Gallery Rifle & Pistol - Your Sport Needs You!

By Charles Murton

As a new member of the NRA General Council, I would like to introduce myself to those of you who don't already know me. I've just taken up the role of Gallery Rifle and Pistol Representative. My thanks to all of you who supported me in this. Those who persuaded me to volunteer in the first place will be receiving an extra-special "thank you" in due course!

In case you aren't familiar with "Gallery Rifle & Pistol", let's start there. Following the "pistol ban" quite a few of us decided we weren't prepared to give up our sport, so we invested our compensation money in "gallery rifles" - rifles built to fire pistol-type rounds such as .38/.357, .44 and .22RF. At first, our only remaining pistol options were air and muzzle-loading pistols, but careful research and creative gunsmithing resulted in the development of Section 1 long-barrelled revolvers which can be used in a similar way to "normal" revolvers. The GR&P community was fairly small when it started out, as a lot of people lost heart and gave up when the "pistol ban" was imposed. However, we have grown steadily over the years and now have a flourishing discipline with a flagship meeting - the Phoenix - at Bisley every May which attracts well over 500 competitors. These include an ever-increasing number of newcomers to the sport who are actually joining us to shoot gallery rifle without the remembered shadow of the "pistol ban" hanging over them, which I think is very promising for our future.

Let's move on to who I am and why I'm doing this job. I'm a career civil servant who started shooting .22 target rifle when I started my first job. From there I expanded into .22 pistol, then centrefire pistols. I have tried out most disciplines over the years, but settled mainly to pistol and then GR&P. Having run a small shooting club in the early days and then taken a few years away from admin duties, I decided in 2000 that it was time to put something back into the sport, preferably at national level where there was an obvious need for volunteers. Having a strong background in computers, I volunteered to run Stats for the Phoenix. My first meeting was Phoenix 2001. Those who entered that meeting will remember we had huge problems - working from a building site which was supposed to have been the NSRA's Lord Roberts Centre and having the computer system eat most of the scores and die being just two of the highlights! I swore never to use anyone else's computer hardware or software for such a task again. Since then, we've used specially donated / purchased PCs and software written by me - which I can modestly (!) claim has been a huge success. Computerised squadding has also been introduced. The whole software suite is used at almost all of the GR&P meetings held at Bisley and is now being trialled at meetings around the country.

Over the period 2001 to 2004, I served on the Phoenix committee as Chief Stats, Secretary and Chairman. In doing so, I came to know many of the key staff in the NSC/NRA well, and also of course many of the range crew and shooters. Being a civil servant, I'm used to committee work, so when the election of a new GR&P rep was approaching I wasn't surprised to find my arm being twisted. I put in my papers and … here I am!

As a discipline rep I believe that I have two main responsibilities:

· to represent the interests of the GR&P shooting community within the NRA;

· to provide a communications link from the NRA back to the GR&P shooters.

To fulfil the first of these responsibilities, I need to know what your views and concerns are. If there is any issue which you as a GR&P shooter (or indeed as a shooter from a different discipline) want to raise, there are several ways to do this. The most obvious is to speak to me in person. I attend all the NSC-run GR&P meetings at Bisley, and I will be trying to get to a few more around the country over the next few years. However, I can be difficult to pin down at meetings because I'm often running the Stats! An alternative is to e-mail me - I have set up the e-mail address galleryrifle@ntlworld.com to make this easier. For snail-mail, just write to me care of the NRA at Bisley. Alternatively you can raise your point with any of the members of the GR&P Sub-Committee, who are:

Chris Farr (Information manager - classifications, highest achieved scores, record scores, etc.)
Neil Jones (International long-barrelled revolver shooting)
John Robinson (GR&P webmaster)
Brian Thomas (NSC GR&P Meeting Director)
Peter Watts (International gallery rifle shooting)

Each member of the Sub-Committee has the lead in one particular area, as identified in brackets, but all of them will be involved in other issues of interest / concern to GR&P.

