Shooting sports is a group of competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged firearms, mainly referring to man-portable guns and bows/crossbows.
The .38 Super, also known as .38 Superauto, .38 Super Auto, or 9×23mmSR, is a pistol cartridge that fires a 0.356-inch-diameter (9.04 mm) bullet. It was introduced in the late 1920s as a higher pressure loading of the .38 ACP, also known as .38 Auto. The older .38 ACP cartridge propels a 130-grain (8.4 g) bullet at 1,050 ft/s (320.0 m/s), whereas the .38 Super pushes the same bullet at 1,280 ft/s (390.1 m/s). The .38 Super has gained distinction as the caliber of choice for many top practical shooting competitors; it remains one of the dominant calibers in IPSC competition.
Practical shooting, also known as dynamic shooting or action shooting, is a set of shooting sports where the competitors are trying to unite the three principles of precision, power, and speed, by using a firearm of a certain minimum power factor to score as many points as possible during the shortest amount of time. While scoring systems vary between organizations, each measures the time of which the course is completed, with penalties for inaccurate shooting. The courses are called "stages", and are shot individually by the shooters. Usually the shooter must move and shoot from several positions, fire under or over obstacles and in other unfamiliar positions. There are no standard exercises or set arrangement of the targets, and the courses are often designed so that the shooter must be inventive, and therefore the solutions of exercises sometimes varies between shooters.
Metallic silhouette shooting is a group of target shooting disciplines that involves shooting at steel targets representing game animals at varying distances, seeking to knock the metal target over. Metallic silhouette is shot with large bore rifles fired freehand without support out to 500 meters, and with large bore handguns from the prone position with only body support out to 200 meters. Competitions are also held with airguns and black-powder firearms. A related genre is shot with bow and arrow, the metal targets being replaced with cardboard or foam. The targets used are rams, turkeys, pigs, and chickens, which are cut to different scales and set at certain distances from the shooter depending on the specific discipline.
The International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) is the world's largest shooting sport association and the largest and oldest within practical shooting. Founded in 1976, the IPSC nowadays affiliates over 100 regions from Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. Competitions are held with pistol, revolver, rifle, and shotgun, and the competitors are divided into different divisions based on firearm and equipment features. While everyone in a division competes in the Overall category, there are also own separate awards for the categories Lady, Super Junior, Junior, Senior and Super Senior.
A racegun or race gun is a firearm that has been modified for accuracy, speed, and reliability. Often a semi-automatic pistol, raceguns are used primarily in practical shooting competitions and are modified to function best within a certain set of rules, such as weight, size, and capacity requirements.
The United States Practical Shooting Association(USPSA) is the national governing body of practical shooting in the United States under the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC). Its over 35,000 active members and over 500 affiliated clubs make USPSA the largest practical shooting organization in the United States and the second largest region within IPSC after the Russian Federation of Practical Shooting. USPSA publishes a member magazine called USPSA Magazine six times a year.
The 9×25mm Dillon is a pistol wildcat cartridge developed for use in USPSA/IPSC Open guns. The cartridge is made by necking down a 10mm Auto case to 9 mm.
Power Factor (PF) in practical shooting competitions refers to a ranking system used to reward cartridges with more recoil. Power factor is a measure of the momentum of the bullet, which to some degree reflect the recoil impulse from the firearm onto the shooter.
Cowboy action shooting is a competitive shooting sport that originated in Southern California in the early 1980s, at the Raahauge Shooting Range in Norco, California. Cowboy action shooting is now practiced in many places with several sanctioning organizations including the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), Western Action Shootists Association (WASA), and National Congress of Old West Shooters (NCOWS), Single Action Shooting Australia (SASA), Western 3-Gun as well as others in the U.S. and other countries.
Multigun, Multi Gun or Multi-Gun, often also called 2-Gun or 3-Gun depending on the types of firearms used, are practical shooting events where each of the stages require the competitor to use a combination of handguns, rifles, and/or shotguns Multigun has a lot in common with ordinary IPSC/ USPSA single gun matches, and matches generally have courses of fire where the shooter must move through different stages and engage targets in a variety of different positions.
Steinar Haugli is a Norwegian sport shooter who has won the IPSC Norwegian Handgun Championship 9 times, the Dynamic Sports Shooting Norway civilian pistol championship 3 times, and the NSF Field Shooting Championship Revolver class in 2002. He has been competing actively since 1988.
Rune Vikeby is a Norwegian sport shooter who has won the IPSC Norwegian Handgun Championship in practical shooting with revolver 5 times and civilian pistol 8 times.
The IPSC Norwegian Handgun Championship is an IPSC level 3 championship held once a year by Dynamic Sports Shooting Norway.
Action Air is an airsoft shooting sport based on practical shooting under the International Practical Shooting Confederation. The sport enjoys popularity in countries and areas such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan where civilian ownership of real firearms are either illegal or extremely difficult to obtain, but it is also used by some owners of real firearms as an affordable and easily available training tool. Action air is restricted to handgun, and is not included in the IPSC Tournament structure.
The 1976 IPSC Handgun World Shoot II held in Berndorf, Salzburg, Austria was the second IPSC Handgun World Shoot, and was won by Jan Foss of Norway in front of Ray Chapman of United States by a small margin. Foss had been unknown before the championship and did not participate internationally afterwards.
Shooting competitions for factory and service firearms refer to a set of shooting disciplines, usually called service rifle, service pistol, production, factory, or stock; where the types of permitted firearms are subject to type approval with few aftermarket modifications permitted. The terms often refer to the restrictions on permitted equipment and modifications rather than the type of match format. The names Service Rifle and Service Pistol stem from that the equipment permitted for these types of competitions traditionally were based on standard issue firearms used by one or several armed forces and civilian versions of these, while the terms production, factory and stock often are applied to more modern disciplines with similar restrictions on equipment classes.
Nordic shooting with cross-country running or running biathlon is a biathlon sport which combines running and shooting.
100 meter running moose is a shooting sport based on running targets simulating a moose moving sideways.
