WE MADE A THING

Olympic 50-meter pistol shooting is perhaps the purest, accuracy-driven discipline of all the pistol sports. In it, shooters attempt to send sixty, 22LR rounds into tiny groups at 54.68 yards … riveting stuff.

Which isn’t to detract from the undoubted skill required to apply the fundamentals of marksmanship on a consistent basis, in order to rise through the ranks of any competitive sport. But we have to wonder if one of the hurdles the athlete has to overcome is to stay awake on the firing line. While it has its roots way back in the code duello, the sport evolved over the years to embrace Flobert’s radical new invention — the rimfire cartridge — before being adopted as an official Olympic sport in 1896. The International Olympic Committee, being a bunch of corrupt, limp-dicked, party yes-men with a visceral aversion to any kind of shooting event, dropped it in 2018.