As we’ve noted before, Samuel L. likes his guns. Judging from his recent tweetage, he also loves him some Olympic pistol competition, too. And he really seems to revere rimfire’s recoil. Or lack thereof. We second that emotion. As for the absence of sideways shit presentation, we’re totally down with that, too.
I find it hard to get impressed by rimfire shooting. handling recoil is 90% of the art of shooting. I understand some people like it, but I find it quite boring.
Yes, but the accuracy demands are 100x what they are in action shooting. One-handed.
Here, here. I say let’s have us some good old large-bore pistols in the Olympics where we use the venerable .45ACP (because they don’t make a .46 of course. ;^)
🙂
Too much noise for an event with a crowd watching.
I’m sorry, but if you think handling recoil is 90% of shooting… you haven’t done enough shooting for a score, and you’ve done far too much spraying of rounds downrange.
When I’m shooting a pistol for a score, I don’t even notice the recoil. It doesn’t matter whether I’m shooting a 1911, a Smith 41, a .38 revolver or a 9×21 racegun. The fundamentals are always the same for every gun, and the hardest thing to accomplish is co-ordinating the trigger break with the control of the front sight. Recoil literally takes care of itself.
You don’t notice it because you’re handling it. Most of the challenge of shooting a pistol is recoil. I’ll stand by that.
I’m by no means an Olympian shooter but I’m no slouch.
I understand your point, but I would say that recoil is managed by you doing everything else properly in slow fire shooting. Breathing, grip, focus takes care of recoil, so it wouldn’t really matter if you’re shooting a .22 or a .500. However, rimfire makes smaller holes, so it’s easier to see who is more accurate.
By the time the recoil impulse is in my hand, the bullet has left the muzzle and I’ve done all I could do to put the shot on target. The recoil literally does not matter to me, OR MY SCORE. The only way it would is if I have such a half-assed grip on the gun that it comes out of my hand(s).
Since that doesn’t happen, recoil does not matter.
I don’t care if they’re shooting air pistols — those Olympic shooters are insanely good.
That’s because you haven’t tried it with a .22LR Gatling Gun. Not boring.
Now that would be worth doing!
Dat Foo is Off da Hook! And on The Pipe.
Samuel L. Jackson had the best tweets throughout the Olympics. And having him appreciate the “gats” just makes it that much better
“I find it hard to get impressed by rimfire shooting. handling recoil is 90% of the art of shooting.”
1) You should try an actual rimfire competition sometime and see how it goes. You might be just a wee-bit more impressed after you find out how tough it really is.
2) Handling recoil is about 2% of the art of shooting. By the time you have to “handle recoil” the round is already out of the tube and on it’s way and you’ve already made all of your accuracy mistakes (trigger, breathing, flinches, et-al).
Yeah, but to be fair, you have to handle your nerves in anticipation of the recoil. At least with a real gun you do.
No, you don’t.
Too many people get hyper-involved with recoil, IMO. I’ve noticed this in beginners especially, which is why I start people with a .22: so I can tell them “Pay no attention to the recoil.”
What jangles people’s nerves isn’t so much the recoil. It is the noise of the larger, higher-pressure rounds. The best solution to this is to shoot outdoors and put in ear screws under a good set of muffs.
i have to agree with you d.g. muzzle blast seems to affect people more than ant felt recoil. my wife is 5 feet tall and she handles any pistol, including a 45 well. her complaint is the slap in her face from muzzle blast on the larger guns. i’ve taught and shot with a wide range of people and the blast seems to be the top complaint,imho.
I will amend my comments in light of thinking about the “so big they’re stupid” calibers in handguns – the attempts to create cannons without carriages, the .500 S&W, .475 Linebaugh, etc. For these guns, handling recoil is a significant factor, if only to make sure that you don’t split your wig with the gun coming back into your face.
For semi-autos – I’ve not yet seen a semi-auto that recoils so hard that, if you have a competent grip on the gun, it will try to slap you in the face.
