Target shooting is very popular. If you include informal target shooting (AKA “plinking”) then it no-doubt accounts for the majority of ammunition sold. In my un-citable opinion it also accounts for the majority of guns sold. People who target shoot a lot tend to own a number of guns. People who use guns for hunting or defense need to practice with them, and this is generally target shooting of some sort.
Even after 50 years of meeting people from all over the U.S.and the world, I’m still astonished at people who don’t see life the way I do! It’s amazing that so many seemingly intelligent people can be so wrong!
I love target shooting. It’s no different than bowling, horseshoes, darts, or any other game of skill. Most people can hit a target at 50 or 100 yards. It takes some skill to keep your shots in a 3 or 4 inch circle at 200 or 500 yards. More still at 1,000 yards. It’s a challenge.
Moving targets are more challenging. I don’t hunt anymore because a) there’s very little game I want to eat, and b) I don’t really like killing animals needlessly.
We’re left then, with clay target sports: trap, skeet, and sporting clays. And of course, you and a friend in a field with a thrower and a box of clays.
Plinking in the yard, the woods, the swamp, the quarry - it’s probably the most common target shooting there is. Nothing sanctioned, nothing scored, no trophies. Just regular folks shooting at a tin can on a fence. We’ve been doing it almost since we got here. I’ve never met a gun owner that doesn’t do this.
Me? I’m the fun uncle to about 20 kids. I take them where their parents won’t. Fishing, boating, crabbing, shooting. Every adult and child in my family knows if I’m wearing pants, I’m packing heat, and even the non-gun [del]idiots[/del] democrats are ok with that around their kids. None of them are allowed to go shooting with me or grandpa just yet, but will someday.
I recently had some of the younger ones with me and my son, crabbing near the IC in Florida. It’s remote country. Snakes, gators, 2-legged vermin and so forth are possible, so I have the appropriate tools with me. At some point a plastic bottle floats slowly by. I screw a suppressor onto a pistol and pop a couple of shots at the bottle.
The kids all come running, wanting to see more, but I told them we’re not here to shoot, really, and we’d have to ask their parents.
Later at the house, one of the kids mentions the Great, Dangerous, Awesome Shootout of The Swamp to their folks. Mom - my wife’s little sister - freaks. I’ll spare you the drama, but address one line of the evening: “What kind of person just pulls out a gun and shoots a bottle?”.:eek:
Well, 100, maybe 200 million people here in the U.S. alone. Your dad is one. So’s your uncle. And your cousins. And your sister. Yep, dad’s been taking his 3 girls to the range ever since they were little. The one I married has followed the True Path of Gun Owners, 
while the other two went to the other side.
No, miss Holier Than Thou can’t comprehend just plinking in the country because it’s fun. It’s as common as buttered toast, has been for 200 years, and isn’t illegal, immoral or fattening. Unlike toast, which I assume Bloomberg will be after soon.
All this coming from a woman - and hubby - who collectively drive a Porsche Cayenne S Turbo, Panamera 4S, 911 Turbo, Audi R8GT, S8, and Q7. Two people.
When we have fun family debates over what is “necessary”, I generally have enough ammunition…
See my reaction is that if you profess to love the outdoors as much as you do, you’d be keen to protect it and should have removed the bottle from the ecosystem, rather than shooting it. But perhaps she has another reason for her reaction.
If the only firearm-related activities were target shooting and hunting, there would be no problem with requiring people to register their firearms, to store them at designated storage facilities, to get permission from the authorities before using them, etc. There is no mechanism preventing a government from drafting laws to regulate recreational activities.
The goal, as I understand it, is for gun owners to retain their ability to purchase weapons and keep them at home without government intervention. So they frame the discussion in terms of Rights, and possibly of Benefits to Society. This allows them to invoke the constitution, which talks about militias and (apparently) about self-defense.
I go to Winchester Gallery. And many retail workers, no matter where they work, act as though customers are an interruption and a bother.
Where I live, target shooting is extremely common. I usually hear gunfire when I step outside the house. Mainly neighbors plinking in the backyard. *Everyone *around here shoots.
My first thought was I hope the bottle wasn’t still floating by when he shot. One of the basic safety rules is “don’t shoot at hard surfaces or water”.
Purely anecdotal, but it seems like nearly everyone I know who does target shooting also hunts.
I do Cowboy Action Shooting when I can (not as often as I’d like). Lots of guns. Lots of fun.
