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Gunfire Erupts In South Carolina From Youth Gang Related Activity
By Tom McHale

Scholastic Steel Challenge Gang Activity

My Gun Culture

USA --(Ammoland.com)- Gunfire erupted in a Summerville, SC rural community over the weekend as a gang of teenagers, including some pre-teens according to witnesses, literally sprayed hundreds of bullets over a three hour period. According to some estimates, over 1,400 shots were fired before the shooting spree ended just before 1pm eastern time.

Gang Member Showing Off His Colors

Witnesses claim the hoodlums committing these shannanigans were armed with typical ‘street guns’ including Springfield XD’s, Smith and Wesson M&P’s, and Glocks. “Typical Saturday night specials favored by criminals and thugs,” whined New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “I can’t believe that gun companies are giving our children access to these things. My people tell me that Smith and Wesson even gave them one free of charge in order to encourage this behavior.”

Most of the youth involved exhibited no shame and brazenly walked around with their firearms in full view. Most had exposed belt holsters, belt-mounted magazine carriers, and other tactical equipment.

“These kids were armed to the teeth,” observed a passer by. “They had lots and lots of high capacity magazines. Every one of them had at least five from what I could see.”

On further examination, It turns out that the gang was participating in a Scholastic Steel Challenge Match. A source close to the group explained the gangs colors. “They’re wearing Techwear competition shooting jerseys,” explained a mysterious adult ring leader known as Coach Mike. “They have a really cool ‘Steel Stingers’ logo on the back. Totally bad if you ask me and the kids love ‘em.”

The Palmetto Steel Stingers gang team is based at Palmetto Gun Club in Charleston, South Carolina. In addition to providing a great facility for the youth to practice and hone their skills, club members are exceptionally generous with donations, loaner firearms, and free coaching and instruction. National and local gun related companies have also thrown in their support. Smith and Wesson provided a team M&P 9mm, Winchester Ammunition provided big discounts on ammunition, and local retailer East Coast Guns has donated ammunition.

A Teaching Moment

Safety is the number one priority with each new team member receiving exhaustive classroom training before stepping on to the range. Coach Mike also starts each practice session with a pop quiz on the four rules of gun safety and cold range rules.

Scholastic Steel Challenge is a division of the Steel Challenge Shooting Association designed for hoodlums.. youth ages 12-20. The basic idea is to hit five steel targets as fast as possible, without missing. A youth match consists of four separate courses of fire, each with a different combination of target shape, size, and range. At each course of fire, competitors shoot five ‘strings’ with the best four times getting logged in the books. As the event is timed, each miss costs precious seconds, thereby placing a premium on accuracy and smoothness over raw speed. It’s challenging, which probably explains the name Steel Challenge.

It’s not hard to see how these kids ended up in gun toting gangs. A look at their collective backgrounds tells the story:

• Top of class in a prestigious junior high school
• Practices drawing and getting fast sight pictures with a paintball gun and paper plates on the clothesline
• Former International Irish Dance Champion
• Various members of junior and senior high school cheerleading squads
• A recent graduate of a summer Civil Air Patrol program

Dangerous group isn’t it?

Got kids? Know kids? Ever seen a kid? Expose them to something fun, safe and challenging. You’ll also get the joy out of scaring the bejeepers out of any hand-wringing pantywaists nearby. Check out the Scholastic Steel Challenge program and find (or start) a youth shooting team in your area! Please, do it for the children!

About: Tom McHale describes himself as a conservative gun-totin’ bible-clingin’ literary assault dude who enjoys finding humor in just about anything. His web blog My Gun Culture is an irreverent, twisted look at gun news bordering on the ridiculous. It covers shootin’ stuff, loud noises, defending your own, the occasional mall ninja, and about 200 years of the American way. “These are the (partially) true stories of… My Gun Culture” says Tom. Visit: www.mygunculture.com

Filed under: Competitive Shooting News by MyGunCulture 1 Comment »

U.S. Coast Guard Academy Takes Scholastic Steel Challenge Collegiate Spring Shooting Championship

Scholastic Steel Challenge Collegiate Spring Shooting Championship

Scholastic Steel Challenge

EAST GRANBY, Conn. --(Ammoland.com)- The motto of the U.S. Coast Guard is ‘Semper Paratus’ which means ‘Always Ready’ and that’s exactly what the cadets of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy were when they took on, and beat, the University of Vermont, Harvard University, Yale University and a squad from Wayland High School to claim the first Scholastic Steel Challenge Collegiate Spring Championship.

