It's back, guns blazing!

[Saint_Zero]

It’s that time of the year again for the National (or International) Policeman’s Pistol championships. Where men and women gather from all around the US, and the world some years, in Jackson, MS to shoot their guns and see who is the best. We’ve had the fortune some years to have the Champ right among the people of Mississippi.

There is one fellow, who won’t like to see this event back. Two or three years ago, a man tried to commit armed robbery on a fellow leaving the range in South Jackson. The guy put a package on his car, and calmly gave the guy his wallet. The robber, thinking he was in the clear, ran. Much to his dismay, the man he robbed turned out to be the new overall champion. Right, he didn’t get far before being pegged with a .38 special at a good distance.

I think of him every year, and smile.

[Padeye]

Let me get this right, the robber was fleeing the scene when the champ shot him? Is that justifiable in Mississippi?

[Saint_Zero]

Yup. He robbed a Cop. It wasn’t a fatal wound. I was hoping the local paper here would have the original article online, but being the losers they are, they don’t.

[Max_Torque]

While on the subject of competition shooting: Politically incorrect gold

On Tuesday evening Bob Costas interviewed Megan Quann, American gold medallist in Breaststroke, asking the usual questions about her competitive career and her goal for the 2004 Athens Olympics. Watching, it struck me that NBC did not cover, let alone interview, the United States’ first gold medal winner of the Sydney Games.

Does the name Nancy Johnson strike a chord of familiarity? Not to most Americans, only to those few who follow Olympic shooting sports. You can see Nancy’s smiling face on several websites but not in the New York Times. If you look for shooting events results on the New York Times website you better look under “A.” They are listed as Archery/Shooting. The coverage of Johnson’s gold medal was on page D14 of Saturday’s Washington Post, while it’s hard to find anything about Olympic shooting in the Los Angeles Times. Only the Chicago Tribune ran two stories about air rifle competition since gold medallist Nancy Johnson is originally from the Chicago area. The second story was how her husband Ken failed to medal in his event, men’s air rifle.

. . .

It is sad that another Olympic prospect, Lauren Santibanez from San Diego, Calif., may never get the opportunity to experience that thrill, or even get to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Women’s pistol team. Lauren’s problem is not an inability to shoot straight, or lack of spending the countless hours of practice and participation in competition; her problem is a law initiated by California State Senator Don Perata, passed by the Legislature, and signed by Governor Davis. This law classified Lauren’s Olympic target pistol as an “assault weapon.”

A mistake, an absurdity that should be rectified, what could the legislature have been thinking are the thoughts that go through one’s mind when hearing of Lauren’s predicament. But no, it’s the law and Don Perata has no remorse, no second thoughts. His comment according to the San Diego Union-Tribune was:

If Olympic shooting is her goal, Perata says, she should find a state more friendly to the sport, much like Olympic skiers go to Utah and Colorado to train.

“She may be better off living in Texas,” said Perata, who reluctantly indicated that some limited exemptions to the law might be made if there were compelling reasons.

For those who may be wondering why the pistol is illegal: the California law classifies any firearm designed to accept a magazine in front of the trigger as an assault weapon. It’s a .22-caliber pistol, fer crissakes.