It was at a local private sportsman's club and I heard about the match from one of the members.
It was their first match under the CMP rules.
I was pleasantly greeted by the other shooters and someone quickly briefed me as to what the club had to offer. They said that until noon breakfast was three bucks over at the club kitchen and told me where the toilet facilities were as well as where I could get a cold drink if I wanted one.
That was pretty nice of them to offer me the services of the kitchen that fed me a damned fine breakfast for three bucks. Then again, shooters are pretty good guys.
They didn't have to allow me the use of the kitchen if they didn't want to. After all, it was a private club. The only things they were required to provide me with were the use of the range while I was involved in the CMP match and a bathroom.
Seeing I was shooting a Garand that day and the ammo for the match was inexpensive I bought 52 rounds for five bucks and shot the match. It was cheaper than I could handload them for.
It was a nice club, and like my usual club it was well tended. They had a pretty good bunch of guys there and I shot the match with no problems.
After the match the club returned to being a private club and required membership to enter the premises.
I discussed that with our CMP committee at the next club meeting and it was explained to me that when our club enrolled in the CMP program that there were requirements that the matches were open to the public and there were a few basic things we had to make open to shooters that entered the match.
I mention this because shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing the press in our area was doing what a lot of other television stations were doing at the time. They were taking footage of CMP matches and showing it on the air and passing it off to an unsuspecting public as paramilitary training.
It was a dirty trick and a couple of years later I got even with this particular reporter by passing off my cat on a leash as a guide animal and giving her a feature story but that's another story in itself.
Still, she and her cameraman drove up and demanded the right to take pictures of the match and the Range Officer asked her to leave. She waved a CMP pamphlet and said that the matches were open to the public.
I was next to the RO and shot back that the pamphlet read the matches were open to SHOOTERS of the general public and asked her where her rifle was.
She got pushy and started demanding her rights and so on and as she was another member pulled out what was then a new fangled cellular telephone and called the police.
A couple of minutes a cruiser showed up and an annoyed cop got out. In less than a minute the van was last seen driving off of club property, followed by the police car.
At the next meeting I heard that she got a ticket for running the stop sign at the end of the road on the way out.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this:
http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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I have not yet attended a CMP match. I generally stick with the local matches, which are IDPA, IPSC, Three Gun, and the new "Steel Maches" which are like IPSC but seem to be just local level. I need to get back into shooting but my hobbies have been curtailed due to the economy. And even worse 9mm has been rarer than hens teeth. So, I need to expand my firearms collection to include different calibers. Quite an obvious solution.
ReplyDelete"she got a ticket for running the stop sign at the end of the road on the way out."
ReplyDeleteSometimes life is just so good.