Post by goomba on Sept 22, 2010 19:13:27 GMT -5
Top Shot Champ Answers Your Questions
Iain Harrison, winner of History Channel's Top Shot, sat down to answer the questions you submitted through American Rifleman's Facebook and Twitter accounts.
By Danny McCullough
9/17/2010
Top Shot champion Iain Harrison sat down with NRA E-media to answer questions from American Rifleman's Facebook and Twitter pages.
Q: How did you prepare for the competition? (Jeff Love via Facebook)
A: I had two weeks [to prepare]. So I called up a friend of the gun club I shoot in, a guy named Adam Schmidt, who shoots SASS and western 3-gun, and I asked him if he could teach me how to run a [Colt] Single Action Army, because that was a huge gap. You have to go into your weaknesses, obvious gaps in your knowledge base, and I spent a few hours of his time and his own ammunition (it’s always good to run with somebody else’s ammo). [And he] taught me how to run a Single Action Army reasonably competently. And it came up. It’s one of the quintessential American guns, so I figured going into the show, it’s probably going to show up.
Most other things I was fairly confident in. I was going to try to get ahold of a stick-bow to shoot because all my archery experience in the past was shooting something with pins and wheels on it, and I shoot a release, so it’s more akin to shooting a rifle than shooting a bow. I wasn’t able to pull that together and it came back to bite me.
Q: What do you think of the differences between the United Kingdom’s gun laws vs. the United States? (Christopher Lambert via Facebook)
A: One of the reasons I left the U.K. was the change to the U.K. gun laws in 1997 that meant that I had to surrender all my handguns. There were only 20,000 pistol shooters in the U.K. at the time, so a very small minority in country of 60 million. It was an election year, when the government decided it needed to look tough on crime, there had been a school shooting and hanging out legitimate firearms owners seemed to them the obvious way to go. So they knew exactly how many [guns] they had and where to find them, so they said turn them in or you get 10 years. They changed the laws in 1997, they took effect in 1998, and I moved in October of 1998.
Q: Are there any physical exercises you do specifically to improve your shooting? (Michael Prato via Facebook)
A: I run, I lift weights occasionally. In fact, I just did a race.
Q: What’s your favorite food? (Peter Sviatko via Facebook)
A: Well, I’m British, so obviously the national dish is curry. I’m a big fan of Indian food.
Q: How would you compare the trick shots on Top Shot to more traditional shooting disciplines like bullseye pistol, action pistol or small-bore shooting? (John D. Rickards via Facebook)
A: The trick shots kind of put everybody outside of their comfort zone. It’s not something you can do on a regular range. Practice was slim to none. It was pretty much a level that everyone got into. If you could pick things up then it was an advantage in the contest.
read the rest here
www.americanrifleman.org/articles/top-shot-champ-answers-questions/
Iain Harrison, winner of History Channel's Top Shot, sat down to answer the questions you submitted through American Rifleman's Facebook and Twitter accounts.
By Danny McCullough
9/17/2010
Top Shot champion Iain Harrison sat down with NRA E-media to answer questions from American Rifleman's Facebook and Twitter pages.
Q: How did you prepare for the competition? (Jeff Love via Facebook)
A: I had two weeks [to prepare]. So I called up a friend of the gun club I shoot in, a guy named Adam Schmidt, who shoots SASS and western 3-gun, and I asked him if he could teach me how to run a [Colt] Single Action Army, because that was a huge gap. You have to go into your weaknesses, obvious gaps in your knowledge base, and I spent a few hours of his time and his own ammunition (it’s always good to run with somebody else’s ammo). [And he] taught me how to run a Single Action Army reasonably competently. And it came up. It’s one of the quintessential American guns, so I figured going into the show, it’s probably going to show up.
Most other things I was fairly confident in. I was going to try to get ahold of a stick-bow to shoot because all my archery experience in the past was shooting something with pins and wheels on it, and I shoot a release, so it’s more akin to shooting a rifle than shooting a bow. I wasn’t able to pull that together and it came back to bite me.
Q: What do you think of the differences between the United Kingdom’s gun laws vs. the United States? (Christopher Lambert via Facebook)
A: One of the reasons I left the U.K. was the change to the U.K. gun laws in 1997 that meant that I had to surrender all my handguns. There were only 20,000 pistol shooters in the U.K. at the time, so a very small minority in country of 60 million. It was an election year, when the government decided it needed to look tough on crime, there had been a school shooting and hanging out legitimate firearms owners seemed to them the obvious way to go. So they knew exactly how many [guns] they had and where to find them, so they said turn them in or you get 10 years. They changed the laws in 1997, they took effect in 1998, and I moved in October of 1998.
Q: Are there any physical exercises you do specifically to improve your shooting? (Michael Prato via Facebook)
A: I run, I lift weights occasionally. In fact, I just did a race.
Q: What’s your favorite food? (Peter Sviatko via Facebook)
A: Well, I’m British, so obviously the national dish is curry. I’m a big fan of Indian food.
Q: How would you compare the trick shots on Top Shot to more traditional shooting disciplines like bullseye pistol, action pistol or small-bore shooting? (John D. Rickards via Facebook)
A: The trick shots kind of put everybody outside of their comfort zone. It’s not something you can do on a regular range. Practice was slim to none. It was pretty much a level that everyone got into. If you could pick things up then it was an advantage in the contest.
read the rest here
www.americanrifleman.org/articles/top-shot-champ-answers-questions/