In terms of me communicating with you, this article is a start - there will be more to come. John Robinson will be posting news on the ShootFastDontMiss website (www.galleryrifle.co.uk).

So, apart from me appearing on General Council, what is the GR&P news at the moment? Well…

· The range of events on offer at GR&P meetings continues to expand. This year we have added Hunter Field Target and long range shotgun slug events to the Phoenix meeting. At the recent National Championships we trialled short range shotgun slug events - these will be a regular feature of Phoenix and GRAWs (Gallery Rifle Action Weekends) from now on.
· We've built good international relationships with the BDMP in Germany and the Shooting Sports Association of Ireland (SSAI). Teams from both of these organisations took part in a friendly international match at this year's Phoenix. Next year we are hoping to have other overseas teams present as well, and to move this match onto a formal NRA / GB footing as soon as practical. Selection for the Phoenix 2006 squad will take place as soon as possible after the October GRAW. I will be carrying out the selection, assisted by the Sub-Committee, based on scores achieved in the relevant events during 2005. Once the squad has been selected, the 20 squad members will elect a captain and an adjutant will be appointed. NB all this is an interim arrangement - more formal squad selection, based on pre-published criteria, will be introduced for 2007.
· We have also sent informal teams to competitions in both Germany and Ireland. In both cases we have been teaching them about gallery rifle shooting in exchange for the opportunity to shoot events and firearms which are simply not available to us over here. It's been great fun! Especially since, at the moment, we keep winning…
· The GR&P Rules, as published on the ShootFastDontMiss website and used for some time at the NSC meetings, have now been agreed in principle by the Shooting Committee of the NRA and will shortly be submitted to the Council for formal endorsement. They will be published - split into a short "rules" section and a rather larger "GR&P handbook" of event details - early in the New Year, though there will be very little substantive changes in rules from the current version (3.03). These rules have already been formally adopted by the SSAI and are in the process of Federal approval in Germany. This means we have established common GR&P firearm definitions, range procedures and events across three nations - so far.
· In a recent Journal article, my predecessor (Neil Jones) reported that the WA1500 (World Association for 1500 shooting) had agreed to allow UK shooters to use long-barrelled revolvers to compete in events in Europe provided that only iron sights of a maximum 6" radius were used and any wrist-brace did not give forearm support. Unfortunately this announcement turns out to have been slightly premature - the WA1500 did agree in principle, but one nation (Belgium) objected and the objection has not yet been resolved. Neil is still working on this, and will report back from the WA1500's AGM within the next month or so.
· Most of the old, tired turning target frames on Melville have just been replaced with brand new ones - at both 25m and 50m on some bays! There are new control boxes too. A few teething problems have been experienced, but I'm sure those will be sorted in time for the next GRAW (October 29-30).
· It has been noted by many that one of the GR&P meetings held at Bisley each year runs in a completely different way to all the others. I'm talking about the GR&P element of the Imperial meeting, which to date has run different events to different rules - and on the whole has been a lot less popular with the shooters than the other GR&P meetings. We are looking at ways to improve things without throwing away all of the traditions surrounding this meeting - more on this to follow…

Many of the GR&P shooters reading this article will doubtless view the NRA as being somewhere between "unfriendly" and "hostile" towards any discipline which isn't target rifle. This was certainly true when I joined the association. However, things have improved enormously over the past few years. Huge effort has been put into supporting GR&P events at Bisley, and there has been considerable investment in the facilities at, for example, Melville range. From my own personal observations, the whole attitude towards non-TR disciplines has improved. That's not to say things are perfect just yet, and to improve them still further I need the help of all GR&P shooters. I believe that the best way to develop target shooting as a whole - and GR&P in particular - is through the NRA. Many of you (e.g. over 70% of those who shot at Phoenix this year) are not members of the NRA. The more of you who become members, the more influence we can have over the future direction of the NRA, and the more funds will be available for longer term investment in our sport. There's a lot to be done, and it's going to be a challenge, but I'm up for it. Are you?