Americans actually do shoot quite well, but the rules around gun handling are incredibly strict for Olympic shooting.
Things like minor celebrations, emotion, or even the cadence of your walk while leaving the range can cause disqualification.
Since American shooters can't hit a bullseye without shotgunning a beer and magdumping into the sky as eagles carry exploding fireworks in celebration, they often do not place in Olympic shooting
Well, sure, but you don't send a random selection of citizens to the Olympics. You send the best.
The nation with the most gun owners per capita and a huge population should have many pinnacle-tier shooters, even if it also has many bad ones. So the question is, why aren't they at the Olympics?
Honestly? Opportunity. It starts with money, or willingness for you or your parents to give up everything that isn't training.
I was in the service with some incredible shots. I've been on the range with some pretty incredible shots. Most of them would never have the opportunity for any number of reasons.
Some of that comes down to simply money. Flavor Flav is sponsoring our women's water polo team because some of them were working three jobs while training to stay afloat. Not everyone wants to or even can do that.
A lot of the people who would be excellent at shooting have no interest in specifically Olympic shooting or training for the type of shooting required, unfortunately. That, and the military has probably poached the best of the best, and don't want to show what "best of the best" shooting looks like for strategic reasons.
Respect is a big part of it. Another problem is that they aren't seen as actual tools. They're probably more often a male enhancement device than a tool.
They should be viewed as a tool for the production of meat, for the efficient removal of varmints. In the worst case they are a tool for the defense of self or others. That worst case scenario is actually very rare.
Tools and toys can be interchangeable. However: some pretty strict laws govern the use of toys like sports cars.
My shooting tools are mostly polymer stocked or gripped. Plain, cheapest base model I can get. Then I take them apart and work on the mechanisms to make them mine. I don't have a lot of them, just have a few for my particular use cases.
I really like them. I get pleasure from using my tools. I also really like my lathe and my daily driver small truck. I've also taken them apart and worked on them.
I think this attitude should be required if one is going to own and be responsible for such a dangerous tool. There should be an interview process or something to weed out dumb fucks and the mentally unstable. After all, the militia was supposed to be well regulated. It's not particularly complicated.
Yup. You get it. The solution is simple, with one exception. Simple doesn't mean easy.
We need socialized healthcare including mental healthcare. That would do a lot, there are almost always signs that a non-gang mass shooter is mentally unwell.
Gang and crime based mass shootings would fall through the floor if we removed the incentive for them, prohibition of drugs. Addiction should be treated as a health problem.
We need to identify these sources of hateful propaganda, the nests of poisonous ideology and root them out through education. We aren't teaching critical thinking, I think that also has a lot to do with it.
You also have many young men that lack good role models for positive masculinity. This is a big thing I'm not sure how to fix. Toxic masculinity has become so pervasive and has infected almost every straight man that can be considered macho. I'm a very masculine man, and proud of it. My zippo says Daddy. My straw hat also has a pride/equality pin next to a Ruger pin. The number of men that I meet like myself is quite low. Met a very macho trans man once that I found had a similar worldview. Have met similar men in the gay leather communities but they tend to cluster in large cities and form insular communities for their own safety.
On that last point I think part of the issue is positive masculinity needs to be tied with self love/empowerment. The focus on toxic masculinity has overall been negative and easily spun as "men are toxic" (even though the people who'd benefit most from positive masculinity would be men themselves). Men are struggling because its hard to find a way forward that society accepts and supports
Yeah. I have no clue how the path out of it works.
Lots of disenfranchised young men full of anger and drives, piss and vinegar, see negative messaging for liking the stereotypical things that young straight men like on one side. On the other side they're welcomed with open arms and then drip fed poison while reinforcing their identity.
Here on Lemmy if you talk about hunting, meat eating, etc.; people get all riled up. Think I have at least one troll following me and down voting every post.
The left is failing young men and driving them into the open arms of fascism.
Yeah, I agree with you on pretty much all points. All I can really do is see my peers or juniors who may be at risk of falling into the darker corners, and try and bring them into my circle before that happens, but I only have so much time and energy, and that only helps the ones who get seen before they fall
Knowing is better. Knowing is always better. All we can do is try and tell others what we've learned and keep trying to grow ourselves. My purpose is loving my people, my little family. Care for them and treat other folks with respect and kindness. To err is human, and we forgive others when we can.
You can get a permit to carry a gun in Switzerland if you actually have a good reason for it, like being a security guard. Otherwise you can transport it to your shooting range as long as it isn't loaded. So I wouldn't really say she could carry that in this context.