That said, sport shooting is not the primary reason Americans protect their gun rights.
I shoot targets, but not game. I don’t like the taste of game. I also don’t like dressing it and butchering it, or having it butchered.
Interesting responses so far.
FWIW, when I said “Target shooting” I was referring to organised competitions like the stuff the CMP and the NRA run, as opposed to “plinking”. I figured most US shooters with access to somewhere safe to do so would engage in a sport of informal target shooting with bottles, cans, etc.
Ah. When I say “target shooting” I DO mean plinking, because to me the alternative to target shooting is hunting.
Which is what I’m trying to fathom in the OP - Why? To employ an automotive parallel, it’s like pretending the only reasons to own a car are for driving to or from work or “because you can”, with the suggestion of using them for car-racing being dismissed as something between “silly” and “crazy talk”.
I am surprised to hear there are so few ranges about in the US, though - one would think with a high number of guns there, there’d be lots and lots of people wanting to use them for target shooting (as well as hunting etc), and thus places to shoot them.
There are a lot of people who want to shoot at ranges. But regulatory issues can make new ranges difficult to build. You can get a lot of NIMBY responses when you try to build a range in a typical suburban area. (Rural regions are easier, but they are less convenient for the average gun owner to use.)
(You’d think everyone would want LEGAL gun owners to practice regularly with their weapons, so they’d be effective and safe handlers. But in practice that’s not how it works out.)
I’d add that I would imagine that liability insurance for these facilities is also much more expensive now, than in the past. I wonder what annual premiums for a typical 25 lane indoor pistol range run these days?
I didn’t mean to convey that ranges are extremely rare in the United States, but I do think they are less common than they used to be. Also, with a more urbanized population these days, and with ranges usually requiring a bit of space (especially for rifle or Sporting Clays work.), more people now will find themselves further away from a target range.
Thanks for the tip, Lynn. It looks really fun. I have to be in the DFW area in the near future, and it’s nice to know of a range my GF and I can go visit.
I think the obvious answer is that there’s a limit to how many people are GOOD at something.
Lots of people play golf. Only a few thousand or maybe tens of thousands bother to sign up for tournaments, even at the local level. Most just go and play with their buddies, because signing up for tournaments that you know you’re going to lose is a pointless endeavor.
Likewise, the only difference between someone who practices for competitions with a $10,000 .22 pistol and someone who goes down to the local range to put holes in paper for no reason is that the latter lacks either the talent or the motivation to compete with the former.
Huh. I have a few guns. I target shoot at a local sportsman’s club. I also shoot at (and occasionally hit) clays. There is a S&W .357 magnum in my nightstand drawer and a 16 gauge pump under the bed for home defense.
I do not hunt. I love venison, pheasant, and duck. Many of my friends hunt and my gf bakes apple pies which we trade for game.
This, pretty much.
I enjoy plinking. I have no interest in getting involved in organized target shooting. I don’t want to spend that kind of time or money to become good enough at it, assuming that I’m capable of becoming good enough at it. While I’m fairly accurate for a plinker, I’d have to get much, much better to rank anywhere other than the bottom if I shot competitively. And I don’t like being at the bottom. I’m good enough to hit my targets most of the time, and I’m good enough to shoot in self defense, especially with hollow points.
I play Dungeons&Dragons and I used to play the collectible card game of Magic: The Gathering. I enjoy both games, but it’s very, very rare that I will enter into a tournament of either one. If I play with friends, it’s just a group of people having a good time together, and we rarely look up the rules. If we decide that a rule is stupid, or could be better, we ignore it or change it. In a tournament, I’d play with a group of strangers, and all of us would be following the rules exactly, no matter how stupid a particular rule is. I just prefer the relaxing atmosphere of playing with friends. Our goal is to have fun, not to move up the ranks of players.
Now, if someone will build Dream Park, then I’d consider spending the time and money to get better. But I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.
I think it’s sort of the opposite. I don’t hunt, I do target shoot. And I would think that every hunter target shoots to a degree. They have too to become proficient.
Very high, I would think.
And then there is the cost of meeting the EPA regulations. Those are definitely necessary (no one wants people to be coming down with lead poisoning), but the installing and maintaining those air filtration systems can’t be cheap.
When all the factors are considered, it’s no wonder that ranges (especially indoor ones) are becoming harder to find.