by Andrew Kiser
With a focus on the combination of shooting pistols as fast and as accurate as possible, action pistol groups are growing around the world. Now, kinesiology professor Carmine Grieco is hoping to start a new action pistol shooting club at CMU.
Grieco, who has been a professor at CMU for the past two years, is holding an interest meeting at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20, at the Monfort Family Human Performance Lab.
“I recently came from another college in West Virginia called Glenville State College and I started a similar club there and it went really well,” Grieco said. “We competed regularly there and it went really good for the students and I would like to bring the same thing to CMU.”
What sets action pistol shooting apart from normal shooting is the participants are constantly moving and shooting fast.
“Normally, when you think about shooting you think about somebody standing on a range and they are shooting at a paper target and it’s about 50 yards away,” Grieco said. “Action pistol shooting originates from another concept called practical shooting and it’s dynamic in nature.”
The competitions can differ from each competition.
“It’s usually based on competitions, and in each competition there are four to six different scenarios and each are different in each competition as well,” Grieco said. “So you never know what exactly you are doing.”
If the club starts, Grieco is wanting the students to participate in action pistol events in Whitewater. Two organizations, United States Practical Shooting Association and International Defensive Pistol Association, each hold one event every month at the William Jarvis Shooting Complex. At the event, the shooting officer judges the contestants at the course, and they add a new wrinkle to the course.
“It is up to the shooting officer to make different scenarios,” Grieco said. “For example, this complex holds two events a month, whenever you go to the event they will post what the scenarios will be ahead of time, so you are not going completely blind, but they are always going to be different.”
Some examples of different scenarios, Grieco gave, were hitting six targets off of a small moving windmill and one where the contestants had to shoot around a vehicle.
“I went to a competition a few months back and they had to shoot around a car,” Grieco said. “There was literally a car parked on the range and you had to determine: how am I going to shoot around this vehicle in order to stay within the rules and hit all the targets?”
The sport of action pistol started around the early 1980s by Ray Chapman and John Bianchi. According to www.nra.org, they developed original courses to be used in the first Bianchi Cup, which was developed as a law enforcement only competition. Since then 12 more courses were made, and the sport opened up to civilian competitors in 1984.
As a part of the club, Grieco teaches the students firearm safety as well. He believes the sport is safe as long as the club emphasizes safety first. During his time as an advisor for the previous club in West Virginia, there were no firearm incidents.
According to Grieco, if there is enough interest, the club will start next spring. Anyone interested in joining the club, contact Grieco at cgrieco@coloradomesa.edu or at 970-248-1715.