The rule is you have to hold it single handed. Then everything follows logic, you need to have the arm fully extended to be more stable. You need to keep your eye behind the iron sights. etc.
Try it out yourself, extend your arm and see if you can find a more stable position.
Incredible. I just used my sons nerf toys, and there's just no way to do it to line everything up without leaning to get your head at the level with the pistol.
The gun itself is the painful looking part. I've never seen a pistol that wraps around your thumb like that. Her stance seems perfect, give or take a little lean.
To anyone who is curious, that little elephant plush is her daughter's who gave it to her mom for good luck...or the mom just really wanted it, I wasn't there
Not to take anything anyway from the Olympic athletes who are incredibly talented at their sport, but their sport doesn't resemble the practical shooting of real guns.
Yeah 10m distance with a laser pistol really downplays the old cavalry competition with real high caliber handguns. That said, the old competition was fucking stupid because it allowed cavalry officers to complete but not enlistedmen, because enlistedmen were supposedly more professional and officers were the real amateurs. So you can say the rules were always stupid.
American police officers will spend 43 rounds on a single eight year old jaywalker while the average Japanese assassin requires less than three rounds per Prime Minister.
American shooting is a lot more flash than precision.
Legitimately there's a category of shooting sports that's about the most efficient use of WWI trenchgun style slam firing, which is basically abusing the reload speed on that class of shotgun to convert it into a semi-auto.
We literally made a sport out of what the enemy tried to get classed as a war crime as an act of spite and you're wondering why we not so good at traditional marksmanship? It's a level of decorum that America was basically founded as a fuck you against.
Legitimately there’s a category of shooting sports that’s about the most efficient use of WWI trenchgun style slam firing, which is basically abusing the reload speed on that class of shotgun to convert it into a semi-auto.
I kept chopping paint in mine so I just switched to a semi-auto. God I havent played in forever. Except I need like defoggers for my mask, since I need glasses
I mean, the Olympic version of traditional marksmanship is using a lightweight pellet gun that can't be holstered with a $5,000 customized hand grip and little eyeglass oculars.
You make the competition with a glock 22 and allow 5 seconds to empty the clip and it's a different competition.
You're already backtracking by saying "usually" so you could easily answer your own question here: this is an unusual case.
But that being said, there is nothing in the definition of boring that contains the term "easier." Like go play video games for an hour, then go sit in a room with the lights off and try to guess when an hour has passed. You'll see how easily boring can be much more difficult.
What did I backtrack from? You asked for my logic and you got it. Here's some more.
Most words have more than one denotation and all words have innumerable connotations. That's where context and inference come into play, both of which I employed in determining precisely what the original commentor meant by "boring as hell." It seemed obviously defensive given the context of the meme, as did many other comments in this thread trying to distance Olympic shooting from slaughtering school kids hunting or whatever. That implied, to my subjective reasoning, that the commentor thought it was somehow inferior to whatever version of competitive gun-shooting they prefer. If your subjective reasoning led you to believe "boring as hell" meant "really, really hard," that's something you'll have to settle with you and your brain, friend.
You started with it "should" be easier to "usually" being easier. Statement of fact to just more than 50%.
If your subjective reasoning led you to believe “boring as hell” meant “really, really hard,” that’s something you’ll have to settle with you and your brain, friend.
You're projecting. I do not believe that saying something is boring indicates anything about it's relative difficulty. That's you.
You're thinking of "would." "Should" just means it's probable. You know, like "usually."
You're projecting
Again, I'm using context and experience to infer your opinion. Naturally it's bound to be biased, it is my experience, but it's the best I can do with nothing but your condescending whinging to go on.
Olympic shooting is just a different beast. Look at the differences in scores; it's fractions of a point, in most cases. Air guns simply aren't popular in the US, while they're one of the very few options open to most people outside of the US. And, TBH, there's not a lot of support for the Olympic shooting sports in the US, aside from possibly trap.
The "conventional" guns aren't conventional by any normal definition. I suspect that the air rifles are slightly more accurate than the .22 rifles, because it's really hard to get perfectly consistent .22 ammunition. I've known a few people that did that kind of target shooting--I think they were all Finns?--and holy hell, they're really particular about controlling for every possible variable.
Trap uses very normal shotguns, aside from being extraordinarily, exquisitely made; the over-under shotguns are works of art.
Olympic shooting has nothing to do with shooting of any other kind. The guns are custom made. Unless you are speficially training for the Olympics you'll likely never handle such a "weapon". I think using these guns is the equivalent to a running being able to use spring blades. I am not a gun owner but it feels like a pointless sport as done.