But up to an including a .44 Mag out of a N-frame revolver, I maintain that the recoil isn’t really the issue, but noise certainly can be.
There are plenty of smaller, lighter-recoiling guns that really do rattle people – like a .357 full-sized revolver with 125 JHP’s in an indoor situation. Lots of noise, flash, sturm und drang really sets people on edge – on both sides of your firing station, too, but not too much recoil.
Go to the NBC Olympics website and watch the finals of the rapid fire pistol. When you consider the size of the target, the distance, and the time limits I believe you will come away with a greater appreciation of the sport. Plus, it was really quite exciting to watch.
I’ve played around with a few competition rimfire pistols, on those microscopic targets. It is very, very, very hard to do, and those who can do it at an Olympic level have superhuman muscle coordination and control.
However, it is also boring as all hell. Time for Olympic three-gun.
+eleventy billion for Olympic 3-gun!
AGREE!!!! I would love to see 3 gun or at least practical shooting at the Olympics. They organizations are world wide, no reason not too!
I think a Ghetto Pistol Shootout would broaden the appeal of the Olympics myself. Imagine if you will, mandatory mirrored sunglasses, bandannas, pant on da ground that must be held up with the free hand, and sights on the side of the slide. The shooter must fire at a bobbing and weaving target while bullets are raining all around him. I’m thinking it would be a hit!
On a more serious note though. Watch some Cowboy mounted Shooting sometime. Now THAT is an exciting sport. Not just your ability to aim while standing still in a laboratory environment and handle the recoil so to speak. You must be able to shoot on the fly, literally, aiming by instinct rather than science, and have an equine partner who is finally honed in the art, and can also “handle the recoil”. Kind of a mixture of barrel racing and Cowboy Action Shooting. Plus, the costumes are da’ bomb!
To me, a gun is simply a valuable tool and an ballistic projectile delivery system. I’d prefer near zero recoil and noise.
While his tweets are all good and shit.
Remember he still pimps for the pResident and his rerun for supreme dick-tator and doesn’t want you to have any freedoms.
Too bad he voted for Obama because he’s black.
He may like guns, but he’s a fool. Samuel L. Jackson thinks you should vote for president because of his race:
Samuel L. Jackson did, in explaining why he voted for President Barack Obama — “because he was black.” Jackson also said his vote had nothing to do with Obama’s agenda: “[Obama’s] message didn’t mean [bleep] to me.”
Obama isn’t really a black man — at least as defined by Jackson: “When it comes down to it, they wouldn’t have elected a [n-word]….A [n-word] is scary. Obama ain’t scary at all. [N-words] don’t have beers at the White House. [N-words] don’t let some white dude, while you in the middle of a speech, call [him] a liar. A [n-word] would have stopped the meeting right there and said, ‘Who the [bleep] said that?’” White voters, according to Jackson, voted for Obama because they found him un-black or semi-black or quasi-black.
Recoil and blast are part of what I love about center fire handgun shooting. That said I’ll risk weighing in on the debate. With slow fire high accuracy events among top ranked shooters recoil and blast should and likely have nothing to do with it. If recoil is an issue in slow fire competition the shooter needs much, much more practice.
That said, recoil and muzzle control are huge in rapid fire and highly timed move and shoot events (and most applicable to DGU). These are simply separate animals. For precision slow-fire .22lr simply makes more sense in terms of shooter fatigue, cost, risk management and a host of other issues. Precision slow fire is a sport and it’s equipment, rules and scoring are structured as such. To take away from it’s competitors for not having to manage the recoil of a center fire cartridge is to completely miss the point of that type of competition.
Or, more succinctly, in both golf and baseball one attempts to strike a ball with a specialized stick, these (ball and stick) are not interchangeable, and skill at one of these competitions does not necessarily imbue or restrict ability at the other. It is such with slow-fire rim-fires Vs center-fire run and gun.