The cadets outpaced second place UVM by 79.52 seconds with a final winning time of 363.15 seconds. Cadet Barton Nanney led the team, finishing first overall with a time of 79.46 seconds and a stage win on both Speed Option and Roundabout. Finishing second overall was Cadet Alex Webber with 89.67seconds followed by Cadet Jake Naum, fourth place overall, with 96.22 seconds. Cadet Jon Sapundjieff, who took top honors on Five to Go finished fifth overall with 97.80 seconds.

“The U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s Combat Arms Team put in an outstanding performance at the Collegiate Spring Championship. As SSC expands at the collegiate level, the cadets are likely to remain at, or near, the top of each match if this weekend’s shooting is any indication,” said Scott Moore, director of the Scholastic Steel Challenge.

The University of Vermont’s Shooting Sports Club finished second with a combined team time of 442.67 seconds, led by Jeffrey Hammersmith who finished seventh overall with 99.27 seconds. Chris Stecyk placed eighth overall with 99.40 seconds while William Cain and Takeshi Horiguchi finished 10th and 11th overall with times of 116.44 and 127.56 seconds respectively.

The only non-collegiate team competing in the match finished third. Made up of students from Massachusetts’ Wayland High School, the squad posted a final time of 458.88, just 16.21 seconds behind Vermont.

Jesse Goddard, who finished third overall in the match with a time of 91.75 seconds, led the Wayland shooters. Helping propel Wayland into third was John Monahan who took top honors on Smoke & Hope, the only stage the Coast Guard Academy cadets did not win, and finished sixth overall with 98.37 seconds. Will Gunshenan and Derek Kaufman rounded out the Wayland effort with 130.35 and 138.41 seconds each.

Harvard’s team, which included shooters who had little or no experience with pistol shooting, finished fourth with a team time of 690.51 seconds. Alvin Siu led the Harvard squad with a final time of 136.78 seconds followed by Kip Christianson with 157.39 seconds, William Marks with 180.53 seconds and Lila Nieves-Lee with 215.81 seconds.

The Yale squad, which also featured shooters with limited pistol experience but, like Harvard, unlimited enthusiasm, took fifth with a team time of 717.23 seconds. Brian Lee led the Yale effort by finishing ninth overall with a time of 108.38 seconds. Lee was followed by Edward Paulino with 165.37 seconds, Justin Hart with 211.83 seconds and Dan Bersak with a match time of 231.65 seconds.

Held at the Hartford Gun Club and hosted by firearms make Smith & Wesson, the Scholastic Steel Challenge Collegiate Spring Championship marks the program’s expansion to the collegiate level.

The next major collegiate event on the SSC schedule will be the Scholastic Steel Challenge Collegiate Fall Championship which will be hosted by Sig Sauer and take place at the Sig Sauer Academy located in Epping, N.H.

The Scholastic Steel Challenge is a national team-oriented youth shooting program developed by the Steel Challenge Shooting Association and funded in part by a grant from the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The program is open to young men and women ages 12 to 20 and offers them the opportunity to compete as a four person team for a national title in the action pistol discipline of speed shooting.

From the beginning, industry support for the Scholastic Steel Challenge has been strong with the program picking up sponsorship from Action Target, Atlanta Arms & Ammo, Brownells, Glock, GT Target Stands, MGM Targets, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the Outdoor Wire Digital Network, Precision Delta, Safariland, Smith & Wesson, Winchester Ammunition and the Youth Shooting Sports Alliance.

For more information on the Scholastic Steel Challenge and the Steel Challenge Shooting Association, visit www.SteelChallenge.com, follow @ScholasticSteel or @SteelChallenge on Twitter or find the Steel Challenge on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SteelChallenge.

About the SCSA:
The Steel Challenge Shooting Association (SCSA) is the national governing body of the sport of Speed Shooting and organizer of the Steel Challenge World Speed Shooting Championships. To learn more about the Steel Challenge Shooting Association and the Steel Challenge visit the Web site at www.steelchallenge.com. There you will find diagrams of the stages of fire, complete listing of past results, a list of past champions, world record times and more.

Filed under: Competitive Shooting News by Ammoland No Comments »