Gun industry’s helping hand triggers a surge in college shooting teams (Wa. Post)

[petronius]

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Although some collegiate teams date to the late 1800s, coaches and team captains say there is a surge of new interest from students, both male and female, ­finally away from their parents and curious to handle one of the country’s most divisive symbols. Once they fire a gun, students say they find shooting relaxing — at MIT, students call it “very Zen” — and that it teaches focusing skills that help in class.

Some also find their perceptions about guns changing.

“I had a poor view, a more negative view of people who like guns than I do now,” said Hope Lutwak, a freshman on MIT’s pistol team. “I didn’t understand why people enjoyed it. I just thought it was very violent.”

And that’s precisely what the gun industry hoped it would hear after spending the past few years pouring millions of dollars into collegiate shooting, targeting young adults just as they try out new activities and personal identities.

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Link to story

Interesting read I thought, and perhaps relevant to policy as it's a new route for people to gain familiarity with firearms, and perhaps demystify the shooting sports, as hunting declines...

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I remember when Folgers did the same sort of thing on our college campus

to hook a new generation on coffee.

[doc03]

2. The older hunting generation is steadily dieing out so they have to

get young recruits interested in shooting to keep up the demand for guns. Just like tobacco, people are not smoking so now they are targeting young people with the vape.

[Eleanors38]

4. The sport of hunting has seen a great surge in women hunters...

who are more likely to light up targets than cigarettes. Some say women are the new face of hunting, and they may be right.

[doc03]

10. Same there the gun industry has been recruiting women to make up

for the general decline in hunting. In my experience in this area anyway there are far fewer people
hunting. There just isn't as much land to hunt on today. When I was young almost all the landowners let us hunt
anytime now you either have to belong to a hunting club or hunt public land. So you have a declining hunting population, you
have to drum up fear of crime so people think they have to have a gun for protection and recruit young people and women to
make a market for your product. Like the tobacco industry people are not smoking now they come up with the vape which may even be worse anything for the almighty dollar.

[Eleanors38]

12. I agree with some of your views, but take issue with your recruitment outlook...

The upsurge of women taking up hunting follows a different way. Whereas boys are chiefly recruited by their fathers or another male adult, women come to the sport at an older age; mainly as young adults who may have an adult male (boyfriend, uncle, father) instructing, or through a female organization like Becoming an Outdoor Woman (BOW). Currently, there are two women shooters groups in the Austin area which weren't around ten years ago. This will be the chief means of recruitment in the future, IMO. In other words, most adult women are not children being sucked into tobacco habits. As for gun and accessory manufacturers, their's is a study in being behind the curve. Even now, women hunters complain about ill-fitting, downsized mens' apparel and firearms. This has spawned cottage industries seeking to change product development. (I note the resurrected S&W hammerless snub-nosed revolver, and Ruger's own introduction of a similar type; both have no-snag features designed for purses.).

It's clumsy catch up more then recruitment: The big uptick in women shooters, while rather recent, has been going on for a generation, and I have yet to see big movements toward a one-size-fits-all rifle/shotgun dimension for production weapons other than the coarse ones men have been stuck with since horse & buggy times. Some kids/ women-size, pink paint, etc. doesn't reflect structural change. Women are very much in the lead on this one.

[Eleanors38]

3. A very good illustration of how deep and widespread the shooting sports are.

It would appear the foundations and other shooting sports organizations are more rediscovering a constituency than creating a new one. One of my old hunting texts from generations back showed college students in shooting competitions, and I wondered: Why was this part of society ignored? Perhaps the culture war over guns distracted the groups who are charged with the custody of promoting good firearm practices. No more.

[Brickbat]

5. Local high school got a trap team recently.

Looking forward to seeing them compete.

[Lurks Often]

6. There are even scholarships for the shooting teams now

Daughter of a shooter I know got a full scholarship to shoot either trap or skeet for a university.

[ileus]

7. Shooting team sports are a great way to enjoy firearms.

[krispos42]

8. That's not how culture wars are suppose to work!

[Nuclear Unicorn]

9. “I didn’t understand why people enjoyed it. I just thought it was very violent.”

I pretty much wrote the same thing a few years ago. I wrote about the first time I went shooting back on the old DU.

[Eleanors38]

13. Feminist scholar Mary Zeiss Strange had a similar take when her husband suggested...

taking up a rifle for hunting, to paraphrase: "No, I might like it."

She must. Stange has since written a number of books on women hunters and shooters.

[pablo_marmol]

11. "Some also find their perceptions about guns changing."

I would think that quite a few are changing their attitudes. MIT students changing their attitudes about guns? And not passing on gun hate to their offspring? Quite a nightmare for pro-restriction supporters.

The times, they are a changin'.

Edited to add: I liked the comment from the student who spoke of the Zen aspect of shooting. Defies the stereotype of the "violent macho" shooting enthusiast.