No, that is not true, these are fundamentally single shot bolt action rifles. Maybe like a race bike to a normal street bike.
The additional precision and adjustability are no use to a normal shooter but they are not more complicated to handle.
I mean, they should add a version of this competition where you shoot two guns vaguely at the ceiling without looking at it, while dancing in a cow-boy outfit.
In the states, mass shootings tend to thin out the population of competitors, leaving only Americans who have done active shooter drills and know how to find cover.
Isn't it kind of weird to point at medal counts in the Olympics to say that America sucks? Most overall medals and second in gold medals. Shitting on America, no matter if it makes sense or not.
Bit of a woosh. It's a joke about the specific category. America, the country with the largest number of shooting deaths, has 0 medals in the shooting category.
America is not the country with the highest number of shooting deaths, nor is it the country with the highest per-capita number of shooting deaths. You have been misinformed by propaganda.
Brazil has a lot of gun deaths. But it’s worth keeping in mind that lots of the Amazon region is essentially a lawless “Wild West” and that specialized police units are, in fact, in war with enormous trafficking gangs. “Regular people” get shot too, of course, in violent crime incidents. But besides this, many “regular people” don’t own guns and don’t advocate for guns in the same way as in the US. There’s not really a “gun culture” that regular people participate in — it’s not an identity. Certainly not as much as the US.
I think that’s what makes the photo a valid joke and criticism of the US and that it wouldn’t work for other countries like Brazil. It’s not just looking at total gun deaths or other absolute metrics, it’s also taking into account the layers that make guns in the US a cultural symbol. The US is basically the “gun country” of the world because in the US, guns aren’t just a gang or criminal thing, they're a “regular” thing.
At this point we've only had finals for the events that use children's guns. I'm not really surprised that China would beat us at shooting children's guns. They'd probably win a tricycle race too.
There’s a brand of 22 rifles named cricket that are specifically designed to teach children how to shoot they’ve got built-in safety locks that are a bitch if you lose the key
They probably did in most of Indiana, but I grew up in Bloomington and it's the evil librul leftie commie part of Indiana where a bunch of old hippies who are still hippies settled around the horrible liberal indoctrination center of Indiana University, so they only gave us water pistols.
Oh that makes sense. You were indoctrinated by the evil IU. Why I bet that Kinsey man taught you all sorts of left wing lies like that it’s more ok for a man to love another man than to love his rifle in an intimate way.
As a matter of fact, that is a thing that exists. I had a special child-sized .22 rifle when I was 5 years old. My parents kept it safely stored and allowed me to practice with it under close supervision. Sears made them, marketed as a "youth" model.
Well that's disturbing... imagine how many parents, especially today, wouldn't keep it safely stored or allow their kid to practice with it only under close supervision.
In theory, in a world where every gun owner was responsible, it wouldn't worry me. We don't live in that world.
It could legitimately be an Olympic sport. Although they would need to disguise the name by calling it something like "precision drone-flying" where the goal is to drop a water balloon filled with paint onto a target or something
I think OP was pointing out that several of the competitions use air guns, but conveniently glossed over the one with shotguns (which I'm sure OP will love to know, China got a silver medal...)
It'd be nice if they had a long range category with real rifles. Most countries are already uncomfortable letting their people have access to Olympic pea shooters, so I don't think we'll ever see 1000 meter shooting as an event.
You do know shooting sport guns are built specifically for shooting sports at the Olympic level, right? You seem to think power is more important than accuracy. I doubt any of the athletes agree.
But I'm sure there's some sort of "Redneck Games" or something where people use AR-15s with bump stocks and Colt .45s to target shoot. You should check YouTube.
I'm just not impressed with any marksmanship that maxes out at 50 meters. Regardless of how powerful a gun is it's not impressive to be accurate at such a short range. I don't care about how powerful the gun is, I just want to see it fling something far enough to be interesting.
I'm sure we're all sorry that the world's best target shooters don't impress you. Unfortunately, no one took you into consideration when arranging the Olympics.
The world's best target shooters under a very specific and particular set of circumstances, usually indoors. It's like you're trying to insult me for not being impressed at the driving skills of the world's best indoor go-kart racers.
You know they hit about within a half inch circle at 55 yards. That is with iron sights and the weapon not supported!
This is really remarkable. If my top of the head calculation is correct this is about 1 MOA. Better than the hardware error alone of older/ lower end guns.
Americans actually do shoot quite well, but the rules around gun handling are incredibly strict for Olympic shooting.
Things like minor celebrations, emotion, or even the cadence of your walk while leaving the range can cause disqualification.
