VIDEO: Rifle Shooting with UT Olympian Ronan Richardson

Sparks

It's a little cheezy, but good nonetheless - and in 1080p HDTV as well!

Lemon3

Not a great ad for safety, with "pick it up" being the only instruction given to the noob, and he also forgot to mention that gun was/might be loaded/cocked too, not good.

Sparks

I'm pretty sure that that wasn't as unscripted as it looks, especially given the training the DURC ROs go through...

Lemon3

It looked accidental to me, or else really well acted. If I was shooting the video, I would do a retake and get things looking right, especially for the club.

Sparks

If it was the club doing the filming, yeah, but if it's the UT doing it, they're going to look for something silly.

Also, the first time anyone ever fired an air rifle in the ten years I was a DURC RO, there wasn't a pellet in it, for exactly this reason. 40 years of continuous operation in that range, with 3-400 members every year, half of them newbies, running four hours a day, five days a week on half-hour details with two or three shooters in each detail (and always with a minimum of two range officers for that detail), and no accidents or injuries (bar people hopping their heads off the low roof) kindof points to the club being safe, I would have thought....

It wasn't me!

Having been there on the day, he was given a lot more instruction. It just doesn't make for good footage. Everything was discussed with them as to what would be shown before it was shot.

bazza888

yeah it looks bad on the guy teaching allright!!thats some little range is it in a basement or somewhere?

Thirdfox

It's in one of the dungeons of Trinity College

And speaking as a current RO for the club I'm sure our captain would have given proper instructions to anyone using a rifle for the first time.

The TRO tests can be...difficult...to pass.

bazza888

im not saying anything bad about the guy,just that the fact its in the vid looks bad.it looks like a cosy little place allright!!

Sparks

Thirdfox wrote: »

The TRO tests can be...difficult...to pass.

I wouldn't say difficult.

They're designed to be impossible to pass successfully (ie. getting nothing wrong) - if someone got through them without failing some part of the evening, they wouldn't learn anything

Sparks

bazza888 wrote: »

it looks like a cosy little place allright!!

Yup. And 400 people use that as their range every year. People think DURC's a bit overboard on the forms and stuff... until they see the size of the range and the number of members in the club for the first time, at which point a few start wondering if we need more organisation

MiGiD

The University Times videos aim to show off sports in college in a lighthearted way and I think they did that (our relationship with campus newspapers has not always treated us so well). DURC certainly didn't take a lighthearted approach to the visit with excessive amounts of ROs present to supervise the one shooter and the Safety Officer present to supervise the ROs and the shooter and his 'crew' (paying particular attention to camera placement).

There should be a disclaimer like from Cops or Mythbusters saying that all shooting was carried out under the supervision of experts and this should not be tried at home. Scenes may have been dramatised for entertainment purposes

Our range is unfortunately vertically challenged but it's cosy and wouldn't be DURC any other way

demonloop

I can't imagine anyone has viewed that video and thought there was a lack of safety.

If anyone was to assume that was the first take, and think that was the complete instruction from beginning to end, would be naive bordering on ridiculous.

There was a video I saw not long ago were Jen McIntosh and Neil Stirton showed Rhona McLeod (?) from Sport Scotland how difficult 50m prone rifle was.

None of that video showed the undoubted safety brief she got beforehand, and no-one commented as to it's absence from the final released video.

It showed her getting into position and firing a few shots, helped by Jen who loaded it for her IIRC.

Well done DURC, great to see shooting getting some good, positive air time.

It wasn't me!

It's my opinion that the two college clubs are in a unique position, with university media outlets on their doorsteps, comparatively huge memberships and potential membership pools, to provide good PR and to actively pursue it, to attract younger people to the sport (And I know, getting them at eighteen isn't the same or of the same value as getting them at eight to eleven, but that's just how it is at the moment) and in general to provide a really good resource for Irish shooting, and this video and the very fact that we saw an opportunity and pursued it to highlight ourselves and our sport and hopefully get a few more people interested is a positive step in that direction.

Comments as to its quality and content are great, but, well, you didn't see the whole day (Cutting well over an hour of a session and filming down to what you've seen, you're not going to get procedural stuff included without compromising on the exposure part of it), it was well run and we got on well with the filming team and were all agreed on what needed to go in to make it work from everyone's perspective.

The fact is, nobody else is doing it (Last piece of target shooting film media I recall is four and a half years old and was the NTSA 50m National Championships in 2007 on RTE's On the Ball) and we're better off for the fact that something's being done. Was it last year Sparks had target shooting videos showing on screens over the Stephen's Green Shopping Centre and every second comment was criticising him for not showing it sexily enough, or only showing air rifle stuff rather than the facet of the sport the commentator wanted to see, but wasn't prepared to put the work in for? If more people were doing this, we'd be better off, but it's certainly easier to tell other people why you think their efforts aren't enough.

Sorry if this comes across overly strongly or indignantly; that's not my intention. If people have issues with this video, they need to be making their own and getting them promoted, rather than criticising, and I'll watch and support all of their efforts too.