Gallery Rifle

As many of you will know, the RAF Pistol Club has now formally adopted Gallery Rifle. Since I've volunteered to be Gallery Rifle Captain, I thought I'd better start with a newsletter article on what "Gallery Rifle" actually means.

It all starts with the pistol ban, of course. Deprived of pistols, those of us who decided to stick with shooting looked around for alternatives. One was black powder, which allows pistol shooting to continue, but in a very different form. Another was pistol-calibre rifles, also known as carbines, also known as Gallery Rifles. Actually, the term Gallery Rifle (GR) is a NRA term. Since they are the governing body for this type of shooting, this is the term we'll stick with.

The NRA defines two categories of GR ­ Smallbore (SB) and Centrefire (CF).

GRSB covers all .22 multi-shot rimfire rifles, be they semi-automatic, lever-action, bolt-action or whatever. There is a huge variety available, but by far the most popular is the Ruger 10/22. This is a relatively cheap, reliable semi-auto which can be shot straight out of the box for about £200 or customised out of all recognition for over £1000. As usual, the skill of the shooter makes far more difference to the results than the customisation of the gun does. The NSRA doesn't use the term GRSB, but instead calls these Lightweight Sport Rifles (LSRs). However, their definition also includes air rifles of similar performance, which the NRA definition doesn't.

GRCF covers all fullbore / centrefire rifles based on low-power (i.e. pistol) cartridges, of which the most popular are .38/.357 and .44. Semi-auto fullbore rifles have, of course, been banned even longer than pistols, so most of the GRCF rifles are of the classic underlever style, as seen in the cowboy movies, with a tube magazine under the barrel. However, a few innovative pump, lever and even revolver designs are now starting to emerge.

So, what can we shoot with these rifles? Well, most of the old pistol disciplines have survived, though in modified form. Bianchi has survived, but is a difficult discipline to run as it requires moving targets and falling steel plates. "1500" is probably the most popular GR discipline, but does require a 50m range, and not everyone has access to one of those. The old Service Pistol B has been turned into "Multi-Target", with only slight changes. Service Pistol A (Match 11) has been rather more heavily modified to become "Phoenix A". Police Pistol 1 has become "Timed & Precision" with hardly any changes. All of these disciplines can be shot using either GRSB or GRCF.

I'll concentrate on the disciplines that are closest to what the Club used to shoot, i.e. Multi-Target, Phoenix A and Timed & Precision. The distances and timings are the same regardless of whether they're shot with GRCF or GRSB, but the targets aren't. GRCF uses targets which look like the original pistol versions (Fig 11 & PAA), though to be politically correct the original man-figures have been turned into generic DPM in either black-and-tan or black-and-white. Also, stick-on patches have been developed to put a new scoring ring in the centre, as it proved a bit easy to group inside the old 10 ring with a GR. GRSB uses the same style of targets, but employs the scaled down versions of the "equivalent to 50m when used at 25m" design. These don't have stick-on scoring rings.

I should probably mention the NSRA disciplines as well. These are :

LSR Precision (Prone), shot on 5-bull "cadet" targets at 20yds.
LSR Precision (Standing), shot on PL14s at 20yds or SPA proportional targets at 25m.
LSR Timed, as Precision (Standing) but using the old "half-UIT" course of fire.

Realistically, the RAFPC can't hope to support all of these disciplines, certainly not at first. We've therefore decided to pick one which doesn't require special equipment and can be shot with pretty much any GR. I'm recommending that it be Timed & Precision ­ a formal decision will be taken by the committee when we're planning the next Championships. Whichever discipline is chosen will be part of the Victor Ludorum, so all those of you who fancy the cup had better start practising with a GR! Of course, not everyone can afford to buy a GR. The RAFPC is therefore buying a basic Ruger 10/22, which will be available for all Club members to use at Bisley. Once we've coached you into the new discipline, which should happen during the practice day(s) for next year's Championships, you should be able to use this rifle to enter the various Bisley meetings. We plan to put Club teams into as many as possible. You can, of course, also use the SA80 with the .22 conversion unit as a GRSB. In either case, Service personnel have the advantage that .22 ammunition is provided by the RAF, so your operating costs are minimal.

We're also looking into the possibility of buying a .38 underlever rifle for the Club to keep at Bisley. We'll let you know how that goes as well.

If you're a novice as far as GR is concerned, don't worry about it. Coaching will be provided by those of us who are already familiar with this type of shooting, and exactly the same Tyro / Non-Tyro classification system will be adopted as is used by the Club for the various pistol disciplines.

That's more than enough from me for this article. I'll try to provide another, containing more specific information about what the Club is doing with GR, later in the year. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to contact me:

Charles Murton

Farnborough Mil 6041

cjmurton@dera.gov.uk