Since American shooters can't hit a bullseye without shotgunning a beer and magdumping into the sky as eagles carry exploding fireworks in celebration, they often do not place in Olympic shooting
"I can tolerate precision shooting, but I draw the line at emotional regulation!"
Well, sure, but you don't send a random selection of citizens to the Olympics. You send the best.
The nation with the most gun owners per capita and a huge population should have many pinnacle-tier shooters, even if it also has many bad ones. So the question is, why aren't they at the Olympics?
Honestly? Opportunity. It starts with money, or willingness for you or your parents to give up everything that isn't training.
I was in the service with some incredible shots. I've been on the range with some pretty incredible shots. Most of them would never have the opportunity for any number of reasons.
Some of that comes down to simply money. Flavor Flav is sponsoring our women's water polo team because some of them were working three jobs while training to stay afloat. Not everyone wants to or even can do that.
That is really fucking cool that Flavor Flav is doing that.
.22's are too small for them
A lot of the people who would be excellent at shooting have no interest in specifically Olympic shooting or training for the type of shooting required, unfortunately. That, and the military has probably poached the best of the best, and don't want to show what "best of the best" shooting looks like for strategic reasons.
(side note, happy cake day!)
smells like the gymnastics problem to me, incredibly strict ruling and doing things "too dangerous" will get points knocked off to me.
You certainly don't need to a fucking psychopath to shoot guns respectfully, but you also shouldn't be deranged either.
Those ones probably aren't trying to compete in the Olympics.
Respect is a big part of it. Another problem is that they aren't seen as actual tools. They're probably more often a male enhancement device than a tool.
They should be viewed as a tool for the production of meat, for the efficient removal of varmints. In the worst case they are a tool for the defense of self or others. That worst case scenario is actually very rare.
Tools and toys can be interchangeable. However: some pretty strict laws govern the use of toys like sports cars.
My shooting tools are mostly polymer stocked or gripped. Plain, cheapest base model I can get. Then I take them apart and work on the mechanisms to make them mine. I don't have a lot of them, just have a few for my particular use cases.
I really like them. I get pleasure from using my tools. I also really like my lathe and my daily driver small truck. I've also taken them apart and worked on them.
I think this attitude should be required if one is going to own and be responsible for such a dangerous tool. There should be an interview process or something to weed out dumb fucks and the mentally unstable. After all, the militia was supposed to be well regulated. It's not particularly complicated.
Yup. You get it. The solution is simple, with one exception. Simple doesn't mean easy.
We need socialized healthcare including mental healthcare. That would do a lot, there are almost always signs that a non-gang mass shooter is mentally unwell.
Gang and crime based mass shootings would fall through the floor if we removed the incentive for them, prohibition of drugs. Addiction should be treated as a health problem.
We need to identify these sources of hateful propaganda, the nests of poisonous ideology and root them out through education. We aren't teaching critical thinking, I think that also has a lot to do with it.
You also have many young men that lack good role models for positive masculinity. This is a big thing I'm not sure how to fix. Toxic masculinity has become so pervasive and has infected almost every straight man that can be considered macho. I'm a very masculine man, and proud of it. My zippo says Daddy. My straw hat also has a pride/equality pin next to a Ruger pin. The number of men that I meet like myself is quite low. Met a very macho trans man once that I found had a similar worldview. Have met similar men in the gay leather communities but they tend to cluster in large cities and form insular communities for their own safety.
On that last point I think part of the issue is positive masculinity needs to be tied with self love/empowerment. The focus on toxic masculinity has overall been negative and easily spun as "men are toxic" (even though the people who'd benefit most from positive masculinity would be men themselves). Men are struggling because its hard to find a way forward that society accepts and supports
Yeah. I have no clue how the path out of it works.
Lots of disenfranchised young men full of anger and drives, piss and vinegar, see negative messaging for liking the stereotypical things that young straight men like on one side. On the other side they're welcomed with open arms and then drip fed poison while reinforcing their identity.
Here on Lemmy if you talk about hunting, meat eating, etc.; people get all riled up. Think I have at least one troll following me and down voting every post.
The left is failing young men and driving them into the open arms of fascism.
I have no clue what can be done about it.
Yeah, I agree with you on pretty much all points. All I can really do is see my peers or juniors who may be at risk of falling into the darker corners, and try and bring them into my circle before that happens, but I only have so much time and energy, and that only helps the ones who get seen before they fall
We'd probably get along just fine.
Knowing is better. Knowing is always better. All we can do is try and tell others what we've learned and keep trying to grow ourselves. My purpose is loving my people, my little family. Care for them and treat other folks with respect and kindness. To err is human, and we forgive others when we can.
