For the fun, for the challenge, for the responsibility

I've been gestating the idea of a local shooting facility for several years, and the idea is finally starting to take shape.

Not everyone has access to land and a place to shoot. I grew up with both and I tend to take my good fortune for granted.

In my mind it would be nice to have a place where people could go to shoot at short or long ranges, shoot pistols, rifles and shotguns, to do serious marksmanship training or to simply plink at cans and paper targets. A place for enjoying guns and the shooting sports, a place to teach, to learn, to gain skills, to improve skills.

Perhaps most importantly, a place to learn about, think about, talk about and practice the moral and ethical responsibility that comes with our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

I don't want to simply build a public range. Nor do I want to simply give people access to a place to shoot. There are too many problems with those approaches.

What makes sense to me is the idea of forming a group -- a community if you will -- of people interested in having shooting fun, but also willing to take up the challenge of learning, teaching, growing skills, gaining proficiency, and most of all, of vigorously embracing the responsibility that goes hand in hand with our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Punching paper and plinking cans is all well and good, but there are other shooting sports as well. One that really intrigues me is the two-gun action challenge match. Ian and Karl explain it better than I can.



And Karl does a very fine job here bursting the "Tactical Timmy" bubble. As he said in the previous video, the gear is cool and fun to wear and try out and learn about. But the gear isn't the point.



Here is a series of videos I put together to demonstrate a mock-up stage of a two-gun ACM. Now here are some things I already know. I'm not a professional internet video producer. I'm not a "tacticool operator." I'm old and fat. Nevertheless...

First of all, gear. Two-gun means rifle and pistol. You don't have to use an AR and a black pistol. It can be a single-shot .22 rifle and a gate-loading single action revolver.



Overview.



Very first run-through. Warts and all.



Second full run-through. Some improvement, still an old fat guy though. Sorry about the wind noise; it's Nebraska in March.



The next three are pistol only. Still old and fat, still windy.







So. If you're from around these parts and are interested in putting something like this together, respond in comments (I know, it's tricky with Blogger), respond in koobecaf (read that backwards) comments, call or text me, or look me up. I'll set a date and time for an initial meeting to kick the idea around. I'm thinking a weekday evening in the library meeting room.

Thanks for reading and watching. Hope to hear from you.