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Title (Dublin Core)
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Uncle sam's shooting gallery
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Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
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Uncle sam's shooting gallery
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extracted text (Extract Text)
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TRAVELING in planes, trains, buses,
private cars, trucks, and even on foot,
more than 10,000 eager men, women,
and youngsters from all corners of the
nation will head toward the shores of Lake
Erie in mid-August for the largest sporting
event in the world. The lure that draws this
myriad of bankers, housewives, G-men,
clerks, police, shopkeepers, and citizens
from practically every other walk of life, is
the annual National Rifle Matches spon-
sored jointly by the U. S. War Department
and the National Rifle Association.
In this mammoth gunpowder rodeo, mil-
lions of rounds of ammunition will be fired
from pistols, 30 caliber rifles, and small-
bore guns. Police will school themselves in
getting the jump on criminals. Hundreds of
beginners will learn how to shoot and how
to handle guns safely. Marksmanship rec-
ords will be assaulted, historic trophies won,
and national champions crowned. And at
the end of the three-week bullet jubilee, a
new group of straight-shooting citizens will
scatter to their homes to add to the defen-
sive power of the nation and to the world-
wide reputation of the United States as a
country of crack shots.
The "shooting starts August 18 at the
Army's Camp Perry, a few miles from the
lake town of Port Clinton, Ohio. Nowhere
else in the world, experts state, is there a
rifle and pistol range that can compare with
it. Here, stretched out side by side for two
and a half miles, are target ranges of every
size from 1,000 yards for .30 caliber rifle
competition to twenty-five yards for pistol
events. And around the fringe of the ranges
is a far-flung city of tents to house the ex-
tensive Army personnel required to run the
matches, and also to accommodate practi-
cally all the contestants and visitors.
For the matches are open to any citizen
of the United States, and the Army will put
up any American who wants to compete.
Tents, beds, and bedding are supplied with-
out charge, while a mammoth cafeteria
serves meals at low prices. For the rifle or
pistol fan who would like to bring his fam-
ily, the "Squaw Camp,” a part of the reser-
vation next to the bathing beach, is set
aside. Here a man and his wife can have a
floored, screened tent, with electricity, for
$150 a day. Bringing junior along adds
Just fifteen cents a day to the tent cost.
And you don't even have to own a gun,
for the Army will issue you a .30 caliber
rifle, or a 45 caliber pistol, and furnish all
the ammunition you'll
need for match firing.
If you've never fired a
rifle, a competent Army
instructor will show
you how.
Inaddition to the van-
guard of individual con-
testants, the Perry meet
will attract civilian rifle
and pistol teams from
every state in the union,
plus teams represent-
ing the National Guard,
metropolitan police
forces, the U. S. Army,
Coast Guard, and Ma-
rine Corps, the Customs
Service, the White
House police, G-men,
and other state and Fed-
eral agencies. Last year,
almost 5,000 persons
competed, firing a total
of more than 3,000,000
shots.
Step out on the range
when the matches get
under way and you'll
see a sight that you'll
never forget. With the
roar of service rifles in
your ears, you will gape
at a two-mile line of fire.
Crack marksmen, lying
prone, are battering
bullseyes 1,000 yards
away. Down the line,
under the watchful eyes
of soldiers and officers,
civilians are getting
their first chance at fir-
ing the mew Garand
semiautomatic rifle re-
cently adopted by the
Army.
Group by group, all
along the firing line,
the nation's greatest shots, together with
the dubs and rank tyros, are standing, sit-
ting, kneeling, and lying prone, shooting
rifles, pistols, and revolvers at various
ranges, in timed-fire, rapid-fire, and slow-
fire matches. Playing a sharpshooter’s swing
tune, bullets whistle through the air and
zing into the targets, or occasionally kick
up a spatter as they miss the target and
plow into the waters of Lake Erie beyond
the butts.
Strolling down back of the firing line, or
sighting along the pits be-
hind the targets, you'll mar-
vel at the horde of Army of-
ficers and men needed to con-
duct all phases of the compe-
tition. You'll note target spot-
ters, range officers, scorers,
checkers, computers, and mes-
sengers. In the pits, the
trench back of the butts,
you'll watch enlisted men haul
targets down from their racks
in the line of fire, for check-
ing, repair, and replacement.
Officials estimate that fif-
teen Army men are required
for each ten contestants in
order to run the matches in
the smooth, efficient, and safe
manner for which the meet is
famed. An indication of how
Army supervision makes for
safety is found in the fact
that only two casualties have
occurred in twenty-one years of match fir-
ing at Camp Perry.
Down at the left of the range, youll wit-
ness one of the most interesting phases of
the Perry matches—the National Police
School, where representatives from police
departments in all sections of the country
are schooled in the latest methods of police
science, and sent back home as qualified in-
structors to their fellow officers in the home
forces. Subjects studied in the full-week
course include disarming an attacker, shoot-
ing at rapidly disappearing targets, using
tear gas and the Thompson submachine
gun, hand-to-hand fighting, and the funda-
mentals of jujutsu.
Here at the Police School is the famous
“Hogan's Alley,” a curious group of back-
less building fronts representing the dilap-
idated frame structures lining one side of
the main street of Bucktown Gulch, Ariz.,
as it appeared in 1879. By means of a series
of hand levers and attached
cables, silhouette figures
are popped suddenly into
the window or door open-
ings of “Bud Peagler's
Pool Parlor,” or the “Wa-
hiawa Cafe,” while police
try to drill them with pis-
tol bullets before they dis-
appear two seconds later.
Near-by is a replica of
the rear of an automobile.
Traveling on an overhead
trolley, it speeds away as
police fire at it in attempts
to “blow” a rear tire. Sim-
ilar in operation is a run-
ning-man target, which,
crosses the officers’ line of
fire at an angle from left
to right
The value of this police
training is dramatically
revealed by the experience
of the Detroit, Mich., po-
lice who have sent repre-
sentatives to the school
for years. When they first
started, an average of four policemen lost
their lives for every criminal killed in De-
troit. Today, the average is one policeman
to every eleven criminals.
At the opposite end of the range from the
Police School you run across hundreds of
youngsters from eight to eighteen, some of
whom will shoot it out for the national jun-
ior championship of the nation, and some of
whom are barely big enough to hoist a
rifle to their shoulders. A U. S. Marine is
assigned to each of these neophytes to give
him expert instruction in the rudiments of
rifle shooting and gun handling. Before the
youngster comes out from under the wing of
his leatherneck guide, he will have learned
not only how to shoot a gun and handle it
safely, but also how to clean it, take it
apart, and put it back together again.
Truly a giant training ground for the de-
velopment of the art of shooting, in all its
phases from the instruction of future sharp-
shooters to the rewarding of record-break-
ing feats of marksmanship, the annual
Camp Perry meet has had much to do with
the establishment of shooting as one of the
most popular American sports. And now,
with national defense of primary impor-
tance, Perry's influence may prove to have
been of even greater value than that of a
clean, wholesome sport in building up the
armed might of the United States.
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Contributor (Dublin Core)
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Edward W. Murtfeldt (article writer)
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Language (Dublin Core)
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eng
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Date Issued (Dublin Core)
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1940-09
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pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
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57-64
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Rights (Dublin Core)
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Public domain
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Archived by (Dublin Core)
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Sami Akbiyik
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Marco Bortolami (editor)
Popular Science Monthly, v. 137, n. 3, 1940
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