The Olympic venue is probably intimidating when you're used to using schools as shooting ranges.
yeah i was gonna ask, do we even have a team that runs for this? I feel like we would've heard about it otherwise, yknow, being american and all that.
The real reason
In fairness, you see that chick from South Korea?
I will never have that kind of swagger
I definitely would not want to be the guy who tried to mug her.
Remember that in modern countries she wouldn't be allowed to carry that
I'd say that really depends on the country. Unless you don't consider Czechia or Switzerland modern.
You can get a permit to carry a gun in Switzerland if you actually have a good reason for it, like being a security guard. Otherwise you can transport it to your shooting range as long as it isn't loaded. So I wouldn't really say she could carry that in this context.
Also walking around with a gun is very frowned upon in Europe, even when there's a reason.
That grip on that thing is crazy.
It looks like they took a wooden block and CNC'd her hand shape into it and nothing else. I'd like to see it from the other side.
Something like this
she looks like an arena shooter character.
i bet she can go partially invisible for 20 seconds with a cooldown of 7 and throws mad stun bombs
I just permaban her
I don't have the slightest idea what I am looking at other than a girl holding a gun in a way that looks painful
The rule is you have to hold it single handed. Then everything follows logic, you need to have the arm fully extended to be more stable. You need to keep your eye behind the iron sights. etc. Try it out yourself, extend your arm and see if you can find a more stable position.
Incredible. I just used my sons nerf toys, and there's just no way to do it to line everything up without leaning to get your head at the level with the pistol.
The gun itself is the painful looking part. I've never seen a pistol that wraps around your thumb like that. Her stance seems perfect, give or take a little lean.
Are you really critiquing the stance of an Olympic level athlete?
No, I'm critiquing the other poster that was critiquing her posture, which as I mentioned is exemplary.
Reading comprehension is hard, but it's never too late to learn.
Critique is analysis.
OHHHHH GOODNESS HOW COULD I FORGET THAT LEANING 3 DEGREES IN A DIRECTION WOULD GET YOU DISQUALIFIED.
Tell me you're angry over innocuous details without telling me you're a nitpicky assinine idiot. Please, I'll wait.
Meh, you critiqued, and said you didn't. Own it I guess.
And angry, no, not worth my time. Pedantic? Sure.
Having used a similar gun, it's way more comfy than you think.
Is this a Futurama reference?
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
To anyone who is curious, that little elephant plush is her daughter's who gave it to her mom for good luck...or the mom just really wanted it, I wasn't there
You don't gotta aim to bit a crowd of kids at a school.
AKA Spray 'n Pray.
Shots and prayers 🙏
That's what an extended mag is for ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Sometimes classroom training doesn't translate.
Certainly hit lots of live targets in the classrooms of Uvalde.
--->The Joke--->
youNot to take anything anyway from the Olympic athletes who are incredibly talented at their sport, but their sport doesn't resemble the practical shooting of real guns.
There are actual competitons for that, such as the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) world shoots. The U.S. is much better represented in these: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPSC_Handgun_World_Shoots
Classic Americans, making up our own rules and sucking at following the rest of the world lol
True but it looks like the IPSC is international as well, and the most awards are held by a French man, so US kinda sucks a little at that too.
IPSC is common around the world.
This isn't about the facts. We're on Lemmy. It's about shitting on America, regardless if it makes any sense to.
To be fair, America deserves it.
When it makes sense, yes. When it doesn't make sense, no.
Imagine downvoting this, lmao
You must be new here. I defended the US. That's sure to get a few downvotes. Lol
We're the best in our own country!
It's everyone else who sucks at following our rules, buddy 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
It's like football, americans rule american football.
Biathalonn used to use serious rifle rounds before they switched to .22 LR.
Tbf you could definitely hunt squirrels, weasels, stoats, hare, tarmigan and many other winter animals with 22LR.
Sure, but biathlon wasn't about hunting. Nor was the pentathlon.
Yeah 10m distance with a laser pistol really downplays the old cavalry competition with real high caliber handguns. That said, the old competition was fucking stupid because it allowed cavalry officers to complete but not enlistedmen, because enlistedmen were supposedly more professional and officers were the real amateurs. So you can say the rules were always stupid.
Archery isn't "practical archery" either, and equestrian isn't "practical horseback riding".
Honestly a historical version of these would be pretty damn cool alongside the modern olympic take. Show me the best 100lb longbowman
Xuefeng Cao
Nils Jonasson
Elias Frangoulis
Feels like America might be running a few ringers.
mfw the shooting venue wasn't a school
Don't be rude.
