Ideas on the Marksmanship Qualification Program

Marksmanship Ratings

These are not yet cast in stone (in fact, they never will) but serves as some general guidelines. The standard levels of marksmanship should be as follows:

Pro Marksman
Marksman
Marksman First Class
Sharpshooter
Expert
Distinguished Expert

Those are the commonly recognized ranks, whereever you go, be it military, law enforcement or other organizations. We should stick with those.


What about course of fire?

We can go all over the place on this. I think we need to keep it simple first. I'd propose a bullseye pistol type of course of fire with slow fire, timed fire and rapid fire scoring. Later on, we can get into a lot of other things --- rifle, shotgun, handgun, etc.

At most, maybe we can add a rifle qualifier. So we have pistol and rifle first.

We can work on the actual scoring later. There are many models out there for us to consider. We'll try to make it as simple as possible. Don't pick overly long ranges, but something that most people will have access to, including shooters in urban areas who can access only indoor ranges with limited distances. We'll use standard types of targets that are easy to purchase.


Postal verification

I propose that shooters mail in their qualifying targets. The NRA Marksmanship Qualification Program relies exclusively on the honor system for all levels except Distinguished Expert. It's easy to implement this. We can add another dimension with postal verification to keep it interesting and add some accountability. What do you think?


Awards

I'm proposing to provide the following awards for each shooter attaining a new level:

1. Certificate
2. Medal
3. Rocker

I'm wondering on a t-shirt. That potentially could be a lot of trouble having to stock too many sizes and different marksmanship levels. But that's something that shooters may want. I don't know yet.


Publication of Directory

We can maintain some type of directory by city/state/country that has individuals who have qualified at different levels. People who don't want to be identified can have their initials listed. I think it's a good idea to have a comprehensive list even if a portion of folks are anonymous. That reinforces to people that this is a solid program with reasonable participation (if that in fact is the case).


Shooter of the Month Recognition

We publicize a short bio with picture of a qualifying shooter once a month. Or if that's too much, we can do it every 6-months, or maybe just when we get to it. And call it simply "Shooter in the Spotlight" or something like that.

We ask a selected shooter to complete a bio and a questionnaire. One of the questions should be: How has the Beverly Hills Marksmanship Qualification Program helped you as a shooter?

That would give tremendous PR potential.