Even in Gun-Hating Britain Shooting Is Great for Business
February 1, 2007

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

General newspapers, magazines, television networks and radio stations in the United States tend to portray the shooting sports as the exclusive province of rural residents and blue-collar workers. They seem to ignore the thousands of professionals, including bankers, real estate developers, college professors, doctors, lawyers and other urban business executives and their white collar employees for whom the shooting sports provide primary recreational opportunities.

For several years, many gun writers have referred to Sporting Clays as “golf with a shotgun.” That may be true, but only because of the walking involved in moving from one stage to another in trying to break 50 clay birds and rabbits of varied sizes in surprisingly different flight paths and settings.

While people don’t link other shooting activities with related other recreational activities, the same thinking can be applied to pistol and rifle shooters, Cowboy Action Shooting and muzzleloading competitions and hunting, and big bore and long-range precision shooters armed with almost anything from .22 centerfires to .50 BMG rifles.

Universal Appeal
I was reminded of the continuing and universal appeal of the shooting sports recently when I ran into a judge I hadn’t seen in several years who is a machinegun enthusiast. This encounter came about among several other meetings with women shooters. During our brief conversation the judge complained that the source of surplus .30-06 hardball seemed to be drying up in recent months. But paying more to buy factory-made .30-06 ammo apparently was not going to have him set aside his heavy machinegun for something lighter or pedestrian.

I mention all of this to focus on the fact that millions of people in all walks of life still enjoy safe and wholesome recreation with firearms; yes, and even with non-powder guns. Their numbers may have been thinned in recent years, especially in hunting, but it would appear from various research reports that they may be on the upswing again. Certainly the growth in the defensive use of firearms has been steady and consistent almost all across the country.

A recent National Shooting Sports Foundation report revealed that some 25,000 young boys and girls had entered hunters’ ranks in the past year. And thousands of women and young people have been taking up guns to engage in one of the many challenging and enjoyable recreational shooting sports.

It seems that no matter what the gun-haters say, many people will still be taking up arms for a variety of reasons which certainly don’t need to be explained to Gun Week readers. To help underscore this point, I’d like to quote from a report in The London Times, published in a country which has been trying to wipe out completely the shooting sports and all forms of gun ownership, and which is having problems now dealing with an ever-growing violent crime wave while figuring out how to deal with the Olympics they will host in 2012.

On Jan. 7, reporters Richard Woods and John Elliott contributed a story to The Times which might surprise many people on both sides of the Atlantic.

The headline was “Executives and women go for their guns.”

“Put down those golf clubs and go for your gun: shooting is fast becoming the social networking sport of choice,” the two journalists reported.

A survey of 2,000 companies and 14,000 directors (in Great Britain) shows that shooting is soaring in popularity, they continued. “A decade ago, toting a shotgun did not even feature among the most popular recreations listed by company directors. But the survey ranks shooting as the seventh most popular recreation, almost level with gardening,” The Times reported.

“Though golf remains the directors’ favorite recreation, shooting has come from nowhere and continues its rise, despite the current politically correct climate,” said Allister Heath, editor of The Business magazine (of Great Britain), which conducted the survey.

Numbers Up
Nor is shooting’s popularity solely down to city bankers blasting off on corporate days out. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) saw its membership rise to 128,000 last year, up from 110,000 in 1996; the number of affiliated syndicates has jumped to 940 from just 370 in 1996. (In Britain, shooters for “syndicates” as closed clubs for hunting on preserves and private game farms.)

A recent survey by economic consultants Pacec estimated that 480,000 people now participate in shooting and the sport generates 70,000 jobs. Many of the newcomers are women.

“We have constantly been increasing our membership, it’s across the board,” said Christopher Graffius of BASC. “It is far more accessible than it was.”

An American reading that report might find it hard to believe.

It’s true, though, that landed gentry and business big hitters still lead the way.

Rupert Lowe, the chairman of Southampton FC, is ranked as one of the finest shots in the country. And Marco Pierre White, the celebrity chef, is such an avid “gun,” as shooters are generally known in England, that he takes out his 12-bore up to four times a week during the season.

Hunting seasons in much of the British Isles in confined to preserves and put-and-take estate shooting, and the shooting is largely confined to what shotguns are still legal. But shooting also ranges more widely, partly because farmers have diversified in search of new sources of income.

“Often renting land to a syndicate can be very profitable for them,” said Graffius, “so there are more opportunities for syndicates to shoot than in the past.”

Others suggest that people have discovered shooting is an easier way to network than golf, The Times reported. “When I play golf, most people go in one direction and I go somewhere else,” said Dylan Williams, founder of the Royal Berkshire Shooting School. “The ability to talk to people is negated.

“Whereas here (at the shooting school) you can invite who you want and give them a great day out where they will achieve a great degree of success very quickly.

“People in business say they would shoot even if they weren’t very good at it, because of the people they meet.”

Baron Phillips, a London PR man and keen gun himself, agrees. “It’s become the new networking tool, whether it’s old blue bloods or new money.

Others believe the attractions of shooting go beyond the boardroom. Jonathan Young, editor of The Field, said: “It may be down to people moving out to the countryside. Wives join the tennis club and socially they are fixed. Then the boys turn round and say, what are we going to do? And the answer in many areas is shooting.”

Women Too
However, more women are also discovering they like the thrill of firearms. Among them is Caroline Stevens, a divorced mother of two from Hampshire, who took up the sport recently, The Times reported.

“I got hooked when I was on holiday in Ireland and was invited on a woodcock shoot,” she said. “It was being up on the open moors, dogs running in the woods, the tension—the whole atmosphere just captured the imagination.”

Stevens paid £60 (around $100 US) for a one-hour lesson at a clay shooting school—and discovered a lot of other women were also taking up shooting. “They were divorced women and other women with time on their hands, wanting to do something in a mixed atmosphere.”

Stevens has since obtained a gun license and bought a Beretta 12-bore. “I love it,” she said.

The Times also reported that some 31,000 people are employed as gamekeepers, beaters, loaders and others, that some 70,000 other jobs support shooting in the UK; that people spend about £2 billion (almost $3.5 billion) on shooting in Britain, where a gun may cost anywhere from a few hundred up to £25,000.
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