But this mix of range officers and shooters from across the country are apostles. They’re the NRA’s best hope for popularizing the organization’s American Rifle Challenge. If they bought in to the competition, the hope was they’d take that enthusiasm back to their home ranges and start running local ARC matches themselves.
While their rooms and meals were covered after they arrived for the ARC training at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, they paid for their own transportation. With gas at almost $5 per gallon, that demonstrates a belief in the competition.
Like true apostles, they came to learn how to spread a simple message: if you already own an AR-style rifle or are considering buying one, the NRA American Rifle Challenge is the competition designed to help you learn new skills, make new friends and learn to run your AR correctly.
Rifle proficiency isn’t a message unfamiliar to the National Rifle Association, despite all the issues the organization has had over the past few years. Marksmanship training was, after all, the organization’s founding purpose. The ARC competition itself isn’t new either, but it never seemed to catch on with the shooting public.
The NRA’s competition division is tasked with changing that. As part of that task, the ARC program supports the use of rimfire ARs, pistol caliber carbines and the use of suppressors for training and competition.
If the people I spoke with and watched at Atterbury are any indication, we’ll be seeing many more of the ARC events around the country. It won’t happen overnight, but the effectiveness of the folks being trained should go a long way toward turning it into a popular competition. They are, after all, the disciples of this match.
Speaking with attendees from Michigan, Colorado, and California (shooting California-compliant ARs with some difficulty), they totally “got” the idea that just owning an AR doesn’t make someone a competent shooter any more than reading a book about golf means you’re ready to play. Competency, in any endeavor, requires practice. Competition helps focus the mind while making weak points easy to spot.
Michigan resident Steve Wasenko not only demonstrated his willingness to learn, he demonstrated the fact that the ARC competition would be applicable for everyone. Wasenko’s in a wheelchair, but his shooting abilities were on display to the point he finished first among the shooters/students in one of the demo stages.
“I love shooting,” he told me, “I want everyone to see that this is shooting where it doesn’t matter how experienced you are — or aren’t — it’s a chance to compete, have fun, and get better.”
He and his business partner are opening a new Michigan facility that will feature ARC matches. It will also encourage physically challenged individuals to come give the shooting sports a try. As an alum of Trevor Baucom’s highly successful Adaptive Defensive Shooting Summits he’s not only an ambassador for ARC competitions, he’s a solid example of the ability to shoot not ending after a catastrophic injury.
The results from the Camp Atterbury training session won’t be something quantifiable in the near term. Like anything based on discipleship, it will take time to bear fruit. As the attendees collected their sample targets, shirts for initial range officers, and other assorted training aids, it looked like they were leaving with two key ingredients for success: knowledge and enthusiasm.
We’ll keep you posted.