Newly graduating college club shooters

Sparks

Well, it was inspected by the new Super from Pearse St. only a few months ago and given the all clear, so I guess we're as close to approval as you can legally get in this country. The firearms are held on an authorisation as well, so there's that to add weight to it.

We can't shoot .22 standing there at all though, and there's no air pistols yet (the club's still thinking about safety issues and it'd have to wait until the legality is nailed down anyway, the club does not have the right to act autonomously in such matters, it needs the college's permission). Safety's a big deal in DURC, obviously, since we get between 100 and 300 completely new shooters coming in each year who have to be trained to shoot safely.

Ammoman

thats a seriously high turn over of shooters in 1 year , how many stick at it ?

Sparks

It varies from year to year, and some who'd stick to it for the full year wouldn't be back the next year, or might drop out after two or three years. Normally, we'd be seeing around fifty to a hundred shooters graduating from the college who'd been shooting for a few years though. And then there's the shooters from UCD to count as well - they tend to have between 100 and 300 a year, from what I remember.

Ammoman

so you are talking about 100 dedicated target shooters comming into the sport each year ? how come no one ever sees these guys practicing ?

civdef

Lads can we try and keep on topic here?

I'm having to split a lot of threads lately due to topic drift. The retention of members in university rifle clubs would make a fascinating thread in it's own right no doubt, but is hardly relevant in a thread about range approvals.

Sparks

Yup, time to split that subtopic off allright...

Ammoman

OK getting carried away there , I will try to contact the PSNI to get a copy of their range requirements , if i get it I will post it here , if thats OK

Sparks

Ammoman wrote:

so you are talking about 100 dedicated target shooters comming into the sport each year ? how come no one ever sees these guys practicing ?

Because they go from an environment where they just have to turn up to the club and shoot, to one where they have to get licences, rifles, jackets, slings, mats, scopes, ammunition, pay over a hundred quid a year in membership fees, plus capitation fees, have to drive thirty miles or more to the range, and have to find time for all this while starting work for the first time, and there's no more dedicated coaching sessions, there's no equivalent to the intervarsities with it's squad training and worst of all, there's noone there to help out, no leaflets explaining what they have to do, no website they know of that explains all this, and so on.
This is the kind of thing the NTSA's meant to be doing, but it's not being done. Collegiate shooting hasn't been too well regarded at committee level there, with lots of "bloody student" jokes being the norm and complaining about how students want everything free or cheap, easy, and handed to them (in fact, students don't have any money, haven't been doing this for twenty years and need to be told how it's done and what has to be done and how to do it).
So every year we lose anything up to a hundred or two trained .22 and air rifle shooters because noone's willing to do the work to keep them.
Now there's a problem with target shooting in Ireland today....

Ammoman

its sad to see that they just loose interest when they leave , If they were truely dedicated they would make the effort , all be it a great effort to keep up the sport , i know when i started , I had very little disposable income to spend on shooting , but i never lost my interest in over 20 years, and sadly now I spend more per year on shooting than I was earning 20 yrs ago.

there must be some way that consessions can be made by the colleges to keep tallented target shooters active ?

Sparks

its sad to see that they just loose interest when they leave , If they were truely dedicated they would make the effort

See, that's the wrong mindset to take. Sure, if you only want people who'll dedicate their lives to training and shooting, you can assume that they'll make that much effort, but if you want a large body of shooters, you'll make it as easy as possible to get involved. And to be honest, the bulk of what's needed is information and encouragement (and perhaps deferring those capitation fees for a year or two for new graduates!). Remember, you're talking about going from an environment where the club handles all the details like licences, maintainance, training, paperwork and so on, into one where the shooter has to handle them - but without knowing what was involved up to that point. It's a lot to learn in a short time and there's a lot of unfamiliarity involved. And it shouldn't be a barrier to continuing in the sport, because the fewer shooters we have, the lower the competitive levels, and the lower the money raised from entry fees in competitions!

Ammoman

Sparks wrote:

Remember, you're talking about going from an environment where the club handles all the details like licences, maintainance, training, paperwork and so on, into one where the shooter has to handle them - but without knowing what was involved up to that point. It's a lot to learn in a short time and there's a lot of unfamiliarity involved.