The venue could also be a populated street, a supermarket, or a playground. Our mass shootings aren't just limited to helpless school children.
i apologize; that was culturally insensitive.
Sucks that there are no schoo children and black people available as targets.
Their averages are still fucked.
American police officers will spend 43 rounds on a single eight year old jaywalker while the average Japanese assassin requires less than three rounds per Prime Minister.
*47 rounds
While the one Japanese assassin requires one round per 47 Prime Ministers.
Pfft. I used to bulls-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home.
Stop bragging and go over to Tosche Station. We're totally out of power converters.
American shooting is a lot more flash than precision.
Legitimately there's a category of shooting sports that's about the most efficient use of WWI trenchgun style slam firing, which is basically abusing the reload speed on that class of shotgun to convert it into a semi-auto.
We literally made a sport out of what the enemy tried to get classed as a war crime as an act of spite and you're wondering why we not so good at traditional marksmanship? It's a level of decorum that America was basically founded as a fuck you against.
For those who aren't sure what slamfiring a shotgun is
That's hilarious cause I did this with my pump action paintball gun. Didn't know there was a term for it.
Part of a long and proud tradition o7
Stock-Class CCI Phantom 🫡
Is that not how we're supposed to fire that?
I kept chopping paint in mine so I just switched to a semi-auto. God I havent played in forever. Except I need like defoggers for my mask, since I need glasses
I mean, the Olympic version of traditional marksmanship is using a lightweight pellet gun that can't be holstered with a $5,000 customized hand grip and little eyeglass oculars.
You make the competition with a glock 22 and allow 5 seconds to empty the clip and it's a different competition.
Competition shooter here. Olympic shooting is boring as hell.
Americans place really well in IPSC, USPSA, and 3gun.
The IPSC rifle world shot is happening right now in Finland.
It would be a little strange if Americans didn't place well in United States Practical Shooting Association competitions
So it should be even easier, right?
No. Why do you think that logic follows?
Because a self-proclaimed competition shooter said it's boring. Boring things usually aren't more difficult than the non-boring version.
You're already backtracking by saying "usually" so you could easily answer your own question here: this is an unusual case.
But that being said, there is nothing in the definition of boring that contains the term "easier." Like go play video games for an hour, then go sit in a room with the lights off and try to guess when an hour has passed. You'll see how easily boring can be much more difficult.
What did I backtrack from? You asked for my logic and you got it. Here's some more.
Most words have more than one denotation and all words have innumerable connotations. That's where context and inference come into play, both of which I employed in determining precisely what the original commentor meant by "boring as hell." It seemed obviously defensive given the context of the meme, as did many other comments in this thread trying to distance Olympic shooting from
slaughtering school kidshunting or whatever. That implied, to my subjective reasoning, that the commentor thought it was somehow inferior to whatever version of competitive gun-shooting they prefer. If your subjective reasoning led you to believe "boring as hell" meant "really, really hard," that's something you'll have to settle with you and your brain, friend.You started with it "should" be easier to "usually" being easier. Statement of fact to just more than 50%.
You're projecting. I do not believe that saying something is boring indicates anything about it's relative difficulty. That's you.
You're thinking of "would." "Should" just means it's probable. You know, like "usually."
Again, I'm using context and experience to infer your opinion. Naturally it's bound to be biased, it is my experience, but it's the best I can do with nothing but your condescending whinging to go on.
If they had a mass shooting category we would cleanup. Who wants to shoot just one bullet at a time
Where Americans lack in quality, they make up in quantity.
Olympic shooting is just a different beast. Look at the differences in scores; it's fractions of a point, in most cases. Air guns simply aren't popular in the US, while they're one of the very few options open to most people outside of the US. And, TBH, there's not a lot of support for the Olympic shooting sports in the US, aside from possibly trap.
They use conventional guns as well. But they are specially designed for shooting sports.
https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/shooting-101-olympic-equipment
If nothing else, you can't destroy a clay pigeon in skeet shooting with an air gun.
The "conventional" guns aren't conventional by any normal definition. I suspect that the air rifles are slightly more accurate than the .22 rifles, because it's really hard to get perfectly consistent .22 ammunition. I've known a few people that did that kind of target shooting--I think they were all Finns?--and holy hell, they're really particular about controlling for every possible variable.
Trap uses very normal shotguns, aside from being extraordinarily, exquisitely made; the over-under shotguns are works of art.
I don't think most Americans even know there are other guns beside the AR15 lol...
Christ I'm so glad I dodged that gun nut culture. I was very close to falling down that rabbit-hole in younger years.
