, we have done very little to keep our history alive- at least not outside the ranks of shooters.

The 1900 World's Fair in Versailles, France had a Smith & Wesson venue for shooting. It was once very much the sport of aristocrats - and cowboys. Our history shows photos of doctors, lawyers, judges and other professionals competing in a coat and tie. At one time, hundreds of trick shot experts toured the country.

Today, we still have great shooters, but outside the now-aged "Tales of the Gun" or occasional "Modern Marvels" segments on The History Channel, you're hard pressed to find anyone portrayed positively in a shooting context.

It may be we spend too-much time talking about the tools -and none about the craftsmen. Nike, the juggernaut of sports, spends very little time talking about their products - they're all about the people who use them.

Having spent time speaking with Roy Jinks and browsing historical documents and videotapes, I find myself wondering why we don't use great shooters from yesterday - and today - to preserve shooting for the future.

Theirs are entertaining stories - about people who are at the highest levels of elite athletics. We have a variety of competitive shooting activities to choose from, with champions every bit as amazing as the shooters from our past.

Let's all personalize shooting with positive role models instead of aberrant loonies.

We might not all be champion shooters, but we can be positive champions of shooting.

--Jim Shepherd