Competition Shooting IS safer than High School Football

Can we prevent high school football deaths? - CNN.com:
(October 23, 2015)

(CNN)On Thursday night, Bogan High School football player Andre Smith was hit during the last play of the game, his relatives told CNN affiliate WLS. The 17-year-old Chicago student collapsed while walking off the field and was taken to a hospital, where he passed away early Friday. An autopsy is expected later this week. Smith's was the seventh high school football-related death this season. According to an analysis from the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research database, about 12 high school and college football players die every year. The leading cause of death isn't football-related trauma, but sudden cardiac arrest.

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As many of my readers know, I instruct a class in Competitive Pistol Shooting (USPSA/IPSC ... look it up) and every month I teach from 1 to 15 people how to SAFELY use loaded pistols in an aggressive  competitive environment.

When people sign up for my class, I send them a list of equipment requirements and provide some verbiage about the sport.  One of the things I tell them is:

"IPSC competition is safer than High School Football!"

But it's heartbreaking when I go online to confirm that statement, and recent events have sadly proved that teens + football = "dead children".
 (Liberals indulge in outrageous statements to make a point, so I will too.)

Strangely, I have seen young people compete with loaded guns with 'nearly' a zero-injury safety record.  (* disclaimer below)



In the last five years, I've had about 100 people go through the course of instruction, and then attend matches.  Some of them do well, are happy with their performance, and have continued competing.

Others have gone to one match, decided it wasn't for them, and never came back.  Their choice, no problem.

Some seem to treat the class as a generic "Gun Safety Course" and never compete.  If they have learned anything from the class, I'm happy.  We're not trying to proselytize, but to teach people how to use their best judgement when handling a firearm.

Nobody has ever been killed when competing in IPSC/USPSA, to my knowledge.
(Again, see * disclaimer.)

However, when "organized sports"  (which is part of a high-school or college curriculum as a means to "build confidence and character" addresses what should be a much less risky proposition, kids end up dead.

A lot of kids.

It's not just isolated incidents which occur once a decade, but annually several teenagers DIE while competing in organized, intermural, supervised and professionally coached sports.

I'm not writing to criticize High School football;  I don't enjoy spectator sports, so intrinsically speaking I don't care about it one way or the other.  And although I think it's a pointless waste of young lives, I know it's a choice that these children and their families make.  It's not my place to say whether their choices were the best.  After all, who expects their children to die from playing high school football?

Mostly, my family expected me to get shot while I'm at a pistol match.
They're still waiting.  I'm so pleased to say that after 30 years in the sport, they're coming around to the idea that I'm too mean to shoot myself.

And my grand-nephew, Derien, has graduated from high-school so there's one less loved one *_I_* have to worry about, 'cause he was a pretty good football player.

Glad he survived the experience.


* DISCLAIMER:  A few years ago at a local match, I heard that someone had been shot.  Turned out that .. yes, a young man ... had engaged a stage which required him to start prone and then stand, draw and engage targets.  He managed to touch the trigger on his pistol before it had been raised to the firing position.  The bullet hit keys in his pockets and there was some bleeding.  His father took him to the doctor, got him bandaged, and they returned to the range before the match was over.  That's the WORST story I can offer about IPSC/USPSA competition.