Par For The Course

I just finished up a piece for Springfield Armory on the implications of Karl Rehn’s “Beyond The One Percent” series, where he lays out that only one percent of gun owners take any training beyond the bare minimum required by law.

Ouch.

I compared this stat to golf, where the percentage of golfers who take lessons is much, much higher. The full article will come out in a few weeks, but I want to expand on one of the points I wrote about, the importance of a par score. I believe that one of the reasons why so many golfers take classes compared to gun owners is because every golfer knows what he/she has to accomplish when they step into the tee box. It’s 278 yards to the pin, you gotta carry the water and par is four strokes. Par is par at your local municipal range and par is par at Pebble Beach. Heck, every stroke you take on a course or at a driving range has a goal attached to it. If you don’t carry the water, you get a penalty. Whoops.

What is “par” at your local indoor shooting range? What does your local range consider to be competency, and what are they doing to create it? I am not talking about limiting admission to USPSA B Class shooters and above, as I think everyone should be welcome at a shooting range, just like any idiot can take a set of clubs to a public driving range.

However, that which gets rewarded gets repeated. If you want better shooters at your range (and fewer dollars spent on repairs to target carriers, walls, etc.) cultivate a culture of marksmanship. Create a “Drill of the Month” (something with a par time) and have your customers video themselves shooting it and post it online. Best score each month gets a prize. Post the leaderboard so it encourages competition. Every gun store in the country is filled with Type A personalities. Put them to work for you.

What would happen if your local indoor range offered a 10 percent membership discount and better range reservation slots to everyone who could successfully shoot a 5x5x5 drill? How would that impact training at that range? Would people want to sign up for a class in order to help them achieve that goal?

We are a competitive species. Why not put that to work for your range?