Gunbugs

There are 3,400 private golf clubs in the U. S., but there are more than 3,500 civilian rifle clubs. Last week, at Camp Perry, on the shore of Lake Erie, the cream of the country's amateur gunbugs shot it out with soldiers, Marines, Coast Guards, policemen, in the National Rifle and Pistol Matches.

Sixty-seven years ago, when the National Rifle Association held its first tournament, sportsmen ran the show. But in 1903, when Congress recognized the N. R. A. and appropriated funds to help stage a bigger, broader tournament, the national rifle and pistol matches became the War Department's baby. Today, through the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice, the War Department spends $500,000 a year to conduct the Camp Perry matches--sending to the tournament, in addition to picked marksmen from each branch of the service, civilian and National Guard teams representing each State in the U. S. To encourage civilian marksmanship, it offers every civilian contestant a service rifle or pistol, expert instruction, all the ammunition they can fire.

For the past three weeks, gunbugs have been peppering targets along Camp Perry's two-mile firing line--nearly 1,000 of them at a time. Most important of the 105 events: those that determine the National small-bore rifle championship, the National pistol championship, the National military (.30-calibre) rifle championship.

The small-bore title is what most civilian marksmen, the .22-calibre "squirters," shoot at. Winner last week, with a score of 3,187 out of a possible 3,200, was New Haven's Dave Carlson, 26-year-old apprentice toolmaker, who joined a junior rifle club when he was 15, was high man on the U. S. team that outshot 21 other nations in the 50-metre (prone) event at the 1937 world's championships at Helsinki.

The pistol championship (based on performance with .22, .38 and .45-calibre pistols, using each in slow, timed and rapid fire) went to 30-year-old Harry Reeves, who scored 848 out of a possible 900. Onetime Marine, now a Detroit policeman and member of Detroit's world-record-holding pistol team, Reeves also holds--with his teammate Alfred Hemming, No. 1 in N. R. A. rankings--most of the world's records for two-man teams.

The .30-calibre championship (with service rifle at all distances and all positions) attracts the largest entry. In a field of 1,705, shooting from 200 to 1,000 yards (prone, kneeling, standing), Sergeant William J. Coffman (U. S. Infantry) of Camp Ord, Calif, shot the sharpest: 289 out of a possible 300.

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