I might be taking this up wrong , but when these guys learn to shoot , do they not have to maintain the rifles , and are they only using club rifles ? I thought that they owned their own rifles , are they given a specific rifle for the duration of their membership , because it would be even more difficult to do well in competition if you were given an un familiar rifle . surely as part of their training , they are thought how to maintain the firearms that they are using ?

Sparks

Ammoman wrote:

I might be taking this up wrong , but when these guys learn to shoot , do they not have to maintain the rifles , and are they only using club rifles ?

When they start, they certainly don't maintain the rifles!
It goes like this on a typical night in DURC. The first range officer goes to front arch in college and notes down from our noticeboard who's down to shoot that night, then opens the range. The second RO shows up at this point and together they get out a few of the rifles and assemble them. The first shooters show up around 1745-1750 and depending on how long they've been shooting, one of the ROs will help them with choosing a club jacket and sling, setting up the position, general coaching or whatever's needed. The other RO stays outside the range in the lounge doing the paperwork and working with the shooters for the next detail (we don't have much range space, so there are half-hour details every night from 1800 to 2130). Then at the end of the night, the ROs dissassemble the rifles and lock them away, fill out the RO report for the night, then the second RO closes the range.
Now, as the shooters go through basic safety training and basic coaching and gain experience, we start to teach them more about the rifle, but in order to extend the lives of the rifles as long as possible, we only ever teach the ROs (about 15-20 students a year) how to maintain the rifles and they're the only ones that maintain them. We can't afford to replace rifles every few years because of worn crowns from improper cleaning or whatever. The wear and tear from eight students a night, five nights a week, 24 weeks a year, and then more outside term time, that's bad enough!

I thought that they owned their own rifles , are they given a specific rifle for the duration of their membership , because it would be even more difficult to do well in competition if you were given an un familiar rifle.

Very few would own their own rifle, we've only had a handful over the years and they were usually ROs. Yes, there's a specific rifle for each shooter, the RO on duty helps to select a suitable one and it's noted on the shooter's datacard and the ROs on duty every other night that that shooter's coming down get out that rifle and make it ready for them. The datacard also carries details of what jacket, what sling, and other stuff:

=======================================================================
Member Data Card

---

DURC ID #
Surname
Name
Eye Dominance
Handedness
Rifle
Jacket
Sling
Slingstop
Handstop
No-Shows : RO, Date
Notes: RO, Date, Note
Credit: RO, Date, Amount
Results: Date, Event, Score

surely as part of their training , they are thought how to maintain the firearms that they are using ?

No. We don't have enough time with them to do that, at least not for casual shooters. The ones that go competitive certainly learn it, but that's because we have more time with them, since they're shooting on weekends in competitions and training with the colours squad in the range and the gym and so on. Remember, a full week for us is 96 shooters in 20 hours!

Ammoman

Sparks wrote:

Remember, a full week for us is 96 shooters in 20 hours!

busy Busy Busy :cool:

Sparks

Yup, so much so that I'm trying to write some software to computerise the whole thing - all the college kids have access to the web thanks to the college computer labs and lots of them have the net at home too, so an online booking system and a database setup for datacards and RO reports and so on would be a decent idea, one which will hopefully save on paperwork amongst other advantages!

Ammoman

Will putting that sort of info on the web be a security risk ?

Sparks

Not really ammoman, it's already been put out in the public domain before, and the college already has 24hr security. Besides, that's the simplified version of what happens, I left out a few details about the process for security reasons (but leaving out those details didn't detract from the point I was trying to make, I think).

edit - It occurs to me that you might have meant the computerisation of the system rather than putting up the details of the system! No, it wouldn't be a security risk, we wouldn't be releasing any personal details to the general public with it. Datacards and the like wouldn't be accessible to the public domain. The only things that would be visible would be the booking grid, and that would only have a name on it signifying who's shooting on a particular detail (we often get groups of friends who come down to shoot together so you have to leave the names visible so that they can book seperately to shoot together).

Ammoman

OK that clears that up .