Edit: Oof, must've pissed off some RWNJs.
I can picture the American shooters just doing pray and spray and drive bys
They should have put up Snoop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF7xyqCDxQE
You're not wrong.
That’s why muricans need assault rifles.
We’re good shooting at crowds, not in front of them on display. Just makes it too weird.
Americans are good at shooting, just not precisely
Precisely.
Even Guatemala got their first ever gold metal and it was on shooting and she broke the Olympic record.
Nice! Congratulations, Guatemala!
We love shooting guns, doesn't mean we're any good at accuracy!
As someone who has played league of legends for over a decade without any notable improvement, I can fully relate.
Don't worry. They just wrapped up the Presidential Candidate leg of the competition. School is up next and we're expected to have a strong showing.
Olympic shooting has nothing to do with shooting of any other kind. The guns are custom made. Unless you are speficially training for the Olympics you'll likely never handle such a "weapon". I think using these guns is the equivalent to a running being able to use spring blades. I am not a gun owner but it feels like a pointless sport as done.
No, that is not true, these are fundamentally single shot bolt action rifles. Maybe like a race bike to a normal street bike. The additional precision and adjustability are no use to a normal shooter but they are not more complicated to handle.
Doesn't look like a similar firing experience to me.
Not fair, they won't even allow pre-ban machine guns firing tracer bullets in five round bursts.
Try using mathematical triangles to protect yourself from harm.
They need to pack the targets in bunches of 20-25 and house them at an elementary school if you want these mouthbreathers to show interest😉
No no... America has always been about quantity over quality. This proves that.
At Olympic competition you just don't have black people or school children as targets. Which is a severe disadvantage for American shooters.
I mean, they should add a version of this competition where you shoot two guns vaguely at the ceiling without looking at it, while dancing in a cow-boy outfit.
The Olympics are happening? Oh neat.
Oh the reason is simple, they're not in their own country
What's the difference when the Olympics are hosted in the US? Child-shaped targets?
It's not the shape, whispers it's the color.
If the target looked like this, we would have took the gold home. I don't know of I should laugh or cry.
In the states, mass shootings tend to thin out the population of competitors, leaving only Americans who have done active shooter drills and know how to find cover.
such obvious /s content, why are downvoters so hive minded lol
Now that's childish
This shortened graphic doesn't even show that they got last place, smh my head
Im stick in a mental möbius thinking about the title of this post.
If we don’t suck enough at sucking means we don’t really suck. But at the same time not sucking enough at sucking means we suck more.
Ha that made me laugh
What do you expect? There are no political dissenters or uppity uyghurs in China. Not anymore.
Guess where the Olympians trained their shooting skills.
Well, you get a weapon without proving that you got the skills to use it... So, this does not surprise me.....
Hey we aim for quantity of bullets not accuracy, gotta hit as many schoolchildren as possible!
The difference between skillfully using a tool and using a tool as a proxy for personality
I am embarrassed.
Isn't it kind of weird to point at medal counts in the Olympics to say that America sucks? Most overall medals and second in gold medals. Shitting on America, no matter if it makes sense or not.
Bit of a woosh. It's a joke about the specific category. America, the country with the largest number of shooting deaths, has 0 medals in the shooting category.
America is not the country with the highest number of shooting deaths, nor is it the country with the highest per-capita number of shooting deaths. You have been misinformed by propaganda.
yeah, it would be correct to say: "the country with the most shooting deaths that is not an active warzone"
Who is Brazil at war with? I didn't think they were actively participating in any wars.
Brazil has a lot of gun deaths. But it’s worth keeping in mind that lots of the Amazon region is essentially a lawless “Wild West” and that specialized police units are, in fact, in war with enormous trafficking gangs. “Regular people” get shot too, of course, in violent crime incidents. But besides this, many “regular people” don’t own guns and don’t advocate for guns in the same way as in the US. There’s not really a “gun culture” that regular people participate in — it’s not an identity. Certainly not as much as the US.
I think that’s what makes the photo a valid joke and criticism of the US and that it wouldn’t work for other countries like Brazil. It’s not just looking at total gun deaths or other absolute metrics, it’s also taking into account the layers that make guns in the US a cultural symbol. The US is basically the “gun country” of the world because in the US, guns aren’t just a gang or criminal thing, they're a “regular” thing.
I get the joke, it's ironic. Which should have been the title. Just like it's ironic to point to medal counts as evidence that America sucks.
But it's Lemmy and you get extra points for shitting on America, regardless of how much sense it makes.
I’m with you. The title doesn’t make sense.
