Gun Nuts Media

The title of this post is a quote from Teddy Roosevelt that I found earlier today and posted on my twitter page. While rolling the quote over in my head about a multitude of topics, I realize that in one area it applies directly to training, and specifically competition training, in the firearms community.

Here’s an example: you’re in the Bulk classes in USPSA, somewhere in between C and A where most of the shooters exist. You’ve been training hard, working in dry fire and you’ve made progress, which you can track because you’re smart and you log your training. Then you go to a major match, an Area match and you get to see some of the top GMs shoot a stage. They shoot it in 1/3rd the time it takes you and they get way better hits.

There are two comparisons you can make when you see that. The first is positive: “Wow, those guys are good, if I keep at my training, take some classes and work really hard maybe I can be that good some day.” If you do that, you’re in good shape. However, the 2nd comparison is much easier to make, because most people’s default setting is “Training? Why should I do that when I can play Battlefield 4 and eat Swiss Cake Rolls instead?” The second comparison is to see those top flight shooters shredding a stage and think “I’ll never be that good, all my hard work is for nothing, I’m going to play Battlefield 4 and eat Swiss Cake Rolls instead.”

Everyone at some point in an athletic pursuit will fall prey to the 2nd form of comparison. It’s natural to get frustrated, it’s natural to want to quit. Make no mistake: what defines you as a competitor is not the choice you make when you feel good about training, it’s the choices you make when you’re frustrated and don’t feel like training. From the physical fitness world: “Anyone can go to the gym when they’re in a good mood and got plenty of sleep. Few people can when they had a long day and work and are already tired.”

The training doldrums are a tough place to get out of once you get in; for some people like myself the solution is simply to HTFU and go train. No excuses, just put in the work. For other people, you may need an external boost, like a coach or a trainer to drag you along kicking and screaming at times. Sadly, some people will never get out of the doldrums. They’ll bounce from hobby to hobby, sport to sport and make great strides initially, and then get frustrated and go do something else.

I understand this post isn’t for everyone. It’s for people like me, people who are serious competitors and have experienced the comparison, the doldrums, and the frustration. Buck up. Train hard. It will get better. Keep logging your progress, so the next time the doldrums hit you can look back and say “I did get better, I just need to keep training.”

There are give or take 80 to 100 million gun owners in the United States. That’s a pretty big number when you actually sit down and think about it. Now, let’s look at the top end of the shooting sports: there are 20,000+ IDPA members, and 18,000 or so USPSA members in the United States. If you assume a 5% crossover membership between the two sports, that gives us ballpark 36,000 members of the action shooting sports. I’ll spot 3 Gun Nation another 5k, and the Single Action Shooting Society will round us out to 100,000 total. That means that going with the low-end estimate of gun ownership, there are 79,900,000 gun owners who aren’t members of one of the “action” shooting sports.

That 100k number doesn’t take into account the number of people who aren’t members of any of the action shooting sports but are, for lack of a better term, tactical athletes – the people who attend tactical training classes and run around in plate carriers etc with carbines, despite the fact that their day job is an accountant. I’d imagine that the number of people in that group is probably 50-75% the side of IDPA’s membership. So that leaves us with several big buckets of gun owners:

• People who own guns primarily for personal protection
• People who own guns primarily for collecting
• People who own guns primarily for hunting
• People who own guns primarily for recreational shooting/non-action sport shooting

Obviously, you’re going to have loads of crossover between those groups. As an example: someone owns a Ruger Red Label 12 gauge for upland birds, but also uses the same gun to bust a round of trap for funzies. Or someone who collects S&W registered magnums, but also carries for personal protection.

The great thing about the internet is that it’s allowed shooters to find other like minded shooters. USPSA shooters can associate primarily with other people who shoot USPSA primarily, shotgun shooters can talk about whoa skeet skeet, and weirdos who like revolvers can talk about how the Model T was the best car ever. The downside of all of this is that it becomes easy to create tiny echo chambers where all you talk about the things that interest you, so when you’re confronted with someone’s interest that’s outside your scope of interest it’s a lot easier to dismiss it as “unserious.”

Another negative side effect is shouting down criticism with the phrase “stay in your lane.” This is probably one of my biggest pet peeves, because it’s most frequently used a tool to silence dissent because the dissenting party isn’t a GM/Former Operator/Pirate Ninja King.

How do we fight it? Get involved in more than just one thing. I’m not saying give up your primary shooting pursuit, but try something else. This year I went pheasant hunting for the first time, and I loved it. I’ll go again next year, and continue to hunt now because it’s a fun and engaging pursuit. Will I give up IDPA and focus on becoming The Pheasant Nightmare? Probably not, but it’s good for me to have shooting interests outside a narrow scope.

Keep an open mind, and keep shooting. It doesn’t matter to me if someone is a hunter, AR15 fanboy, competition shooter, so long as they support the 2nd Amendment and the continued to right to keep and bear arms. We all win if that’s the case.