Triangle Tactical Podcast and Blog on Guns, Gear, and Competition Shooting
Ben stated that these types of videos aren’t the best way to bring people into the shooting sports because they make good marksmanship look unobtainable, and that they make luck look like skill.
I don’t disagree on the latter point, to an extent. When only one take is shown on the video, it does make it look like he walked up to the line, fired two shots, and hit the target. Maybe he did, but I suspect there were more shots to get his dope before the shot that hit the target in the video. That’s okay though, because a video of a guy emptying several clips at a target not hitting anything isn’t very entertaining.
So why, then, do we encourage people to think this is what good shooting really is? Well, because it’s easy to understand and it’s satisfying. But if we want to actually grow the gun community, we need to show people what shooting is really like, and convince them that they can do it.
Shooting a cookie sheet sized piece of steel at 1000 yards with a double action revolver IS good shooting. The longest shot I’ve ever taken was on a similar sized target, just over 900 yards with a 52x Schmidt & Bender scope on a rifle all pimped out for doing that sort of thing. I literally couldn’t even see the target with my naked eye.
I don’t think a new shooter (or potential new shooter) watches that video and says “That’s really cool, but I could never do that, so I’ll just keep playing my Xbox”. Instead, I think many look at the video and say “Wow, that’s awesome. I want to do that!” Maybe they will act on it and try to get involved, and maybe they won’t, but whenever we have a well spoken steward of the shooting sports putting out entertaining videos for the masses, we win. It shows that guns aren’t scary, we aren’t all tacticool nut jobs, and that shooting is fun.
I like the videos, even if they are cut to only show the entertaining parts.