At this point we've only had finals for the events that use children's guns. I'm not really surprised that China would beat us at shooting children's guns. They'd probably win a tricycle race too.
TIL some people think there's such a thing as a gun for children.
if you told me they sell a gun specifically for children in texas i would absolutely believe it.
that state is fucking crazy
There’s a brand of 22 rifles named cricket that are specifically designed to teach children how to shoot they’ve got built-in safety locks that are a bitch if you lose the key
I was just in the bass pro shop in Memphis the other day, and I did in fact see light caliber rifles specifically marketed for children to use.
They do in California too. It's the whole country.
Well we do have frequent school shootings in America, so any gun that’s been used must be a children’s gun right? /S
This comment makes me sad
Aren’t you from Indiana? I just assumed y’all had free .22s for underprivileged children.
They probably did in most of Indiana, but I grew up in Bloomington and it's the evil librul leftie commie part of Indiana where a bunch of old hippies who are still hippies settled around the horrible liberal indoctrination center of Indiana University, so they only gave us water pistols.
Oh that makes sense. You were indoctrinated by the evil IU. Why I bet that Kinsey man taught you all sorts of left wing lies like that it’s more ok for a man to love another man than to love his rifle in an intimate way.
As a matter of fact, that is a thing that exists. I had a special child-sized .22 rifle when I was 5 years old. My parents kept it safely stored and allowed me to practice with it under close supervision. Sears made them, marketed as a "youth" model.
Well that's disturbing... imagine how many parents, especially today, wouldn't keep it safely stored or allow their kid to practice with it only under close supervision.
In theory, in a world where every gun owner was responsible, it wouldn't worry me. We don't live in that world.
Oh, I didn't realise there was a drone strike event coming up.
It could legitimately be an Olympic sport. Although they would need to disguise the name by calling it something like "precision drone-flying" where the goal is to drop a water balloon filled with paint onto a target or something
You're just making up a sport for the Ukrainians so they can get a gold medal
They've been through a lot, they should get something nice from it.
when do we get the zero V to altitude in X seconds competition, would love to see another streak eagle shenanigan occur.
What guns do you imagine they will shoot next? Are you expecting the event to be sponsored by Armalite? Do you think Kalashnikova will show?
I think OP was pointing out that several of the competitions use air guns, but conveniently glossed over the one with shotguns (which I'm sure OP will love to know, China got a silver medal...)
Also, the air guns they use are absolutely not for children.
It's like saying they throw a discus for children in that sport because it looks like a frisbee.
Shotguns. No, and no.
It'd be nice if they had a long range category with real rifles. Most countries are already uncomfortable letting their people have access to Olympic pea shooters, so I don't think we'll ever see 1000 meter shooting as an event.
You do know shooting sport guns are built specifically for shooting sports at the Olympic level, right? You seem to think power is more important than accuracy. I doubt any of the athletes agree.
But I'm sure there's some sort of "Redneck Games" or something where people use AR-15s with bump stocks and Colt .45s to target shoot. You should check YouTube.
I'm just not impressed with any marksmanship that maxes out at 50 meters. Regardless of how powerful a gun is it's not impressive to be accurate at such a short range. I don't care about how powerful the gun is, I just want to see it fling something far enough to be interesting.
Hahahaha why aren't you in the bloody Olympics then if it's that easy?
I'm sure we're all sorry that the world's best target shooters don't impress you. Unfortunately, no one took you into consideration when arranging the Olympics.
The world's best target shooters under a very specific and particular set of circumstances, usually indoors. It's like you're trying to insult me for not being impressed at the driving skills of the world's best indoor go-kart racers.
Like every single olympic sport can only be performed in a very specific and particular set of circumstances. What is this bizarre gatekeeping?
No, I'm trying to suggest that if you don't like it, don't watch it. What's the point in telling everyone why Olympic athletes don't impress you?
You know they hit about within a half inch circle at 55 yards. That is with iron sights and the weapon not supported! This is really remarkable. If my top of the head calculation is correct this is about 1 MOA. Better than the hardware error alone of older/ lower end guns.
It is still super boring to watch however.
Til 12 gauge double barrel shotguns are for children.
Big colourful bullets so little fingies can use them. It's basically a nerf gun!
When you say "children's gun" do you mean a gun for children to use, or a gun designed to use on children?
For children to use.
Maybe the army guys that the US sent over for trap shooting got lost on the way?
Or perhaps shotguns are for babies, and they only know how to fire rockets or something.
I thought American guns Are for shooting children...
No, they're for shooting ourselves when we've had enough of the crushing capitalism.